Dear Everybody:
The most important news this morning, as far as I’m concerned, was the Department of Education posting a video on the OFFICIAL Department of Education website that compared Trump to Hitler:
–The video shows a clip from the movie DARKEST HOUR, a movie about Churchill fighting the forces that wanted to negotiate a surrender with Hitler and convincing, if not them, at least the public that Hitler could not be trusted and that their only option was to fight him. In the clip, Churchill bellows, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth!”
–The clip then shows a montage of images of Trump, followed by the line, “No one does it like us,” with a tiger emoji.
–The intent was clearly to send a message to Canada, saying, “Don’t mess with Trump or you’ll get eaten,” but that message was completely overwhelmed by the fact that they were comparing Churchill to Canada and Trump to Hitler.
–The outcry was immediate and livid, so they deleted the video.
–The New Republic said it wasn’t clear whether the staff who made the video “wanted Trump to look cool like a tiger and missed the context, or actually wanted to possibly compare the President to Hitler. With this administration, unfortunately, either is possible.” (Note: I don’t agree. I think that they knew exactly what they were doing and wanted to see if they could get away with it or not. They couldn’t, so they deleted it, but don’t kid yourselves that it was an accident, or that they won’t try again.)
–Heather Delaney Reese: “At 10 a.m. this morning, the official social media account of the United States Department of Education posted a video no nother living or dead presidential administration would ever have imagined publishing. While they were attempting to glorify Donald Trump and show the world just how powerful and feared he was, the clip they chose to make that point ended up saying something far darker than they seemed to realize, or more honest than they meant to be.” –Heather Delaney Reese: “Churchill was not calling Hitler strong. He was calling him dangerous.”
The other big news is a good news story about Trump and the midterms:
–The background: Trump has been sitting on $400 million dollars in PAC money and refusing to spend any of it on Republican campaigns. Republican officials have been desperately trying to talk him into spending it, particularly on campaigns that are in trouble, like Susan Collins’s in Maine and Ken Paxton’s in Texas, but he had so far refused to part with a penny, even though it’s vitally important to buy ad time, etc. early on because as the election gets closer, the ads get more expensive and ad time gets sold out altogether.
–Trump has now decided to spend it–or at least some of it–on ads about himself. He has decided that the problem is that people just don’t grasp how great he is and don’t know enough about his accomplishments, so he’s going to do a series of ads starring himself.
–Trump has told MAGA to “pretend” he’s on the ballot.
–He plans to headline a Trump-focused midterm convention next month.
–Trump also has decided to go do rallies for Republican candidates, and everyone in the Republican establishment is afraid to tell him no, even though the last thing they want is him out there braying about how the economy is great and he won the Iran war and data centers are great and everybody loves ICE. (And endlessly bragging about his tariffs and his ballroom and his heliport and all the gold in his Oval Office and his NASCAR race and his cage fights at the White House and his granite and his grass.)
–Trump is also utterly convinced (partly because Natalie keeps handng him carefully constructed cheerful information) that everything is great. “The Radical Left Democrats are going CRAZY with Fake Polls. They’re putting them out at levels never seen before. They’re called, ‘Demoralization Operations,’ where they try to demoralize Republicans so they don’t go out and vote–But the actual Polls are tremendous!”
–Mona Charen: “Poetic justice is the best justice.”
–And Trump is now trashing Republicans, accusing them of blowing the election as if he had NOTHING to do with the GOP at all. He retweeted a post that said, “I’m very worried the GOP is sleepwalking toward a midterm reckoning they don’t see coming. People are pissed off that they voted TRUMP into office and then the GOP continues to slow-walk every reform people want…I don’t think the GOP fully grasps how badly they are fucking up right now.”
–Raw Story: “Donald Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to blame congressional Republicans if the party suffers major losses in the November midterms.”
In mail-in voting/USPS news:
–The judge who had put that stay on Trump’s executive order to restrict voting by mail “reluctantly” removed it after the Supreme Court gave her no other choice with its ruling.
–According to Politico, the Supreme Court had ruled that earlier challenges to Trump’s order were premature because the Postal Service had not finalized its plans. But that changed Friday when USPS issued a final rule to implement the effort.
–brooklyntrolleydodger: “In lifting the second injunction, (the judge) allowed the plaintiffs–pro-voting groups led by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts–to amend their complaint and seek a new court order to block the federal government from carrying out Trump’s decree.”
