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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

If Only This Was Mushrooms

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 22, 2026

More about profits than patients

Donald Trump on Saturday signed an executive order allowing expedited research into psychedelics as potential treatments for mental disorders. (Like his?) “It is the policy of my Administration to accelerate innovative research models and appropriate drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America,” the statement reads.

“Can I have some, please?” Trump joked to assembled guests in the Oval Office.

Would we notice any difference?

In no way should you believe that Trump signed this order out of concern for anyone’s mental health. It’s simply another business area that someone close to him feels is insufficiently commodified and exploited financially. And that someone whispered in Trump’s ear. Likely after making a large donation to Trump, an investment in his businesses, or a purchase of his crypto. Is Don Jr. invested yet?

Big pharma is all over it. A site called Biopharmdive reports:

At least half a dozen biotechnology companies working on psychedelics saw their stocks rise following an executive order from the White House meant to encourage the development of these drugs for mental health.

The order, issued Saturday, directs the head of the Food and Drug Administration to provide a new — and controversial — kind of voucher to “appropriate” psychedelic medicines that the FDA has classified as potential breakthroughs for serious conditions. That classification, as well as the “national priority vouchers,” are designed to significantly speed up the development and regulatory review of certain therapies.

This is more about profits than patients.

Not that there isn’t public and medical interest, Scientific American reports:

An estimated 15.4 million adults in the U.S. live with severe mental illness, according to the National Institutes of Health. Veterans are at particular risk: Research shows that suicide rates are nearly twice as high among veterans as they are in the general population. And existing drugs, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), that are designed to treat depression and other mental health conditions aren’t always effective or accessible for everyone. An increasingly vocal cadre of researchers believe psychedelic substances could offer more effective treatments. And in some clinical trials, psilocybin, MDMA and LSD have been found to have promising results in treating mental health conditions.

“We need better treatments,” says Alan Davis, director of the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education at the Ohio State University. “We need to be able to help people, and I think psychedelic therapies will offer a new way in which to do that.”

But research into these drugs is slow and hard to do, not least because the U.S. government categorizes many psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, which means they are considered to be dangerous and to have a high potential for abuse and “no currently accepted medical use,” according to the definition in the Code of Federal Regulations. In most cases, the possession of such drugs is federally criminalized, and that adds significant hurdles for researchers who are trying to study their effects.

That’s part of the reason why very few therapies that use psychedelic drugs have been approved for use in the U.S. One of the most well studied psychedelics, MDMA, was set back in 2024 when, citing insufficient and flawed research, the Food and Drug Administration rejected a proposal to approve it as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Half of this country appears deranged. We’ll all have PTSD before Trump and Trumpism are gone.

North American Leadership

Published by digby on April 21, 2026

It isn’t us

On Carney’s speech:

 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a video address released Sunday that Canada’s strong economic ties to the United States were once a strength but are now a weakness that must be corrected.

In the 10-minute address, Carney spoke about his government’s efforts to strengthen the Canadian economy by attracting new investments and signing trade deals with other countries. The world is more dangerous and divided,” Carney said. “The U.S. has fundamentally changed its approach to trade, raising its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression.

“Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become weaknesses. Weaknesses that we must correct.”

Carney said tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump have affected workers in the auto and steel industries. He added that businesses are holding back investments “restrained by the pall of uncertainty that’s hanging over all of us.” Many Canadians have also been angered by Trumps comments suggesting Canada become the 51st state.

Carney said he plans to give Canadians regular updates on his government’s efforts to diversify away from the U.S.

“Security can’t be achieved by ignoring the obvious or downplaying the very real threats that we Canadians face,” he said. “I promise you I will never sugarcoat our challenges.”

He’s right to do it. The US has chosen (barely) to become a rogue nation. Other countries, even — especially — our allies have to protect themselves.

Carney is what a smart, mature, strong person( as opposed to a stupid, infantile bully) sounds like. I’m worried that too many of us have lost the ability to tell the difference.

