One good reason why so many people seem to be fleeing everything American when it comes to finance may just be the open, blatant corruption:
Executives from cryptocurrency exchange Binance met with Treasury Department officials last month and discussed loosening U.S. government oversight on the company, while it was also exploring a business deal with a Trump family crypto venture, according to people familiar with the talks.
The Binance executives asked Treasury officials in Washington to remove a U.S. monitor that oversees the exchange’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws, some of the people said. The move would mark a first step toward returning the company, which in 2023 pleaded guilty to violating those laws, to the U.S. market.
Binance has also been in talks to list a new dollar-pegged cryptocurrency from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by President Trump’s family, other people familiar with the discussions said. Listing the token, known as a stablecoin, could catapult it into a huge market and potentially bring in billions in profit for the family.
Those dealings mark the progression of a growing alliance between the Trump family and Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which paid a record $4.3 billion fine for allowing terrorists, drug traffickers and sanctioned actors to move billions of dollars through its exchange. The Treasury talks took place after Binance had already begun discussing deals with representatives of the Trump family.
Everyone’s been talking about the weird circumstance of people fleeing the bond markets at a time when equities are going over a cliff. To say it’s unusual is an understatement. The words you keep hearing is that they’re “selling America” which will have huge effects on the ability of the U.S. to function going forward.
I suspect that the fact that Trump and his oligarch cronies are now just openly corrupt is part of this. (Look at Elon…) The instability resulting from Trump’s insanity is overwhelming enough, but without the rule of law or even any necessity to keep up the appearance of honesty it’s pretty easy to see why people would look elsewhere to put their money
Even the National Review is sickened by what Trump’s buddy Steve Witkoff, until now a real estate guy, is doing in Russia:
Beyond his remit as Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, a role in which he attempted to guide Israel toward a conclusion of conflict with Iran’s proxies on terms negotiated by the Biden administration, Witkoff is also taking point on negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and Russia amid its expansionist adventure in Ukraine. Witkoff is in Saint Petersburg today, where he met directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There, Trump’s all-purpose negotiator seems to have been comprehensively outmaneuvered by his Russian counterpart.
According to the “two U.S. officials and five people familiar with the situation” with whom Reuters reporters spoke, “The fastest way to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine, said Witkoff, was to support a strategy that would give Russia ownership of four eastern Ukrainian regions it attempted to annex illegally in 2022.”
Imagine that! If the United States and its allies sanctioned the appeasement of the Kremlin by forcing Ukraine to give up the territories Moscow tried to seize by force, it could enjoy a temporary reprieve — at least, until Putin presses his territorial ambitions in Europe once again. That’s quite the insight. Why didn’t anyone else think of that?
Russia could be enticed to enter a temporary cease-fire that allows it to regroup, rearm, and reorient its exhausted forces in exchange for reintegration into the global economy and the spoils of territorial conquest it didn’t even manage to secure through force. That probably wouldn’t take much arm-twisting. The Ukrainian people, not just Volodymyr Zelensky’s government, would have a tougher time of it.
As he points out, giving away even portions that Russia doesn’t control would be particularly unpleasant for the Ukrainians who live there due to all the raping, torturing and kidnapping that’s already happening in those territories with more to come. Not that Trump cares. Nor does he care about Europe, obviously.
Indeed, it seems that arriving at that sort of ignominious peace, even if it is so clearly unjust and pretextual that it only sets the stage for another war on terms favorable to America’s enemies in Moscow, is the only objective Witkoff has in mind.
I think we always knew this was Trump’s big “plan.” He’s just been thwarted so far by the parties’ unwillingness to accept it. One could expect nothing less from Zelensky, of course but Putin’s continued intransigence seems to have taken Trump by surprise. Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that Putin isn’t as invested in his desire to get the Nobel Peace Prize as he is.
If Witkoff keeps going maybe he can give away Eastern Europe while he’s at it without Russia having to fire shot. He seems to be that good at his job.
A 300% increase in threats against judges since January
U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas is still reliving the July night in 2020 when her doorbell rang and a gunman shot and killed her son, Daniel Anderl, and grievously wounded her husband. Salas herself was the target.
The threat she faced has only escalated to touch other judges in the Trump era, Salas warned MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Friday.
