While we all weren’t looking it appears the U.S. is now an ally of Russia against Ukraine. There wasn’t exactly a formal announcement of this, but I don’t see any other way to look at events over the last several hours.

Yesterday Trump very proudly announced that he and Vlad Putin had reached a great deal. The U.S. is suspending sanctions on Russian diesel exports  until April 7  Putin agreed to release 300,000 tons of diesel immediately “to the American and global marketplace,” followed by 500,000 tons in November and another million after that.

Trump then wrote on Truth Social that another three million tons of Russian diesel would be delivered “within a short period.” But this depended on the condition of Russian refineries, which have been attacked by Ukraine. Whether the three million tons were really part of the deal or just Trump not knowing how many zeros are in three million I cannot say. But commentators I saw on the teevee said that the Russian diesel would’t make a whole lot of difference to the price of diesel in the U.S. There’s a headline at Barron’s that calls the deal “a drop in the bucket that won’t move the needle on prices.”  But it would make Putin a lot of money. So it’s a stupid deal. I feel for farmers and others who are being ruined by diesel prices who may now get their hopes up there will be relief soon. There won’t.

And then there’s the little matter of the sanction Trump suspended, which was imposed by Congress. Many senators are not happy, and not all of those senators are Democrats.

Less than a month ago the Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, intended to toughen up sanctions on Russia. The late Miss Lindsey’s sister, Darline Graham, was given a big role in introducing and passing the bill, and so far it’s been her big moment in the Senate. Darline is currently in a neck-and-neck race with Dr. Annie Andrews for the Senate seat. One might argue Trump’s suspension of one sanction undermines Darline a tad.

But it gets better. Trump’s next move was to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy :to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure used to produce and distribute diesel, saying the attacks are causing a global shortage. The part about Ukraine being in a war with Russia for its existence as a nation seems to have slipped past Trump’s attention.

So now, having stabbed Ukraine in the back, Trump is saying that Ukraine had better get a new leader. That should make Zelenskyy president for life. And Trump is blaming Zelenskyy for high diesel prices. There are a lot of factors impacting diesel prices, and the Russia-Ukraine war is one of them, but I suspect Trump’s mess in Iran is at the top of the list.

I see also that Andy Burnham, the UK Prime Minister, called Zelenskyy today. The PM assured Zelenskyy that the UK would continue to strengthen its sanctions on Russia and take action to constrain the Russian war machine. I hope President Zelenskyy gets other such calls. But it’s another sign of the times of how isolated Trump is, and how isolated he has made the U.S. And I’m sure Trump has no clue.

At The Atlantic, David Frum tells us (as if we didn’t know) that Trump is an easy mark for Putin.

For the American truckers and farmers Trump claims to be serving, the deal means little or nothing. Trump may not know or may not care that his latest gambit will not reduce diesel prices. His poll numbers are plunging to Herbert Hoover levels. He needs a last-minute electioneering gimmick.

But while the deal will not benefit American consumers, it has immense consequences for others. For Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the deal is a potential lifesaver. For war-ravaged Ukraine, it is the most outrageous and heartless Trump betrayal to date. For Trump’s entourage, the deal promises corruption opportunities on a multibillion-dollar scale. And for people trying to understand the Trump presidency, the deal is further proof of the accusation that Nancy Pelosi flung in Trump’s face in 2019: “With you, all roads lead to Putin.”

I encourge you to read this article. Trump’s “entourage,” in particular Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, have been trying to work a Russia-Ukraine deal that somehow includes some special sweeteners for special Trump donors and some Middle Eastern groups that do business with Kushner and Witkoff. One suspects it’s understood that some of those sweeteners will make it into the pockets of Kushner and Witkoff eventually. Meanwhile, Ukraine is being told to suck it up and make concessions. Or just surrender; that would be great.

Another thing I learned from Frum’s article is that the U.S. actually produces more diesel than we use. Of course, the price is set by global markets.  But if Trump weren’t pouring how many billions of dollars into  his stupid war, maybe the government could provide relief to farmers and businesses that use kiesel with subsidies or something. That might actually help. But then if Trump hadn’t started the stupid war the price of diesel wouldn’t be quite so high.