Oops

Published by digby on April 21, 2026

Krugman on “the vindication of Bidenomics”:

Consumer sentiment, which fell off a cliff in 2022, has declined further under Trump II. Indeed, according to the venerable Michigan Survey, it is at the lowest level ever recorded. Other measures, like the index of consumer confidence produced by the Conference Board, are somewhat less dismal but also show that Americans feel worse now than they did during the Biden years. And as the chart above shows, Americans — a crucial segment of whom voted for Trump because they believed his fabulist promises to bring prices down “on Day One” — are now saying that the Biden economy was better than the Trump II economy.

[…]

Let me address three issues in particular: Purchasing power, inequality, and the labor market.

Purchasing power: Biden had the misfortune of being president when there was a large jump in prices, a jump that was out of his control and happened around the world. This came as a shock to Americans after decades of low, stable inflation This price jump clearly depressed consumer sentiment. However, it’s often asserted that the jump in prices from 2021 through 2022 left most Americans substantially poorer. And that just isn’t true…Using the eve of the pandemic as a baseline, we see that large increases in consumer prices were more than matched by large increases in wages:

Aaaaand he says that thing that nobody wants to hear when they are pointing out that people were hurting nonetheless:

[T}hroughout the past 5 years many millions of Americans have had a hard time making ends meet. But this is always true, in good times and bad. It was actually less true than usual during the Biden years, a period in which wages at the bottom rose more rapidly than wages at the top.

That was a stunning reversal of everything that was happening before or since.

People were traumatized by the pandemic and prices were higher and everything was upsetting. It’s the main reason every country in the world was tossing out their incumbents. We just had the misfortune of having the worst president in history still owning one of the parties and determined to take another bite of the apple.

On inequality:

The economist Peter Atwater coined the term “K-shaped economy” in 2020, to describe an economy in which those at the top get ahead while those at the bottom fall behind. The phrase has stuck, as has the narrative.

But what actually happened during the Biden years, at least in terms of wages, was the opposite. In 2023 and in subsequent work, David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew documented that there had in fact been an “unexpected compression” in which the wage gap between the highly paid and the less well paid suddenly narrowed.

;…]

[D]uring the Biden years, real wages for the bottom 80 percent of workers grew substantially faster than they had over the previous 40 years. Moreover, growth was especially high at the very bottom of the wage distribution. This was the “unexpected compression”: because low-earning workers experienced faster wage growth than those with higher pay, the wage gap between low income workers and high income workers was squeezed during the Biden years.

Then he talks bout the labor market:

Dube’s thesis is that a tight labor market – one in which workers find it easy to get jobs and employers find it hard to get workers — is essential to wage growth, especially among the low paid.

And for much of the Biden era the U.S. job market was very tight. For evidence, look at the Conference Board’s “labor market differential” — the difference between the percentage of people saying that jobs are plentiful and those saying that jobs are hard to get. That number is usually positive — we are an optimistic nation — but it was exceptionally positive during the Biden years:

He concludes:

So, why is it important to set the record straight about the Biden economy? We can’t rerun the 2024 election (although if we could, Kamala Harris would win.) But misperceptions about that economy may prevent us from appreciating policies — especially the strong response to the pandemic — that were actually very good, and which we should be prepared to emulate in future crises.

Isn’t it pretty to think so? But Biden was old and eggs were expensive so… never again?

I urge you to read the whole thing because he goes into much greater detail than I’ve excerpted here and makes a much more in-depth argument. But the upshot is that Biden’s policies were actually very good for the average American and it’s just a terrible shame that he and Harris were run out of office before they could take the next steps to make them stick. Trump’s only real political strategy is to be a bully and do the opposite of whatever his predecessors did and that’s exactly what he’s done.

