VIDEO OF THE DAY: Elon makes good on existential threat, announces launch of new political party
Sure, the world's most infamous ketamine enthusiast lies almost as much as the wannabe dictator whose return to power he personally bankrolled, but Elon Musk's formal announcement of a new political party is a cannonball warning shot across the bow of MAGA, and with BILLIONS to blow on whatever pet project fancies his unpredictable whim, his hard pivot away from Trump cannot be dismissed or taken lightly.
Sunday thought: A national reckoning
Robert Reich, Substack: The United States government is no longer able to protect us from real hazards, such as flash floods, because it’s shifting funds to fake hazards, such as a non-existent immigrant crime wave. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been stripped down so much it can barely respond to emergencies, yet it’s funding detention centers such as “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades. The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, responsible for some of the areas hardest hit by Friday’s flooding, is missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and meteorologist. The Weather Service’s nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, is missing a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer who are supposed to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate. The office’s warning coordination meteorologist left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package offered by Musk’s DOGE to reduce the number of federal employees. At both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Trump returned to the White House in January. It’s the same across much of the federal government. Callers can't get through to Social Security offices. Hazardous waste sites and drinking water facilities aren't being inspected. National Park services have been scaled back. There aren't enough air-traffic controllers to safely guide takeoffs and landings at the nation’s major airports. Trump’s newly-enacted Big Ugly Bill will take funds out of Medicaid and food stamps. For what? To finance another giant tax cut for the rich, along with 10,000 more ICE agents and a gulag of detention camps. I’d like to believe that this worsening catastrophe may eventually have positive consequences. For one thing, it could help us appreciate what our government is for. And why we need a competent and effective civil service rather than Trump lackeys and sycophants. It will also push every American to choose sides, between a government that protects us from real dangers or a police state, between American democracy or Trump fascism.
Take Action: Demand Trump stop ICE raids and military escalation against protesters!
Top Democrat comes under furious GOP fire for opposing Trump's catastrophic bill
Chris Pappas for Senate: Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Chris Pappas did the right thing, as he has for each of his 20 years in public service, and voted against Trump's tax bill because it would kick millions of Americans off their healthcare, and now the GOP is trying to make him pay the price. Within hours of passage, the Republican National Senatorial Committee blasted Pappas on social media for having “just voted against the largest middle class tax cut in history" (an outrageous lie) in an attempt to derail his campaign for the must-win New Hampshire Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Sen. Shaheen. Will you chip in to Chris Pappas' campaign to say THANK YOU for doing the right thing and help him fight back against the relentless attacks from Trump's cronies?
Trump branded, browbeat, and prevailed. But his big bill may come at a political cost
Seung Min Kim, The Associated Press: Barack Obama had the Affordable Care Act. Joe Biden had the Inflation Reduction Act. President Donald Trump will have the tax cuts. All were hailed in the moment and became ripe political targets in campaigns that followed. In Trump’s case, the tax cuts may almost become lost in the debates over other parts of the multitrillion-dollar bill that Democrats say will force poor Americans off their healthcare and overturn a decade or more of energy policy. Through persuasion and browbeating, Trump forced nearly all congressional Republicans to line up behind his marquee legislation despite some of its unpalatable pieces. He followed the playbook that had marked his life in business before politics. He focused on branding — labeling the legislation the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” — then relentlessly pushed to strong-arm it through Congress, solely on the votes of Republicans. But Trump’s victory will soon be tested during the 2026 midterm elections where Democrats plan to run on a durable theme: that the Republican president favors the rich on tax cuts over poorer people who will lose their healthcare. Trump and Republicans argue that those who deserve coverage will retain it. Nonpartisan analysts, however, project significant increases to the number of uninsured. Meanwhile, the GOP’s promise that the bill will turbocharge the economy will be tested at a time of uncertainty and trade turmoil.
Take Action: Stop the Trump administration's dangerous fossil fuel expansion!
ICE is about to get more money than it can spend
Alex Caring-Lobel, Jacobin: Donald Trump’s ambitious budget reconciliation bill includes tax breaks for the rich, the single largest cut to food stamps as hunger hits a two-decade high, and a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid. Given this bevy of unpopular policy, it’s little wonder why few politicians have singled out the bill’s historic budget for immigration and border enforcement. But it would be a mistake to think that the bill’s significant expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is any less a threat to the working class than these bread-and-butter issues. To understand why, Jacobin sat down with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, where he works on issues of immigration policy and advocacy. We spoke about the bill’s provisions for expanded detention and deportation, ICE’s potential staffing issues, and how deportation at the scale Trump envisions would require a transformation of the relationship between law enforcement and the American people.
Inside the dysfunction at Marco Rubio’s shrunken National Security Council
Nahal Toosi, Politico: When the Pentagon recently launched a review of a landmark security pact with Australia and the United Kingdom, the move blindsided many key officials elsewhere in the US government. The decision, it turns out, was a unilateral move by the Pentagon championed by its policy chief Elbridge Colby. The official goal of the review is to see if the pact, AUKUS, which involves selling nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, is in line with President Donald Trump’s "America First" agenda. But many officials at the State Department, the White House-based National Security Council and others who are tasked with making the many-layered agreement a reality weren't told in advance that the review would happen or what its parameters were. Many of their counterparts in Canberra and London were caught off guard, too. The episode — described to me and my colleagues Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary by three people familiar with the situation — is an example of how dysfunctional the national security policymaking process has become under Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in early May became acting national security adviser. Since Rubio took over the NSC, he has shrunk its staff by more than half. It now has fewer than 100 people, according to a person familiar with the NSC process. Arguably more importantly, Rubio has imposed changes to what’s called "the interagency process" — a key function of the NSC that involves coordinating policy and messaging across government agencies and departments. That process, two people told me, is now one in which important meetings are not held, career staffers are often in the dark about what’s expected of them and some people or their institutions try to take advantage of power vacuums.
Fox News, MAGA hats and cookies: Inside Trump's West Wing
Peter Nicholas, Monica Alba, Courtney Kube, Katherine Doyle and Carol E. Lee, NBC News: The military leaders who came to the Oval Office to discuss the new F-47 stealth fighter jet had a few surprises in store. At one point in their sit-down with President Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, walked in unexpectedly. Worried that he didn't have security clearance, officials asked the social media magnate to wait outside, two people familiar with the meeting said. A young aide also came in during the meeting, showed the president something on her laptop computer and left. Trump’s cellphone rang a couple of times. Expecting more privacy in the meeting with the commander in chief, some of the officials came away mystified and a bit unnerved. They quietly discussed among themselves whether the visitors and calls might have compromised sensitive information, with one asking whether they should be concerned about “spillage.” Trump affectionately refers to the Oval Office as “Grand Central Terminal” because of all the comings and goings, a senior White House official said. One of the people familiar with the winter meeting about the plane used another term: “bizarro world.” Various aides have tried over the years to impose a certain discipline in the Trump White House, with limited results. Trump likes to see whom he wants and call whom he chooses, and in the new term, he presides over a freewheeling West Wing that mirrors the man, current and former aides say.
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