But here’s a new development — Axios reports that House Republicans are moving to block Trump’s oil deal.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) vowed Saturday to force a House vote to block Russian oil purchases, challenging President Trump’s diesel deal with President Vladimir Putin.

Why it matters: Trump has touted the deal as a way to lower fuel prices, but it could also provide revenue for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Driving the news: Fitzpatrick, co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said he would introduce the “Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Act” and force a vote through a discharge petition.

“It will be forced to the Floor via discharge and it will pass overwhelmingly,” Fitzpatrick wrote on X.

Retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) tells Axios he has “already agreed” to sign the petition.

Well, okay, not a lot of Republicans, and considering the House is hardly ever in session any more this will probably go nowhere. But it’s still interesting.

Update: Today (Sunday) Trump announced that Putin and Zelenskyy have agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” meaning they have agreed to stop attacking energy facilities. But President Zelenskyy, when asked about it, says this was news to him. Zelenskyy says he will agree to it if Putin agrees to it. But whether Putin has agreed to anything isn’t clear. Trump made a similar announcement last month, but neither party confirmed that there was a deal. Both Russia and Ukraine continued attacking energy infrastructure.

Tomorrow we should hear who will be awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, Then we can all make fun of Trump for not getting it.

Does anybody remember María Corina Machado, last year’s winner? Who foolishly gave her prize to Trump, probably with the expectation that he would help her opposition party gain power in Venezuela? I checked on what Machado has been up to lately. Not a whole lot, other than taking a lot of meetings. I understand that after the U.S. military removed Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, some U.S. lawmakers argued for installing Machado’s party in power. But guess who blocked that? Trump, of course. He’s got the indefinitely interim president Delcy Rodríguez in place who is letting Trump have access to a lot of Venezuela’s oil, and that’s all he cares about. And Delcy Rondriquez refuses to allow Machado to return to Venezuela.

I bet she’s really sorry she gave Trump her peace prize.

In other news, today the Trump Administration announced that Microsoft and some other tech companies, including Adobe, are cut off from a program that allows skilled foreign workers to apply for permanent residency in the United States.  Immediately I didn’t think what did Microsoft do wrong? I thought, why is Trump pissed at Microsoft? Here’s the basics:

Vance framed the move as necessary to protect U.S. workers from unfair wage competition.

“Our message to Microsoft is, you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said at a news conference announcing the penalties. “You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”

Vance did not present evidence that Microsoft had laid off U.S. workers and replaced them with foreign employees through the H-1B program.

I assume reporters are looking into this now. But get this part:

Trump was scheduled later Thursday to present Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor given by the U.S. for technological achievement.

Nadella, who was born in India, previously worked in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. He surrendered his U.S. permanent residency in 1994 and applied for the visa so he could bring his wife to the U.S., an unusual immigration story he recounted in his 2017 memoir.

By now you’ve heard that Trump thinks it would be just fine if an enemy took out Los Angeles or San Diego. This was in a rally in Nebraska. I found a transcript of the entire talk.  Like most of Trump’s talks, it’s basically incoherent.

The outrageous comment, in full: “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with and they might keep going a little long.”

But leading up to this, he wasn’t talking about Iran but about the midterms. Here’s the larger context, from a transcript:

Well, they’re all saying we’re in trouble in the midterms. They can take all the stuff that we gave you, the biggest tax cuts in history, a great border, best border we’ve ever had. All the things that we did, I could write, I could name, I could stand here for 20 minutes and talk to you about it. It could all be taken away if you start losing a couple of little elections. It’s all gone. All of your tax cuts will be, your taxes will be double, triple. You’ll end up in a depression. You’ll end up in a depression with these people. But early voting is underway right now, on early voting or on election day, November 3rd, you go out and vote, you got to go out and vote. And we want to make it as Kamala would say. Did you hear her the other day? Kamala, she said, “We have to make the election too big to rig.” She stole my line.