“Just this week I was contacted by a judge, and I was told that the second pizza that arrived at this judge’s house – he had already received one before – the second pizza that arrived at this judge’s house was sent by my son, Daniel Anderl,” Salas said in an interview on MSNBC. “The name that they used on the pizza was Daniel Anderl. My baby boy, who we lost on July 19, 2020.”
“And if it would have stopped there, it would have been bad enough,” she added. “But it’s not stopping. Just last night, another pizza, there’s four now, four pizzas that are being sent to judges as threats. And who’s the sender? Daniel Anderl.”
Salas told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that the significance in the ominous deliveries is the message that it sends.
“You send a pizza to a judge’s house – that’s the message – I know where you live. You send a pizza to a judge’s child’s house – I know where your child lives,” she said.
Salas has a plea to the kind of people motivated by hatred of the judicial system and judges. “For the love of God, stop all this hatred and all this anger because it is going to get someone killed.”
It is a powerful interview. Both women struggled to maintain their composure in the face of the judge’s tragedy and the sick hatred behind these escalating, Mafia-like threats. Trump-fueled threats, let’s not mince words. The administration and members of Congress are throwing fuel onto the fire with rhetoric about corrupt judges, and “giving license” to people who would do them harm.
Salas looked into the camera and begged people to respect the law, respect the process, and stop the downward spiral. May we all heed her plea.
The constitution will not restrain the mad king (TPM):
GREENBELT, MARYLAND – The Trump administration defied a court order on Friday, telling a judge in writing and verbally that it could not provide information about a man that it admitted it wrongly deported to an El Salvador prison.
At the court hearing, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis for the District of Maryland repeatedly asked a DOJ lawyer to provide basic information about the whereabouts of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported on March 15.
“I have a simple question: Where is he?” Xinis implored more than once.
What’s missing in the AI image above of Donald Trump as Mad King George III is him giving U.S. courts the middle finger. As of Friday afternoon, we’re at that point (ABC News):
The federal judge overseeing the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador in error, slammed the government’s handling of the case Friday and ordered the Justice Department to provide her with “daily updates” on its efforts to bring him back.
“From now until compliance, [I am] going to require daily statuses, daily updates,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said at a hearing in Maryland on Friday. “We’re going to make a record of what, if anything, the government is doing or not doing.”
The judge said she will require updates provided by an official with personal knowledge of Abrego Garcia’s status, on Abrego Garcia’s location, what steps the Trump administration has taken to facilitate his return, and what additional steps the government will take to return him.
Trump could return Abrego Garcia with a phone call to the government he’s contracted. But he doesn’t want to. The administration as already admitted his deportation was an administrative error. But was it? Trump want everyone bowing to his will. If Trump backs down in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that people like those he’s kidnapped to El Salvador get due process in accordance with constitutional law, he implies he’s bound by it. And that’s a no-no.
The Roberts court tiptoed around directly ordering Trump to return Abrego Garcia. Menawhile, Trump lawyers tap dance for all they’re worth to avoid lying to federal judges and pissing off Trump or AG Pam Bondi. At the White House, Trump wants to set up the confrontation with SCOTUS that will prove he’s broken the entire government to his feral will.
A pair of critically endangered, nearly 100-year-old Galapagos tortoises at the Philadelphia Zoo have become first-time parents.
In an announcement Friday, the zoo said it is “overjoyed” at the arrivals of the four hatchlings, a first in its more than 150-year history. The babies are the offspring of female Mommy and male Abrazzo, the zoo’s two oldest residents.
The quartet is being kept behind the scenes inside the Reptile and Amphibian House for now, “eating and growing appropriately,” the zoo said. They weigh between 70 and 80 grams, about the weight of a chicken egg. The first egg hatched on Feb. 27 and more that still could hatch are being monitored by the zoo’s animal care team.
“Mommy arrived at the Zoo in 1932, meaning anyone that has visited the Zoo for the last 92 years has likely seen her,” she said. “Philadelphia Zoo’s vision is that those hatchlings will be a part of a thriving population of Galapagos tortoises on our healthy planet 100 years from now.”
I don’t know about you but I’m soothed by the idea that these tortoises have been on this earth a hundred years and, if things don’t completely blow up, they’ll still be here long after most of us are gone. Giving birth now just seems like a hopeful sign to me.
The Trump administration plans to eliminate the research arm of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.
The move would devastate weather and climate research even as weather is becoming more erratic and extreme. It could cripple the US industries — including agriculture — that depend on free, accurate weather and climate data and expert analysis. It would also halt research on deadly weather, including severe storms and tornadoes.
