All that performative, right-wing bluster about loving “our troops” is about to blow up like a girls’ school in Iran (USA Today):
Dan F. was alarmed when his daughter, a Marine aboard the USS Tripoli, a warship deployed to fight the Iran war, sent him a photo of a meal served on the ship. A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla.
A picture of a mid-April dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, shared by a service member with his family, was similarly unappetizing – a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.
Dan and other military family members worried that their loved ones deployed to the Middle East are going hungry are filling boxes with items they hope could help service members ride out prolonged deployments in the Middle East – homemade fudge, Jolly Ranchers, crossword puzzle books, playing cards, toothpaste, Girl Scout cookies and fresh socks. But mail delivery to military ZIP codes across the Middle East has been indefinitely suspended as of April, and packages in transit now hang in limbo.
Service members Donald Trump deployed to the Persian Gulf for his unsanctioned Iran war are going hungry. One Texas mother has sent over $2,000 worth of packages to her sailor son. None have reached him. She asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation against her son.
These meals are short one or two items from U.S. agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins’s a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla and “one other thing.”
Karen Erskine-Valentine, pastor of a church in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, said she was alarmed to hear from a community member whose son is in the Middle East aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln about the poor quality of food on the ship. The Abraham Lincoln is one of two aircraft carriers sent to the region, along with the USS Gerald Ford. A third, the USS George H.W. Bush, is on the way.
“The food is tasteless and there’s not nearly enough and they’re hungry all the time,” Erskine-Valentine said. “That kind of breaks your heart.”
The Pentagon has not responded to a request for comment. I half expect them to brush off the USA Today story as Iranian (but surely not Russian) propaganda. No other major news outlets have confirmed it as I write.
Images of food being served to sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli, published by USA Today.
A spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service tells USA Today that no parcels are being returned to sender. They are held up until the military lifts delivery restrictions imposed, according to an Army spokesman, “due to airspace closures and other logistical impacts from the ongoing conflict.”
This story will blow upall acrossthe globe. MAGAs already “sick” of Trump will increase their numbers. Soon there won’t just be spray tan on Trump’s face, but a lot of unserved egg substitute. And on SECDEF/WAR! Pete Hegseth’s face in his makeup studio.
Do us a favor and spread this report everywhere you can think of over the weekend.
"You're spending taxpayer dollars to drink milk shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock. Somehow you think that's a better public health message than informing the public about the benefits of vaccines. Really? — Rep. Linda Sanchez to RFK Jr pic.twitter.com/2Oy7kzTGpn
“One thing I find incredible is that you suspended this pro-vaccine messaging campaign, but somehow you’re spending taxpayer dollars to drink milk shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock. And somehow you think that’s a better public health message.”
Bobby had a bad day. But not as bad as the kids who got measles because their MAHA weirdo parents decided not to vaccinate them when Bobby Jr told them it was dangerous.
No greater metaphor for this entire week than Pete Hegseth quoting a fake Bible verse from the movie Pulp Fiction to Pentagon staff. pic.twitter.com/Zv1GFwPTrG
All I’ve been hearing all year is that Democrats can’t raise any money and it’s taken as yet more proof that while voters loathe Trump they don’t like the Democrats any better. And, needless to say, that translates into a lot of sanctimonious advice that Democrats not get their hopes up despite the polls and the off year wins at the ballot box.
Even at a time of inflated political-fundraising hauls, the numbers Democrats reported Wednesday stand out.
Many of the Democratic Party’s top candidates reported gargantuan fundraising totals for the first three months of the year — figures that reinforce the party’s growing confidence that it is gaining momentum roughly six months before the midterm election.
The Democrats’ Senate nominee in Texas, James Talarico, led the way by raising $27 million in the year’s first fundraising quarter, a figure that until recently would have been considered a strong return for a major presidential candidate, let alone a congressional contender.
But he wasn’t the only Senate Democratic nominee to post an impressive report to the Federal Election Commission: Roy Cooper, the Democrats’ Senate nominee in North Carolina, raised nearly $14 million, and Mary Peltola, the putative party nominee for Senate in Alaska, raised almost $9 million. Sherrod Brown, the likely nominee in Ohio, raised $12.5 million.
People aren’t sending to the DNC, that’s true. But they’re sending A LOT to the candidates who have the best chance of turning over the Congress and that’s huge.
I was talking to someone yesterday who was absolutely over the moon about Talerico and he’s a hard core lefty from way back. He’s not a religious person nor is he someone who’s particularly moderate in temperament or politics. But he’s very excited at the prospect of Talerico. Why? First, because he thinks he can win and second because he thinks his religiousity is the kind that will lead him to left leaning policies. Maybe more of a Jimmy Carter kind of thing.
I have no doubt that this will end up causing a lot of strife within the coalition which is not necessarily going to be on the same page policy-wise. We’ve been there before. But that’s a problem for another day.
Anyway, it’s good news that the candidates will have enough money to compete. The Republicans will pour cash into all these races — they have unlimited funds. But after a point that can have diminishing returns. The only thing that matters is that the Dems have enough and it looks like they will.
There was a time when the very concept of a conflict of interest in politics was a serious matter that could cause investigations and resignations in the federal government. Long before Watergate, Richard Nixon was famously accused of corruption when it was revealed at the height of the 1952 presidential election, in which he was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s running mate, that some supporters had set up a slush fund to help pay for his expenses. Nixon went on television and delivered his famous “Checkers” speech to upwards of 60 million people, insisting that his wife Pat wore a respectable Republican cloth coat and that they intended to keep Checkers, the little dog a supporter had given to his daughters. He got away with it that time, but the moniker ‘Tricky Dick” stuck with him throughout his political career.