–However, a new lawsuit was filed Wednesday by Democratic attorneys general in 24 states to block the finalized plan. The new case directly challenges the final rule on the basis that it is unconstitutional. (It’s in the Constitution that the executive branch has no jurisdiction over elections AT ALL.)
–Norm Eisen: “We just filed to STOP the new USPS rule on mail ballots. The Court only held that the injunction came too early. Now we HAVE a final rule and we are litigating it.”
–The judge who had put the stay on is presiding over the new case as well. The lawyers have applied for an emergency block because mail-in ballot voting begins at the start of next week in some states.
–Democracy Docket: “A judge lifted restrictions preventing USPS from carrying out Trump’s anti-mail voting order after SCOTUS invalidated her other block against the measure. While the decision green-lights implementation of the order, the battle continues as litigation over its constitutionality looms.”
–Kyle Cheney: “A federal judge lifted the last remaining block on a USPS plan to regulate mail-in ballots, but new emergency legal challenges–including one filed today by 23 Democratic-led states–could make the decision short-lived.”
–The Democratic National Convention, the DSCC, THE DCCC, and the DGA all have joined the suit.
–Tangentially, the same judge ruled that Trump violated her court order blocking the new mail-in ballot restrictions, saying that the DOJ made contradictory claims to her and the Supreme Court and that the DOJ finalized the rule implementing Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots despite her explicit order barring them from initiating or completing any such rule making.
In Epstein/Trump news:
–The DOJ says they’re going to appeal the judge’s ruling in the Katie Phang case demanding they turn over the handwritten news for Jane Doe’s FBI interviews and other documents.
–The judge had denied the DOJ’s request for an additional 90 days and granted Katie Phang’s request for the government to file its motion for summary judgment in 30 days.
–The judge has ordered them to turn them over NOW and is threatening them with contempt if they don’t, so they’re appealing.
–Meidas Touch: “Why are they fighting this hard? There’s an Epstein Transparency Law, a federal judge ordering disclosure–and instead of complying and releasing the documents, they want to keep fighting it.”
–One reason they may be fighting so hard is that chunks of the notes have already been released online, and they are incredibly damning. Like this one:
–And this note: “Jeffrey Epstein–testimony places Donald j. Trump as a person involved in the sale of young women to the sex trafficking ring of Jeffrey Epstein and Saudis.:”
–In Ghislaine Maxwell news, the federal judge ruled that her claim asking for a retrial is meritless and that all or almost all of her arguments are frivolous. He said the files do not exonerate her. To the contrary, they incriminate her.
–AND a NEW lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn, and lawyer, Darren Indyke, has been filed in New York alleging they conspired with Epstein to facilitate his sex-trafficking operation. It may make more discovery public.
In Kennedy Center news:
–Trump’s hand-picked board of lackeys has now voted to put Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center, this time underneath Kennedy’s name. It’s going to say, “Renovated and Restored by Donald J. Trump,” and the letters will be etched into the stone so they can’t be removed.
–They also voted to name the plaza around Kennedy Center “The Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
–They are threatening that if they can’t put his name on the building, it will have to be demolished because the donations he generated were the only thing keeping the center going. “The Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down.” (“Nice little memorial center you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Don’t tell me they’re not the Mob!)
–Jim Acosta posted: “Trump now threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center.”
–“This is the whole Trump act in miniature. He seizes something, slaps his name on it, declares a historic triumph, and the thing quietly rots. Audiences and donors walked out the door. No amount of gold lettering hides a failure of this size.”
–The truth is that after Trump took it over, donations completely dried up. All the major shows, ballets, and opera companies canceled and went elsewhere. The Center is now on track to fall nearly $1090 million dollars short of its revenue target, with a $243 million dollar deficit even after gutting a third of its expenses.
–Norm Eisen: “We filed our Kennedy Center brief demolishing Trump’s ridiculous position that he may tear down the building if he can’t get his way on renaming. This one is simple: keep Trump’s name and hands OFF. Hearing 2 p.m. Eastern Time today.”
A few last words on Dolly Parton:
–Dolly recorded a bunch of songs and put them in a vault. They will be released over the next 100 years.
–Dolly was an uncredited producer on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. When she learned the only female producer was making less than her male counterparts, Dolly cut her a check for the difference on the spot.
–Justin Lee: “I went to see British pop star Olivia Dean at a sold-out stadium in Houston, and right before Olivia came out, they played “9 to 5″ on the sound system. Everyone turned on their cell phone lights in tribute to Dolly.”
–lineatus: “Solid Democratic campaign strategy idea: Promise that everything Donald J. Trump has named for himself will be named for Dolly.”