She got killed even by the Democrats on that one. Can you imagine Kamala? She’s about two years late. She said, Did you hear that? She said, “We have to make the election too big to rig.” I said, “I can’t believe she…” She stole my line. She stole a lot of things that didn’t work out too well. But I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember with the word just artificial, it’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with and they might keep going a little long.

So he’s free-associating, I assume, and he jumped from the midterns to … what? Iran,I guess. The next paragraph appears to be about Iran.

They always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it, let me tell you. They need it, but it’s going to end very soon, and it’ll end one way or the other and your gas and your gasoline and all of the things. And don’t forget, we also took on a country known as Venezuela. They never talk about that. They never talk about Venezuela. And we’re taking in hundreds of millions of barrels of oil every week. We’re pouring oil. We’re pouring oil into this country like nobody’s ever seen before. We took it over. China left. Russia left. They all left because they wanted them to leave, but they all left and we took over Venezuela. One hour and 48 minutes it took us. Nobody killed. Nobody killed. They don’t talk about that.

Poor baby. But as I learned and reported in an earlier post, the U.S. is getting hundreds of thousands, not millions, of barrels of oil from Venequela every day. Meanwhile, the National Petroleum Reserve is down 429 million barrels.

But back to letting “them” take out Los Angeles and San Diego. California is pissed. And Republican candidates for office in California are now scrambling to put distance between themselves and Trump. :

Jim Desmond, a member of San Diego County’s board of supervisors who was endorsed by Mr. Trump in his campaign to represent California’s 48th congressional district, said he “vehemently” disagreed with the president.

“No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage,” he wrote in a post on social media.

His Democratic opponent, Marni von Wilpert, a member of San Diego’s City Council, highlighted Mr. Desmond’s ties to the president.

“It’s indefensible that Jim Desmond continues to support Trump’s war and continues to be backed and funded by a President who jokes about the 1.4 million people in San Diego being ‘taken out’ by a foreign adversary,” she wrote in a social media post.

I don’t know if Mr. Desmond had a reasonable hope of being elected, but if he did before, he sure doesn’t now.

Of course, the White House doesn’t think this is any big deal.

White House spokesperson Steven Cheung defended Trump on Tuesday. “The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” he wrote. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the President. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”

Trump also posted about the rally on Tuesday morning. “My Rally crowds and enthusiasm are unbelievable!” he wrote. “Nobody has ever seen anything like it.”

The midterms can’t come fast enough.

In what looks to me like a bare-assed attempt to prop up his poll numbers and possibly buy midterm votes for Republicans, Trump has announced he is sending $90 checks to most seniors and $500 checks to nearly a million Affordable Care Act enrollees.

As I understand it, the senior checks are going to Medicare Part B enrollees whose Medicare premiums are deducted from their Social Security income. That would not include me, since my Medicare premium is paid by Medicaid.

The payments, which I don’t believe were authorized by Congress, are coming from a  $2 billion Medicare Improvement Fund that Congress created in 2008 to improve Medicare services. Trump called the fund a “pointless ‘Slush Fund'” in a Truth Social post. The White House said the improvement fund has never been utilized. It may be the fund has never been utilized — I don’t know — but surely that money could have been better spent than just sending a one-time $90 check to seniors that won’t even cover half of the standard monthly premium deduction. Seems stupid to me.

The Treasury Department has already begun sending out the one-time $500 checks to  more than 950,000 Obamacare enrollees in 30 states that use the federal exchange, healthcare.gov. The remaining states have their own state-run exchanges.

These checks are being funded through unspent user fees paid by insurers. Insurers offering plans on the federal exchange pay a percentage of collected monthly premiums to fund IT infrastructure, call centers, and consumer outreach. So I guess Trump isn’t spending that money on IT infrastructure, etc.