A source familiar with the plan told CNN that while the draft budget for fiscal year 2026 will have to be approved by Congress, it is also being distributed to the agency now as guidance on how to slash its current operating budget for the agency, which means the cuts could be implemented this year.
The budget proposal eliminates NOAA’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office and stops funding regional climate data, climate competitive research or sea grant programs. Overall, it cuts the funding for programs currently under the research office by roughly 75%.
The proposed budget also severely defunds other key offices of NOAA, such as the National Ocean Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, and transfers most of the fisheries service functions to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which sits under the Interior Department. (NOAA currently is housed within the US Commerce Department).The internal Trump administration document says the National Marine Fisheries Service “should prioritize permitting” to “unleash American energy” from activities like offshore oil drilling.
This isn’t just Trump. It’s a full blown assault coming from the Republican Party which is determined to turn this country into a dangerous, backwards shithole for Jesus.
When Russ Vought says his politics are Christian nationalist. What does that mean?
Simon Rabinovitch
The way that he describes it is that he wants to basically bring Christianity into all aspects of society, especially government. It’s not that he wants to do away with the separation between church and state, but he believes that Christianity is a formative foundational influence in the way that the American government operates, and that has been muffled for too long.
Christian nationalism doesn’t just give him sort of a guidepost in terms of his views on abortion, but also brings a certain righteousness of conviction to the way that he approaches his work, a belief that in some cases the ends justify the means.
It’s one of the reasons why in Trump’s first administration, no matter what President Trump did, Vought stood beside him. He thought Trump was a key ally for propelling his vision. You can hear that in the way that he talks and you can read it in the way that he writes. And it’s sort of inflected with these righteous tones. He talks about “the storm clouds being upon us,” and “the duty is ours, the results are God’s.”
Christian nationalism is a really, really important motivational force for him.
Noel King
I’ve wondered about his speech. He can be quite mean. He talked about wanting to traumatize civil servants. Make them realize that nobody likes them. If we were 5 years old, we would say, “That’s not very nice.” Now that we’re older, we would say, “Don’t don’t talk about traumatizing people, it’s unnecessary.”
Simon Rabinovitch
It’s really weird, because if you meet him — and I’ve had a long conversation with him — he has this very scholarly demeanor. He’s always very buttoned up, with a very nicely trimmed beard. He’s soft-spoken. But when you actually listen to what he’s saying, it’s really quite radical.
I think this is really just a reflection of the strength of his convictions: This is stuff that he truly, deeply believes in. And more than that, I think that the manner in which he speaks is something that helps to inspire people who work with him. He has a devoted group of small allies who share his vision. He’s not transactional. He might say he’s not corruptible. This is just stuff that he really wants to do.
Science is the enemy to people like this because it interferes with the primitive superstitions that so many of their fellow fundamentalist types believe (and, not incidentally, something that can interfere with their rich patrons’ bottom lines.)
This couldn’t be happening at a worse time. Climate change is not only an acute danger in itself it’s fomenting new threats from disease and we have stupidly decided to become like one of those ancient civilizations that killed itself off because of irrational beliefs. Unfortunately, we’re so powerful that we could take the whole world down with us.
Apparently, people do understand that Trump is wrecking the economy. Even Republicans.
Consumer sentiment plunged 11% this month to a preliminary reading of 50.8, the University of Michigan said in its latest survey released Friday, the second-lowest reading on records going back to 1952. April’s reading was lower than anything seen during the Great Recession.
President Donald Trump’s volatile trade war, which threatens higher inflation, has significantly weighed on Americans’ moods these past few months. That malaise worsened leading up to Trump’s announcement last week of sweeping tariffs, according to the survey.
“This decline was, like the last month’s, pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region and political affiliation,” Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director, said in a release.
“Sentiment has now lost more than 30% since December 2024 amid growing worries about trade war developments that have oscillated over the course of the year,” she added.
This is particularly ominous and totally self-inflicted:
Expectations for inflation rates in the year ahead surged to 6.7% this month from 5% in March, the highest level since 1981, while expectations for the next five to 10 years climbed to 4.4% from 4.1%.
If people do lose faith that inflation will ever get back to normal in the coming years, that would make it extremely difficult for the Fed’s monetary policy to fight inflation.
