huntingdon
Donald Trump to federal prosecutors: Find election fraud, find it anywhere, invent it, make shit up. Or lose your job.
So, prosecutors can lie, commit frauds on the court, violate DOJ policy and the law, and lose their law licenses, or do Trump's bidding.
There is no statistically significant voter fraud. It's hard to do, impossible to hide, and carries stiff penalties. The few people who do it are Republicans. But Trump needs the argument to support his his 2026 election coup.
huntingdon
Donald Trump's EO, declaring a national emergency over the state of the US power grid, looks a lot more like practice for a national emergency over voting in November than it does a real emergency over foreign supplied components for the US power grid.
huntingdon
Imagine how deeply flawed Republican Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, must be to be trailing a Democrat in Texas. And to beg for more campaign donations in a state that's really run by a few hundred wealthy families. Sad.
huntingdon
Removable batteries in smartphones are making a comeback, in part, because the EU is mandating it. Funny how regulators can affect the market to improve consumer choice.
huntingdon
That sort of assessment of a contractor's work, here on the work done for the Reflecting Pool, usually results in a demand for all the state's money back, and blackballing of a vendor from new USG contracts.
huntingdon
In any dining hall, let alone a heavily trafficked one like an Army mess hall, containing rodents and insects is one of the top things to do.
Pete Hegseth's only question here, though, is whether those cockroaches have enough testosterone.
huntingdon
Donald Trump claims 2024 elections were rigged, incumbents illegitimate and should be thrown in prison.
/s
huntingdon
There's a difference between disagreeing with someone's politics, a relatively low bar, and the high bar of finding them a wretched person who deserves to be shunned, in life and in death.
huntingdon
Donald Trump has no clue how govt works. He claims that he's "left instructions," in the event he's assassinated, and that it will involve "dire consequences" for Iran.
Govt doesn't work that way. It's not Trump's property that he can dispose of when he's dead. Any response to the assassination of a USG official would be the responsibility of the then president, not Donald Trump or his heirs. All that's before you get to who did what to whom, when and why.
huntingdon
Vlad Putin is having a Vietnam debacle six times a year. Every two months, he loses 60,000 service members in his fruitless war with Ukraine.
huntingdon
Donald Trump's latest iconography has him acting the part of the Greek Titan, Atlas, draped in the American flag, carrying the world on his shoulders.
This is one of Trump's more bizarre self-images. For starters, he couldn't support a ball half that size, if filled only with air. For another, Atlas was on the losing side in the Titans' war with the Olympians. His punishment was to hold the heavens - not the earth - on his shoulders for eternity. He was a loser.
huntingdon
Absolutely. Not coincidental to Stephen Miller's immigration aims, is that hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers pay into SS every year, but never draw on it.
For them, it's another tax paid to live and work in the US. For SS, it defers the problem of Congress never acting to fix it, though it's rarely been shy about borrowing from the SS trust fund, while being slow to pay it back.
huntingdon
"No one at the Economist Can Figure Out Why" so many people hate unregulated capitalism.
huntingdon
There comes a time when keeping your law license becomes more important than keeping a particular job.
huntingdon
Donald Trump seems deathly afraid of being embarrassed, if he leaves a single penny on the negotiating table. Consequently, even when he's won or has a workable settlement, he stabs himself or it in the back in trying to get an extra dime. He belongs in a padded cell, not the White House.
huntingdon
This term, Donald Trump and Lil' Marco Rubio have fired or forced to resign 2250 Foreign Service Officers, the creme de la creme of USG employees. The latest round of firings, this week, saw 250 of them dismissed on a moment's notice via e-mail.
It's a small group to start with. It takes over a year to be hired, years of experience, training, language study to become a journeyman. Trump has denuded our diplomatic staff the way he's denuding American science.
huntingdon
Based on the breakdown the White House offers for its $1.0 billion ask, purportedly for the East Wing Dance Hall, Trump just made shit up, as he does.
He wants $175 million for Secret Service "training," $220 million to harden the White House complex against drones, and other asymmetrical warfare weapons, $180 million for a new visitor center.
Btw, the breakdown does not include construction costs - above or below ground - for a new East Wing.
https://www.axios.com/2026/05/12/white-house-ballroom-east-wing-secret-service
huntingdon
Donald Trump knows how to bully, extort, grandstand, and cave. That's pretty much it.
Trade talks with Canada, normally our friendliest neighbor, were about to start, to revise the US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement, which Trump "negotiated" during his first term. Before they do, Trump wants Canada to make concessions - to pay an entry fee - upfront.
Once a carnival barker, addicted to bait 'n switch, always a carnival barker.
huntingdon
One would think if Kash Patel wants to accuse a news medium of defaming him -- here, drinking on the job as head of the lead armed federal agency -- Patel would have to do it through his personal attorney, not his employer's.
Patel, of course, likes to mimic Trump in as many ways as possible. Threatening a defamation lawsuit is one of them. As a public figure, the bar for Patel to clear in a lawsuit is high. He's not known for being able to jump.
huntingdon
"Rotterdam mayor, afraid of heights, to abseil Euromast if voter turnout tops 38.9%"
Abseiling down is the easy part, if your rope is long enough, though I expect her line would be belayed and she would do it in parallel with an experienced firefighter or mountaineer.
But it's a nice promo from the mayor to encourage better voter turnout.
https://nltimes.nl/2026/03/17/rotterdam-mayor-afraid-heights-abseil-euromast-voter-turnout-tops-389
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