The checks are going to people who have not qualified for subsidies in the past because they make too much money. In other words, the checks are going to upper-income people. Trump has said that these Obamacare policyholders were “wrongly overcharged” during the Biden administration. While most of the $90 checks going to seniors will actually be direct deposits, the $500 checks are going out in the mail with a letter from Trump.

In his letter, Trump wrote, “For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov. That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now, I am returning it to you!”

“You have paid into this flawed System, and now you are finally getting something back,” he wrote, listing his efforts to root out fraud, reduce drug prices and boost spending on rural healthcare.

So upper-income people who hadn’t qualified for subsidies are getting a $500 “reimbursement” check from Trump because other, poorer people used to get subsidies so they could afford healthcare. $500 won’t come anywhere close to the difference between subsidized and unsubsidized premiums over a period of years, It also won’t make up for the fact that a now-smaller risk pool means everybody’s premiums have gone up. So the people who weren’t getting subsidies must have seen premium increases since the Big Ugly Bill passed.  I can’t say how much those upper income people will be impressed by $500 checks..

Oh, and hospitals all over the country are really struggling because of Trump’s cuts. There are been six closures this year, but many more hospitals have but back or eliminated emergency, obstetrics, and other departments. And there are estimates that hundreds of hospitals will be at risk of closure next year, especially in rural areas.

In other news — and this is actually a bigger deal than Trump’s “love me” checks — do read U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies at the New York Times. It begins:

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.

I hope there’s some way to prosecute all of them eventually.

You really should read the transcript of the Time magazine interview with Trump. It’s unusual for him to be directly quoted in print without his rhetoric being cleaned up. All through the 2024 campaign I was repeatededly furious at watching Trump deliver some word salad remarks and then see it in print rewritten into sensible sentences. But here is the real Trump:

Because I do respect the free press, but I don’t respect fake news. I’ll give you an example. CNN and MSDNC, which is MS Now—they changed the name because it does so poorly. But I won the election. I won it handily by massive numbers. I won the popular vote. I won all seven swing states. They said if you won three swing states, I won all seven. I won the counties. It’s very important, 86% popular vote. Everything, and very conclusively, I haven’t had a good story on CNN for years. They’re incapable of being—they’re fake news. Same thing on MS NOW. 

In his mind, because he won the election by massive numbers, which he didn’t, any criticism of him is “fake news.” And then later:

I went to Tennessee. The crowd went wild. I went to, yesterday, to Chicago. Got the big golf tent. President’s coming. The crowd went absolutely wild. And I said—I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it but I just said a few words before the guy started playing. They asked me to make a speech. I said, “I’m not going to make a speech. I want to play golf.” But I said to him—I mean, they had to stop the crowd from—they were going crazy, 100%. There was no negative number. Did anybody write anything negative about it? Check it out.

That’s all that’s important to him. The crowd went wild! He can’t possibly be doing anything wrong!

And he says the U.S. is taking a “tremendous” amount of oil out of Venezuela and will soon replenish the strategic reserve. But that depends on what you call “tremendous.” According to Google AI, the U.S. needs 429 million barrels of oil to completely fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve back to its maximum authorized capacity of 714 million barrels. Also according to Google AI, the U.S. is importing 629,000 barrels per day from Venquela. So I calculate that Venzuelan oil will replensish the reserve in … a while. And that’s only if we don’t take more out. Then it will be … a longer while. I’m not a math whiz.And that’s also assuming that oil from Venezuela is going to the Strategic Reserve, but who knows? Don Jr. and Eric may be selling it on a black market.

In other news — Trump has lost another group that used to love him — the crypto bros. See Trump loses favor with crypto fans who call him out for cashing in by Isaac Arnsdorf at WaPo. (You may hit a paywall with this link, sorry. WaPo is having issues.)

Now the value of those $TRUMP coins has crashed, the U.S. crypto reserve President Donald Trump promised hasn’t amounted to much, and the enthusiasm for Trump in comments and message boards has turned into disappointment and animosity.

Yep. He ripped off his own supporters. And then later,

I understand some of these people lost significant amounts of money. I feel bad for them, but grifers gonna grift.