“History teaches that when higher inflation expectations become entrenched, the road back to price stability is longer, the labor market is weaker and the economic scars are deeper,” Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said Thursday at an event in Dallas.
Inflation expectations these days may be more susceptible than usual to becoming “un-anchored,” since consumers just experienced a period of high inflation, leaving many Americans particularly sensitive to elevated prices.
No kidding. The fact that he had a strong, growing economy and has purposefully thrown it over a cliff is the best evidence there is that there’s something very wrong with him this time. This is not the way he usually operates. He is the guy who takes credit for others successes and blames others for his failures. Something’s different and he’s even more reckless and rash. His faith in his own instincts is completely dominant now and that’s terrifying.
People can see this and it’s translating into pessimism about the economy. And that could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy as we watch him decompensating before our eyes.
Rep. Mackenzie on measles outbreak: Many of these instances that are coming into our country are from illegal immigrants who have crossed the border and they are bringing these diseases into our country. There is a reason why measles has started to spread in our country pic.twitter.com/8JMjyo25Mx
If he believes that the least he could do is tell his constituents to get vaccinated. But of course he doesn’t really believe that. He just wants to use the fact that a lot of people are really stupid and self-destructive to demonize immigrants.
I’ve been wondering when I would hear this. It’s a very old story and perfect for Trump. I’m just shocked they haven’t fully implemented the traditional plan.
For decades, U.S. health authorities used noxious, often toxic chemicals to delouse Mexicans seeking to cross the border into the United States. Before being allowed to cross, Mexicans had to bathe, strip nude for an inspection, undergo the lice treatment, and have their clothes treated in a steam dryer.
The treatment included gasoline baths and toxic fumigations (including DDT). The Bath Riots began when 17-year-old Carmelita Torres rallied 30 others in 1917 to refuse.
The Mexican housekeepers who revolted had good cause to be upset. Inside a brick disinfectant building under the bridge, health personnel had been secretly photographing women in the nude and posting the snapshots in a local cantina. A year earlier, a group of prisoners in the El Paso jail died in a fire while being deloused with gasoline.
U.S. and Mexican troops eventually quelled the riot, and young Torres was arrested. Though she’s been compared to Rosa Parks, Torres’ protest had little effect, Romo says.
The baths and fumigations (DDT and other insecticides were later used) continued for decades, long after the Mexican typhus scare ended.
In Ringside Seat to a Revolution, author David Dorado Romo reveals some of his findings from the National Archives in Washington DC:
I discovered an article written in a German scientific journal written in 1938, which specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican immigrants with Zyklon B. At the start of WWII, the Nazis adopted Zyklon B as a fumigation agent at German border crossings and concentration camps. Later, when the Final Solution was put into effect, the Germans found more sinister uses for this extremely lethal pesticide. They used Zyklon B pellets in their own gas chambers not just to kill lice but to exterminate millions of human beings.
Yep. We’ve always been an inspiration to the world.
Habba: I have instructed my office today, to open an investigation into Governor Murphy… anybody who gets in our way will be charged in the state of New Jersey for obstruction, for concealment… those investigations will start immediately pic.twitter.com/PyYYQBNKNc
She was “chief counsel” for a parking lot company, went on Fox news, caught Trump’s attention with he fervent defense and Central Casting Mar-a-lago looks and became his “personal lawyer.” She was very bad at it and lost the cases she led. Now she’s a U.S. Attorney intimidating Democrats on behalf of Donald Trump and the GOP. All in four years.
President Trump to a legacy media reporter on the order suspending security clearances for employees who engaged in lawfare with Jack Smith:
“I've been targeted for four years… I was the target of corrupt politicians for four years. Don't talk to me about targeting.” pic.twitter.com/Zzc6IfKTJG
Never say he didn’t warn us. Going back decades, President Donald Trump has publicly declared that his one overriding philosophy of life was the necessity of getting revenge on anyone he believes has wronged him. As he told Charlie Rose back in 1992, “I love getting even with people.”
Since his first run for president in 2015, he’s made it quite clear that he intended to exact revenge on his political opponents. He showed a little bit of discretion during that first campaign declaring that his rival Hillary Clinton “has to go to jail” ostensibly for her email server, but it was obvious even then that he wanted to use the presidency for payback.