Sinking Like A Stone

Published by digby on April 21, 2026

Aaaaand:

Update — another one:

Meanwhile:

Updated list of US House GOP bills that would honor Trump

1) Carve his face into Mt. Rushmore

2) Rename Palm Beach airport after Trump

2a) Rename Dulles airport after Trump

3) Require State Dept to award a “Trump Peace Prize”

4) Declare Trump’s birthday a federal holiday

5) Award Trump a Congressional Gold Medal

6) Mint a $250 bill in US currency w/ Trump’s image

7) Several resolutions urging Trump be given Nobel Prize

8) Directing N.I.H. to conduct research on “Trump Derangement Syndrome”

A Bad Penny

Published by digby on April 21, 2026

Sometimes it feels as if Donald Trump reinvented politics in whole cloth when he descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, and the world turned upside down. Here we are, 11 years later, still living in the surreality we first experienced on that day — like a nightmare from which we can’t awaken. The truth is that the wheels were coming off our political culture long before Trump came on the scene, and every once in a while we’re reminded of it. 

On Saturday the New York Times reported the Department of Justice has hired Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former U.S. attorney and political commentator, to head the “grand conspiracy” investigation targeting the president’s perceived enemies that is underway in the Southern District of Florida under the leadership of U.S. attorney — and Trump loyalist — Jason A. Reding Quiñones. DiGenova brings with him decades of experience; he’s been carrying out GOP vendetta since the days when the president was a tabloid joke and running around with Jeffrey Epstein in New York more than 30 years ago. 

News of diGenova’s appointment comes on the heels of a prosecutor withdrawing from the case, apparently due to doubts she had about prosecuting former CIA director John O. Brennan. Maria Medetis Long reportedly expressed concern that the evidence in the matter didn’t merit moving forward with an indictment, and as a career prosecutor, she should know. But diGenova does not have such lengthy experience. Although he was once a federal prosecutor during the Reagan administration, he has since made a career as a conservative commentator and operative whose most recent political activity came as a member of the so-called “elite strike force team” assembled by Rudy Giuliani to contest the 2020 election. (DiGenova appeared alongside the former New York City mayor at the infamous press conference held at the Four Seasons Landscaping Company where Giuliani spoke with black rivulets dripping down his face like a Real Housewife on a crying jag.)

A Trump loyalist, diGenova has been a GOP hit man since the 1990s when he and his wife, Victoria Toensing, made their names appearing on television to torment Bill and Hillary Clinton. They were the toast of the town, inspiring glowing profiles in the mainstream press in which they were characterized as savvy operators, a distinction that, in the words of the Washington Post’s then-media critic Howard Kurtz, “gives them access to juicy information, which gets them on television, which generates legal business.” In his 1998 profile titled “The Power Couple at Scandal’s Vortex,” Kurtz approvingly noted that diGenova and Toensing had been quoted or appeared on television more than 300 times in the month since news about Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky had broken. The media critic quoted Geraldo Rivera, who was then a host on CNBC, characterizing diGenova as “a strong, principled guy who doesn’t back down. If I played any part in making him a media star, I gloat with pleasure.”

Such was the relationship between right-wing character assassins and the mainstream media during that period — and nobody was more adept at it than diGenova. Although he and Toensing were not the only lawyer pundits on television at the time, they nonetheless pioneered the practice of representing clients involved in the cases on television in an effort to push the scandals into the mainstream, something that remains commonplace today. 

The couple kept a lower profile during the Bush years, raising their heads to defend Dick Cheney’s right-hand man, Scooter Libby. The Obama administration didn’t offer much red meat in the scandal department. But from the moment in April 2015 that Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for president, they were off and running again. 

Toensing defended a number of clients who were involved in peripheral cases such as Uranium One, the absurd charge that Clinton had sold enriched uranium to Russia in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. But it was diGenova who came up with the initial right-wing broadside against one of the first people who would land on Trump’s enemies list in the weeks after he assumed office in 2017: James Comey. Even before the 2016 election, Trump was out there with a talking point that persists to this day, telling Laura Ingraham that “Comey’s a dirty cop. And if there’s one thing a prosecutor hates worse than a criminal, it’s a dirty cop… He threw this case. He did it for political reasons.” 