Jack Smith testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee today and apparently the senators made fools of themselves. I had to be away while it was live and couldn’t watch it, but it sounds like Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt made a total ass of himself. Which is not much of a leap for Eric Schmitt.

I was thinking not long ago that I haven’t heard much from him since he became a senator in 2023. But here is the Schmitt I remember from Missouri. Schmitt obviously thought he had a first rate gotcha in the claim that Smith had attended an N.B.A. game in Atlanta as a pretense to secretly meet with Fani Willis and other prosecutors pursuing Trump there.  But instead of being in Atlanta watching the Atlanta Hawks, Smith was at the University of Maryland watching a women’s basketball game between Maryland and the Iowa Hawkeyes. Facepalm!

Other outtakes I’ve seen just make the whole exercise look ridiculous. At one point Senator John Kennedy was grilling Smith about whether he believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

In other news: I’m feeling a bit left out because I’ve never seen the Trump political ads for television paid for by our tax dollars I’ve only seen bits of them, as shown in this news story:

CNBC is reporting that the ads were funded from the Homeland Security budget. Well, WSJ is reporting, but that’s behind a paywall. Here are key points:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection funded the taxpayer-backed television ads featuring President Donald Trump that have drawn bipartisan scrutiny ahead of the midterm election, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Top congressional Democrats say the administration dedicated $20 million to the effort, including funds provided to CBP through Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

Trump personally pushed for the ads and was involved in their creation, according to the Journal, as lawmakers question whether taxpayer funds were improperly used for political messaging.

Although some advertising agency was paid a ton of money for the ads the ads, I’m hearing they were produced by the White House. video team, and Trump was involved in putting them together. The White House calls them “public service announcements” and “patriotic,” but all they do is promote Trump.  I wonder how this is going over with the general public?

Is Susan Collins going to survive the midterms? I don’t know, but things are looking messy for her.

Earlier this year, Trump’s policies were undercutting Collins at every turn. Last July,, when Joan Sebastian Guerrero was shot and killed by ICE in Maine, and protesters swarmed Collins’s local office, she negotiated a deal with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to halt ICE-initiated traffic stops. Okay, that might have helped. But then the next day Trump insisted that the traffic stops continue.

Trump’s feud with Canada can’t be helping her much, either. And then Trump nominated an anti-abortion physician, Heidi Overton, to be FDA Commissioner. Collins sits on the Committee that’s supposed to vote on whether to advance the nomination. Much of Collins’s appeal in Maine is said to be based on her allegedly staunch support of abortion rights, although she screwed  up big time when she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. And she screwed up again by declaring she doesn’t regret the vote.

But now she’s in bigger trouble, because she’s been accused of engaging in pay-for-play, and the evidence is pretty damning. The basic story, which was first reported in ProPublica, centered on Martin Kao, the former CEO of the defense contracting firm Navatek, A political adviser and fundraiser for Collins solicited donations for a Collins Super PAC by promising defense contracts for Navatek.Kao used shell corporations to make the donations to bypass laws prohibiting defense contractors from directly donating to candidates. And it turns out that whatever it was that Kao produced for the military was useless. Kao is currently serving an 87-month prison sentence for bank fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and COVID-19 relief fraud,

Collins maintains that the FBI exonerated her during the Biden Administration. But it appears the investigation was still ongoing when Trump got back into office, and that the investigation was effectively shut down by Trump’s purge of the FBI. And ProPublica has all kinds of documentation and receipts.

The Collins campaign is still trying to do damage control. This is from yesterday in The New Repubic:

Steve Abbott, who is managing Collins’s reelection campaign, claimed at a press conference Wednesday that Navatek’s research in 2019 benefited the University of Maine, who used it to launch a new boat last month. He even held up pictures of the boat at the press conference. Unfortunately for him and Collins, the University of Maine debunked his claim.

“This most recent boat has no Navatek connection, and UMaine has not worked with Navatek since 2021,” the University of Maine’s Samantha Warren said.