He actually attempted to do it and was thwarted by the proverbial “guardrails.” The NY Times reported that in his first term, Trump did demand that the Justice Department prosecute Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey but was steered away from it by his White House Counsel Don McGahn who told him he didn’t have the authority to order such a thing. He finally managed to get his Attorney General Bill Barr to name a special prosecutor to investigate Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. They spent years trying to prove wrongdoing and ultimately failed because there wasn’t any.
It wasn’t until his third run for president that he really cranked up the threats. In his “comeback” speech at CPAC in 2023 he made no bones about what he planned if he were to win the White House again:
In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution….I am your retribution.
By that time, of course, his own list of grievances was a mile long, having been sued repeatedly and charged with several crimes related to actions he took as president and afterwards. Although he had a long history of lawsuits being filed against him and being found liable, and his crude personal behavior toward women was well documented, he persuaded his followers that he was being railroaded for political purposes. He framed his campaign as a restoration to the White House after the election was stolen from him in 2020 and tens of millions of people believed the lie.
“the Biden regime’s weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponents is something straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show. … From the beginning it’s been one witch hunt and phony investigation after another. … The abuses of power that we are witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt, and depraved chapters” in all of history.”
His henchman Stephen Miller does know how to produce a florid turn of phrase doesn’t he?
There were plenty of people pointing out that Trump was bent on revenge. He didn’t try to hide it. And some of his supporters in the media tried everything they could to get him to say that he wasn’t, that he was just going to restore impartial justice. He wouldn’t do it.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity practically begged him:
Hannity: People believe that you want retribution and will use the system of justice to go after your political enemies
In fact, on many appearances such as this one on Newsmax he was explicit about his regrets for not throwing Hillary Clinton in jail and seemed to be suggesting that he still wanted to do it:
Trump: Wouldn't it be terrible to throw the president's wife and the former secretary of state into jail? Wouldn't that be a terrible thing? It's a terrible, terrible, path that they're leading us to. And it's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them. pic.twitter.com/P0bRL6jurF
Even though he was saying these things there were many Republicans who insisted that he had no intention of getting retribution. And even he would say from time to time, “my revenge will be success” just to keep everyone guessing.
Since he’s been in office he’s completely dissolved any barrier between himself and the Department of Justice and his Attorney General Pam Bondi is honored to be his loyal hatchet woman. She has inappropriately trashed the reputation of any judge who rules against the administration and fired prosecutors who worked on the January 6th cases. And she is helping him with his crusade against the big law firms who represented clients who opposed him.
Trump is withdrawing their security clearances and threatening to bar them from government facilities, putting any business with the government at risk. It’s extortion, plain and simple, by the president and the Department of Justice and many of them have capitulated, agreeing to spend hundred of millions of dollars in pro-bono work, essentially becoming his personal army of lawyers, to do his bidding. As the presidential press secretary Karoline Leavitt said:
“Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong, and he looks forward to putting their pro bono legal concessions toward implementing his America First agenda.”
But this week, Trump finally went the distance and publicly issued presidential memos instructing his Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute two political appointees he believes betrayed him in the first term. The first was cybersecurity expert Christopher Krebs who testified truthfully that the 2020 election was secure despite Trump and his mindless acolytes’ conspiracy theories that the voting machines had been “rigged.” He instructed Bondi to investigate if Krebbs had violated the espionage act by providing classified information to someone who was not authorized to receive it. (The incredible chutzpah of Trump accusing him of the very crime that he has committed numerous times is impressive, even for him. But then, that’s probably the point.) He stripped Krebs of his security clearance and in an act of sheer, gratuitous malice, he did the same to the people Krebs works with at his security firm.
The other person he’s demanding be investigated is Miles Taylor, the former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff who wrote the famous anonymous op-ed in the New York Times saying that there were people in the administration who were keeping Trump from going off the rails. When Trump announced his instructions he said that he believes Taylor committed treason.
Both men are being investigated for things they said that Donald Trump doesn’t like. The first amendment is apparently no longer operative at least for critics of Donald Trump.
The orders aren’t really meaningful in any legal sense. He could have just phoned Bondi and told her to look into them and taken away their clearances without a ceremony. But this is meant as a shot across the bow. Krebs and Taylor were Republicans, hired by Trump, and they were, in his view, disloyal to him personally. As he said in that Charlie Rose interview all those years ago, that is the ultimate crime in his book, and he’s going to “wipe the floor with them.”
For the moment, it’s Republicans being put on notice: cross him and you will pay the price. They’re listening. Democrats are almost certainly going to be next.