By the time Trump’s first impeachment came along, diGenova and Toensing were up to their old tricks. Already part of Giuliani’s back-channel foreign policy — which held that it was actually the Ukrainians who interfered in the 2016 election to help Hillary Clinton — the couple hit the airwaves like it was 1998 again in what Roll Call dubbed “The Vicki and Joe Show.” DiGenova came out swinging on behalf of Trump, saying, “what you’re seeing is regicide, this is regicide, by another name, fake impeachment.” The whistleblowers who raised concerns about Trump’s conduct were “suicide bombers,” he said. Without citing any evidence, he also called the paid Democratic operatives

Trump noticed, and he tapped diGenova and Toensing to join the team defending him in the Russia probe. But reports claimed the “chemistry” just wasn’t there, and the couple was not hired after all. Still, the president must have liked what he had heard. DiGenova was the one who had insisted from the very beginning that “a group of FBI and DOJ people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime… they were going to exonerate Hillary and they were going to frame Donald Trump.” That has formed the basis of Trump’s ongoing attacks against the Russia investigation. 

This was diGenova’s beat during the president’s first term. When Attorney General Bill Barr tasked Special Prosecutor John Durham with investigating the Russia investigation, diGenova was on it. “This is now big time, telling Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, “This is now big time. This is where Brennan needs five lawyers. Comey needs five lawyers.” The whole Obama administration, he declared, was on the hook for framing Donald Trump in the Russia probe. 

And the one person who counted was apparently listening.

Durham, of course, failed to turn up anything. Now Trump’s Justice Department is pursuing another full-fledged investigation using the same case theory diGenova has been pushing for years. Quiñones is a hard-core Trump supporter, and the grand jury involved in the probe is being overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon, who tanked the Mar-a-Lago documents case. With diGenova, the man who created the case’s very origin story, they have their dream team in place.

DiGenova has been given the title of “counselor to the attorney general,” along with free rein to turn his narrative into reality. Can the TV hit man do what none of the other Trump lawyers before him have been able to do: put the president’s enemies behind bars? Stay tuned.

Salon

“He Kissed My Ass”

Published by digby on April 21, 2026

That’s what it’s all about”

He even gave his a big gold bar. That’s all this is, Ass kissing. And some people really like doing it.

He says he’s “honored.”

Of course, those companies already passed the cost of the tariffs on to their customers so getting the tariffs back would just be gravy.

Trump Underwater On Inflation

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 21, 2026

A 70-point drop among independents on inflation

Consumers are indeed feeling it. Inflation, that is.

Trading Economics:

The annual inflation rate in the US jumped to 3.3% in March 2026, marking the highest level since May 2024 and a sharp increase from 2.4% in both February and January. Figures came in line with forecasts, with the rise primarily driven by higher energy costs (12.5%), mostly gasoline (up 18.9%) and fuel oil (44.2%), due to the war with Iran. On the other hand, prices for used cars and trucks continued to decline (-3.2% vs -3.2%) while inflation steadied for shelter (3% vs 3%) and eased for food (2.7% vs 3.1%). On a monthly basis, consumer prices rose 0.9%, the largest increase since June 2022, following a 0.3% gain in February and also in line with forecasts, boosted by a 21.2% jump in gas prices. Meanwhile, core inflation which excludes food and energy, also picked up though much more moderately, to an annual rate of 2.6%, compared to forecasts of 2.7%. On a monthly basis, core consumer prices increased by 0.2%, below expectations of 0.2%. source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

And a 70 point drop among independents on inflation.

Washington Post:

Just 29 percent of Americans approve of the president’s handling of the area, while almost two-thirds — 64 percent — disapprove, a Economist/YouGov poll found. Discontent with the highest inflation since 1981 propelled Trump back into office in 2024. But now it’s become a political albatross of his own.

Trump’s Iran war and tariffs are surely to blame, but:

The deeper explanation, though, is that voters remain furious at the rise in costs from the inflationary period of 2021 to 2025. Since Trump cannot reverse those high prices, their disillusionment has grown.