The latest polls have Collins holding a narrow lead over challenger Troy Jackson, but the pay for play scandal probably isn’t reflected in them. But Collins is an institution in Maine. She was first elected to the Senate 20 years ago. I have no sense of how public opinion is developing in Maine. If any of you do, please comment.

In other news — Remember just a few days ago when Trump promised the Iran War would end right after the miderms, and oil prices would fall and everybody would get a pony? Now there are reports Trump is planning to resume attacks on Iran after the midterms. And I so wanted that pony.

First, the bad news. Today the Supreme Court greenlighted one of Trump’s voter suppression schemes.

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration can deploy an expansive online system that combines citizenship information, Social Security numbers and other sensitive data about millions of Americans, allowing states to use it to hunt for ineligible voters.

Critics fear that states could use the system to purge large numbers of valid voters from their rolls ahead of the midterm elections.

The decision is a win for President Trump, who has pressed his administration to find evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, even though such instances are exceedingly rare. However, it remains to be seen how much enthusiasm there will be among local and state election officials to use the federal system, as it has mistakenly flagged U.S. citizens as noncitizens in past searches.

It’s possible this could backfire on Trump. From what I’m reading it’s up to the states to choose to use the database. If state or local election boards can opt out, it’s a safe bet the bluer states or precincts won’t use them. Even some redder places may decide it’s too close to the midterm election to start tossing people off voter rolls. And if the program makes mistakes, which it does, it’s as likely to toss Republicans as Democrats unless the people running the program add a filter for party registration. And some might.

Update: I’m hearing a fellow on the teevee predicting that states that don’t use the database are likely to be threatened with prosecution by the Administration. So we’ll see.

According to SCOTUSblog,

The dispute dates back to late March, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that (among other things) directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to set up systems that would permit state and local governments to verify voters’ citizenship and immigration status. Those agencies then modified the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known as the SAVE system, to include the records of U.S.-born citizens, to give it access to Social Security numbers, and to allow users to conduct multiple searches simultaneously.

Also,

In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called Friday’s decision a “questionable interim ruling[] about two statutory provisions” that the Supreme Court “has never before interpreted.” She also contended that the majority “focuses only on the harms the Government will purportedly suffer absent a stay, disregarding the harms that the” use of the modified database “has caused, and will likely continue to cause, to lawful voters.”

Kate Riga writes at Talking Points Memo that the way this is supposed to work is that

“If the modified SAVE program is unable to confirm that an individual is a citizen, the agency is required to contact the individual and request that he provide proof of citizenship to register or remain registered to vote,” wrote the majority. 

So close to the midterms, this is going to be a bleeping mess, I suspect. And as soon as lawfully registered citizens start getting notified they have to trot into some office someplace with proof of citizenship in order to be able to vote, I suspect they will make some noise about it.

On to other news. You remember Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon, I’m sure. There’s currently some investigation going on in South Florida involving the alleged “grand conspiracy” against Trump. As part of this, DOJ has subpoenaed some of current and former FBI agents who worked on the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation to provide grand jury testimony.

Here’s the problem for Loose. She has been sitting on Volume II of Jack Smith’s report, which covers the Mar-a-Lago investigation. And she has enjoined anyone in the DoJ from discussing what’s in Volume II with anyone outside of the DoJ. Jack Smith himself isn’t supposed to talk about it, and I understand he hasn’t. But now DoJ has taken the position that it’s okay for agents to discuss the documents investigation to a Grand Jury. And while Grand Jury testimony is not generally made public,

Kate Riga writes,

The filing revealed new information about the status of the “grand conspiracy” probe; it gave the agents a public forum to assert their innocence and the righteousness of the Mar-a-Lago investigation; it lays some groundwork for a future claim of vindictive prosecution if the agents were to ever get charged; and it begins to unspool a counter-narrative for other judges, including the 11th Circuit, where this is all going to land eventually.

The FBI agents’ lawyers are basically using the filing to expose the funhouse mirror of misconduct here at every level.