In Mitch McConnell news:
–Still nothing.
–Molly Jong-Fast: “Are we ever going to find out what happened to Mitch McConnell?”
In They’re Trying to Kill Us All news:
–Today Dr. Oz said today, “We don’t know if the children died from measles or had another condition that was already attacking them and they happened to get measles at the same time.”
–(Note: They tried this same trick during COVID. Also, the only reason they got the measles was because of RFK’s support of anti-vaxxers. Before he came along, measles had been declared effectively non-existent in the US.)
–Elon Putz: “It happens all the time. Most gun deaths are actually from people having a massive heart attack right before the bullet hits them.”
–RFK, Jr. went even farther. He said the measles deaths were faked.
–Both people who died of the measles in Pennsylvania were unvaccinated. Trump’s administration refused to say whether the victims were children, but today Dr. Oz blew it and admitted they were. One was a baby.
In historical news:
–Today in 1883, the volcano Krakatoa erupted, completely blowing apart its island and causing tsunamis around the world. 35,000 people died in the tsunamis, and the explosion was so loud it was heard in Perth, Australia, 3000 miles away.
–The ash cooled the entire northern hemisphere, dropping the average summer temperatures by 0.72 degrees and causing “the year without a summer.”
–It created sunsets around the world so vivid and red that people called their local fire companies to report “the fire to the west.”
In science news:
–There is a lunar eclipse tonight, and the good news is that it will be visible over almost all the continental United States and that it’s at a decent time. (Here in the West it begins at 7:30 p.m. and will be total by 9:30 p.m., so you don’t have to get up at three in the morning to see it.) Plus, you can see it with the naked eye, no telescopes needed.
In other news:
–Trump just canceled major funding for Alzheimer’s research. (His father died of Alzheimer’s, and many observers think Trump is suffering from it.)
–American farmers are facing their worst financial crisis since the 1980s. The crisis has been created by Trump’s tariffs and by Trump’s war with Iran, which has led to huge increases in the price of diesel fuel and of fertilizer.
–The price of toilet paper is likely to go sky-high in the near-future. It’s one of the major exports from Canada to us that Trump has just slapped 50% tariffs on.
In good news:
–Costco is refusing to carry Trump meat.
–A federal judge struck down Texas’s ban on drag shows, deeming it an unconstitutional restriction on free speech. Dolly Parton was cited in the ruling. The judge said, “Just as many people criticize Elvis’s hip gyrations and were offended by his display of male sexuality, chastised Dolly as a voluptuous sex symbol because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes, and breast exposure, and shamed Miley Cyrus for twerking onstage during a live performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, there are erotic elements in countless popular performances that could be subject to both civil and criminal penalties under SB12.” The judge said the solution was simple: “Just don’t go.”
–Arizona erased more than $1 billion dollars in medical debt for 671,000 residents through an Undue Medical Debt program.
Today is International Dog Day, and, since I have just lost my beloved Bunter, my message to you is to hug your furry babies, give them a couple of extra treats (they all deserve it, even if they did tear up the couch cushions and knock over the lamp) and tell them how much they mean to you and how much they’ve enriched your lives. As for me, today I intend to pet every dog I see.
The sadness just doesn’t seem to stop. Yesterday we found out that Tim Curry had died. He was definitely most famous for his sly wit and wolfish grin as Dr. Frank N. Furter in ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, but my favorite role of his was as the Dodo in Syfy’s ALICE. He also appeared in MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND, in Stephen King’s IT (he was the terrifying clown, Pennywise), in CLUE as the butler, in THE THREE MUSKETEERS as a fiendish Cardinal Richelieu, and he appeared in countless other films.
–The Bulwark said, “He made it look fun to be a freak,” and said that while Michael Caine thought of the Muppets as fellow actors when he played Scrooge in A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL, when Tim Curry played Long John Silver in MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND, “I feel like Tim Curry thought of himself as a fellow Muppet.”
–He had had a stroke in 2012 and could no longer walk, but was still doing voice overs.
–Linda Oliver: “Losing Tim today is another kick when we’re down.”
Sorry to have been the bearer of so much bad news this week. To cheer you up, here’s one of the many Dolly Parton stories making the rounds: When Dolly was heckled from the audience by a guy shouting, “I love you, Dolly!” she shouted back, “I told you to stay in the truck!”
Best comment of the day, from the “God” twitter account: “Dear Humanity, I sincerely apologize for taking the wrong person again. I will be going on a listening tour to hear from the community and promise to do better in the future. Thank you. (Signed) God.”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