<glug, glug>

Sign Guy on Monday had a too-close encounter of the MAGA kind with a dude super-triggered over this sign:

Last week’s close encounter was a MAGA overeacting to this one:

Are we detecting a pattern?

Sign Guy is your canary in the coal mine. If MAGAs are getting this worked up over the price of gas and Oreos, how will they respond when, after Labor Day with Trump facing a crushing, humiliating defeat, Sign Guy very publicly starts urging 1000s of independents per week to vote in November?

President Pushmi-Pullyu

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 21, 2026

Trump can’t be trusted. Who knew?

Still image from Doctor Dolittle (1967).

Fact-checker extraordinaire, Daniel Dale of CNN: Even Trump’s most basic claims about the Iran war can’t be trusted

Trump said Friday that the Strait of Hormuz situation was “over.” It very obviously wasn’t.

Trump said Friday that Iran agreed “to never close the Strait of Hormuz again.” The next day, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again.

Trump said yesterday that Vance isn’t going to Pakistan for the talks. Officials quickly said Vance is going to Pakistan for the talks.

Trump said this morning that Vance had left and would be there tonight Islamabad time. Officials quickly said Vance is actually leaving tomorrow.

Trump said Iran has no military anymore and that “everything’s gone.” Iran continues to have a military with destructive capabilities.

Trump said the pope issued a statement saying Iran can have a nuclear weapon. That never happened.

Trump said nobody expected Iran to retaliate against Gulf countries. That was widely expected.

Trump said the only planes the US has really lost in the war have been to friendly fire. He said this at the same event at which he had spoken at length about what happened after Iran shot down a US plane.

Story on the president’s ever-growing number of false claims on big and small matters related to the war – and his triumphant claims about supposed Iranian concessions that we just can’t assume are based in reality:

The rest of the world knew. That’s who.

CNN: A deal to end the Iran war seemed close. Then Trump started posting on social media

Nobody in Washington, D.C. seems to be attempting to stop the bleeding.

(h/t BF)

It’s Been A Day

Published by digby on April 20, 2026

Sorry about all the site issues today. It’s a hosting issue. Oy.

Anyway, enjoy:

Good News?

Published by digby on April 20, 2026

The New York Times’s Nate Cohn, considered to be the polling Oracle by the beltway media, has signed on to the view that Democrats might just flip the Senate:

At the start of the 2026 election cycle, the Senate looked far out of reach for the Democrats. The House always seemed competitive, but retaking the Senate would require flipping at least four Republican-held seats — including at least two seats in states that President Trump won by double digits in 2024. In today’s polarized era, Democrats would need everything to break their way.

So far, everything is breaking the Democrats’ way. With Mr. Trump’s approval rating falling and inflation rising, along with the uncertainty of a war in the Middle East, it’s not hard to imagine a Democratic tsunami in November. A blue wave is not guaranteed, of course, and Democrats would not be assured to flip two reliably Republican states even if it were. But a feasible path for the party to win the Senate is coming into focus.

In recent polls, Democrats appear tied or ahead in four Republican-controlled seats — the number they would need to take the Senate. These include Maine and North Carolina, where the likely Democratic nominees hold clear leads, as well as Ohio and Alaska, where Democrats have recruited strong candidates in states Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2024. There are also signs that Republicans could be in danger in two more states where Mr. Trump won by double digits: Iowa and Texas.

Coming from him that’s especially hopeful. He is quite conservative in his analysis and I wouldn’t expect him to say this is he didn’t think it was for real.

I read an interesting article about Florida of all places where the impeachment whistleblower Alexander Vindman is running against the incumbent Ashley Moody who was appointed to replace Rubio. It’s tighter than anyone expected and Vindman is raising alot of money. There was a time not too long ago that Florida was a wing state …

I’m not getting my hopes up. But if a blue wave does materialize there may be some surprises. I’ve seen it happen.