Loose may be in a pickle now. See also Marcy Wheeler.

Okay, I’m back, and the laptop seems fine. On we go.

It has taken me a while to sort out what is happening with Trump’s media ban, but I believe this is it: Early this morning Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued a 14-day restraining order that reversed the ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House. Even so, when reporters from the three media companies tried to enter the White House this morning, they were blocked and their press credentials confiscated. And then, probably after a lot legal thrashing around, they were given their credentials back and admitted some time before noon.

Early this afternoon Judge Kelly set filing deadlines for motions on a preliminary injunction, which could extend the restraining order beyond the 14 days.

I’m also reading in the New York Times:

The White House allowed a limited number of photojournalists, but not reporters, into the Oval Office for the start of Trump’s meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The print reporter and photographer pool has continued to operate even as the television pool was sitting out until the administration restored banned outlets’ access into the White House. During the event, Trump made a remark about how the Chinese had the friendliest press corps, according to photographers who were present and shared details with the print pool.

So he kept all the U.S. reporters out so he wouldn’t have to admit the ones he tried to ban. I hope the television pool continues to not “pool” him. This is from New Republic:

Despite a court order Wednesday night restoring White House access to Politico, MS NOW, and CNN, their journalists were still barred from the grounds Thursday morning. As a result, the entire White House TV press pool, which includes Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, continued their boycott from broadcasting the president live, and were joined by White House photojournalists.

“Although a court decision restored media access to CNN, Politico & MS NOW earlier this morning, we are currently without a network pool camera. If anything changes, I’ll send out an update,” White House print pool reporter Kerry Picket said.

As a result, China Global Television Network was one of the few outlets to have video of Xi’s arrival at the White House, a reminder of when Trump in his first term barred the U.S. press pool from the building while allowing Russian state media to take pictures of Trump with Russian officials.

After the outlets were barred Thursday morning, they immediately notified the court. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly gave the White House until 12:30 p.m. to explain the continued ban. The White House responded just before the deadline, claiming in a court document that access was restored to Politico, CNN, and MS NOW as of 9:55 a.m.

So I think that catches us up with the media ban story. But see also A Revealing Exchange Between Donald Trump and Kaitlan Collins at The Atlantic. Trump was angry to see the CNN reporter there; apparently he thought his ban stopped her from covering him anywhere.

Update: I’m hearing that this evening that MS NOW and CNN reporter were denied access to some event before tonight’s state dinner for Xi Jinping. So this may be ongoing.

In other news, Bibi Netanyahu is not having a good day at the UN.

Dozens of representatives from participating member countries staged a mass walkout at the United Nations Thursday, just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked up to the podium to begin speaking.

There are 193 countries in the United Nations General Assembly. It was the second year in a row that delegates protested Netanyahu’s appearance. As nearly everybody in the room stood up and filed out of the main hall, others remained but stood up and applauded the international protest.

Meanwhile, around the room, supporters of the Israeli leader began chanting, “Am Yisrael Chai,” a refrain that translates to “The nation of Israel lives.”

Netanyahu’s appearance came hours after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spoke to the General Assembly. Abbas decried what he described as Israel’s “malicious colonial scheme” to steal and control Gaza and the West Bank, and force Palestinians off the land.

Outside on the street, police were arresting participants of another protest. Hundreds of protesters with Jewish Voices for Peace—including celebrities Elliot Page, Susan Sarandon, Hannah Einbinder, and Chelsea Manning—blocked the U.N.’s entrance road, chanting, “We charged you with genocide, Netanyahu you can’t hide.”

Good times.

Trump has banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, and has threatened to ban the Washington Post and the New York Times. News outlets seem genuinely distressed about this. After all that sanewashing and normalizing — that enabled him to get elected — and he does this. Outrageous!

But will they learn any lessons from this? We’ll see.

According to Politico, Trump issued the ban Friday on Truth Social, while chief of staff Susie Wiles was out of town, and white House staff were blindsided. Today reporters from the three media outlets were denied entry to the White House. I’m sure lawsuits are being prepared if not filed already.

At the Atlantic, Adam Serwer writes Speak at Your Own Risk.

This is far from the first time Trump has tried to pressure the media into giving him favorable coverage or punish those who run stories he does not like. As The New York Timeshas documented, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission has repeatedly tried to intimidate networks over their airing of material that Trump finds offensive, including criticism of Trump and interviews with Democratic politicians, by threatening to revoke their broadcast license. Three journalists fired from Stars and Stripes, an independent media outlet that is federally funded, are suing the Pentagon, accusing it of silencing them because of their factual coverage of deplorable conditions for U.S. service members. The Pentagon also sought to force media organizations to sign a self-censorship pledge in exchange for press credentials. His Federal Trade Commission is investigating the liberal media watchdog Media Matters, whose work consists mostly of just publishing the things conservatives say, and NewsGuard, a nonpartisan outlet that provides “scores for news and information websites based on nine journalistic criteria.” Trump sought to ban the AP for refusing to identify the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” as Trump had ordered. This is not even close to an exhaustive list.

Trump’s campaign of censorship is not limited to journalists, however, and the First Amendment does not belong only to the media. Trump’s Justice Department has sought to pressure American colleges and universities over what they are allowed to teach, whom they are allowed to hire, and whom they are allowed to admit. It has used federal funding to censor technological, medical, and scientific research. The administration has singled out left-wing organizations for scrutiny and used federal resources to investigate them for opposing the president. It has sought to deport immigrants because of their pro-Palestinian views.

Some of that isn’t just Trump. A lot of specimens in the Republican party have wanted to put speech controls on universities for a while.

But while of course I side with the press on freedom of speech issues, the media really did bring this on themselves.

See, for example, my post from 2022, How Jeff Zucker Made Trump. Jeff Zucker is a guy with a long and ignoble record in television. When he was head of NBC Entertainment Zucker helped create “The Apprentice” as a vehicle for Trump. And then as head of CNN Zucker helped make Donald Trump president. Zucker. was president of CNN worldwide from 2013 and until his resignation in 2022.  In 2017 Warren Olney wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Trump owed his election victory to  Zucker.

During the election season, I saw entire Trump rallies carried live by CNN, interrupted only for mandatory commercials. Not only was there no critical fact-checking, there was no serious effort to provide context for viewers. Never raised, let alone answered, was the question: Why should a developer with a shaky reputation and no relevant experience be seriously considered for the most powerful job in the world?

See also one of my other earlier rants, from 2017, Are Our News Media Learning?

CNN to me may have been the most egregious of the cable news networks in covering presidential elections. In 2024 I remember a particularly bad interview of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz by Dana Bash of CNN. It was all “gotcha” type questions. This interview was not about helping viewers learn about the candidates; it was just entertainment. I remember turning it off after about fifteen minutes.

But the other networks weren’t that much better. Trump could issue statements that were barely more than word salad, and news media would somehow glean meaningful sentences out of them and report them seriously. His mental deterioration — which got called out on the former MS NBC at least — would be not noticed, and his obvious confusion about policy — like believing foreign countries and not importers paid tariffs — was carefully ignored.

And I know the media were pulling punches because if they were as aggressive with Trump as they were with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, Trump would have had a tantrum, and right-wing media and Trump’s supporters would have screamed to the rafters about media bias.

But I say to you, news media, are you learning now?

In other news: A couple of days ago WaPo ran a news story headlined Gas prices are about to take a big jump, analysts say, with the worst still to come. The economy is thoroughly screwed. Just abvout everything is going to get more expensive now. And it’s certainly not going to get better before the midterms.  But at least we can hope that this will push midterm voters toward the Democrats. It’s our only hope.

Update: I just saw a report at TPM by Josh Kovensky headlined A Far-Right Meltdown that’s a must read. It involves a men’s only, Christians only group that is about a hard right as one can imagine that is working to get members into influential positions in government and business. Just read it.