Nixon wasn’t the only Republican dogged by conflict of interest accusations in the 1950s. Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, resigned in 1958 after refusing to answer questions about a vicuña coat and an Asian rug given to him by a textile manufacturer. Two years later, John C. Doerfer, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, likewise bowed out when it was revealed he had vacationed on the yacht of a wealthy friend.
Seventy years later, it all sounds so quaint.
At one time, it was considered an absolute necessity for public officials to observe these rules and take proper action to avoid them. If they didn’t there would be consequences: dismissal or resignation, and sometimes legal action.
The following decades saw scandals featuring legislators and political operatives of both parties who were accused of conflicts of interest, which were generally defined as a person’s private interests. These were usually financial and directly clashed with their duties, making it difficult for them to act objectively. Many were even determined to have the appearance of conflict of interest — the distinction being that even if a person were acting ethically, someone else might look at their situation and believe they could be compromised — in which case they were required to either divest themselves of the conflict or resign their public position. At one time, it was considered an absolute necessity for public officials to observe these rules and take proper action to avoid them. If they didn’t there would be consequences: dismissal or resignation, and sometimes legal action.
Advertisement: The way money and power converge in our political system, some amount of corruption is probably inevitable. In fact, the system is built for it. But Donald Trump and his cronies have made all the previous cases look like child’s play. As the president himself would say, “We’ve never seen anything like it.”
And if you want to really see why these prohibitions once existed, you have only to look at Trump’s special envoys for peace: Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, whose lack of experience and conflicts of interest have turned the Middle East into a raging fire and even helped lead to the Iran war.
Related
Trump revealed his objective in Iran — 40 years ago The New York Times reported on Monday about an event that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago when Republicans were shrieking that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be disqualified from running for president because she would supposedly sell out America’s national security to procure money from foreign leaders to fund her family’s global charity. In late March, as the Iran war was dragging into its 26th day, Kushner appeared at a Saudi investment conference in Miami. The president’s son-in-law, who had represented the U.S. in the failed talks that led to war breaking out with Iran, was not in south Florida as an American official but as the founder and chief executive of Affinity Partners, an investment firm that had received billions from the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund.
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Kushner was reportedly fundraising for another massive cash injection from the Saudi crown prince at the same time he was serving as a special envoy in the administration’s negotiations with Iran — and as the Saudis were reportedly pushing for war with the Islamic Republic. It is one of the most egregious examples of conflict of interest in American political history. And nobody said a word.
Within days he was off to the Middle East for more talks with Trump’s other special envoy, Steve Witkoff, another arrogant real estate investor with no diplomatic experience who is botching American foreign policy all over the globe.
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Like his partner in duplicity, Witkoff’s conflicts are numerous. He previously joined with the Trump family in the cryptocurrency World Liberty Financial, and after he was named special envoy, Witkoff leveraged his position to argue for an export deal to export the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates, a deal which had not been previously approved due to national security concerns. Coincidentally, I’m sure, a UAE government-backed company handed World Liberty a $2 billion investment in its stablecoin. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon issued a statement saying that “[the deal] appears to have aided a foreign power’s effort to acquire U.S. technology with serious economic and national security implications — and [Witkoff] potentially did so in exchange for his personal financial benefit.”
This is a marked contrast to the Clinton Foundation, which did accept foreign and corporate donations in support of programs to fight HIV/AIDS and economic empowerment for women. But when issues about the appearance of conflicts of interest were raised during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president, how did the organization respond? By pledging to stop taking foreign and corporate corporations if she were elected, and by ending the Clinton Global Initiative regardless.
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Ten years later, it’s apparently fine for Kushner and Witkoff to allegedly be profiteering from their diplomatic partners.
The epic failure of this duo in dealing with the Iran war — at least from a national security perspective, if not their own personal portfolios — shows how this sort of conflict of interest can warp someone’s ability to do the job. As the Times lays out, Kushner and Witkoff represent Donald Trump’s mindset — “a rogue version of diplomacy that’s focused on the flashy and theatrical, a reflection of the Trump real estate developer ethos. But that ethos has failed, and Iran is proof.”
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Subscribe today to support Heather Digby Parton’s commentary But they also symbolize his blatantly corrupt view of government as a legitimate tool for growing their own personal fortunes. As Trump himself said in January after being asked by Times reporters why he was no longer abiding by any ethics rules about conflicts of interest, “because I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to.”
Blatant corruption, it seems, has become just another perk of the job.
The White House is not requiring Kushner to file financial disclosure documents, and certification of Witkoff’s has been inexplicably delayed for months. Since Trump has promised to issue mass pardons to his staff before leaving office, it’s highly unlikely the pair will be held accountable for their behavior.
Advertisement:
But the lesson is clear: Allowing government officials, even so-called special envoys, to leverage their positions for personal financial gain is a recipe for disaster. When Democrats return to power, those arcane rules about conflicts of interest should be codified into law — and made to stick.
There was a time when the very concept of a conflict of interest in politics was a serious matter that could cause investigations and resignations in the federal government. Long before Watergate, Richard Nixon was famously accused of corruption when it was revealed at the height of the 1952 presidential election, in which he was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s running mate, that some supporters had set up a slush fund to help pay for his expenses. Nixon went on television and delivered his famous “Checkers” speech to upwards of 60 million people, insisting that his wife Pat wore a respectable Republican cloth coat and that they intended to keep Checkers, the little dog a supporter had given to his daughters. He got away with it that time, but the moniker ‘Tricky Dick” stuck with him throughout his political career.
Nixon wasn’t the only Republican dogged by conflict of interest accusations in the 1950s. Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, resigned in 1958 after refusing to answer questions about a vicuña coat and an Asian rug given to him by a textile manufacturer. Two years later, John C. Doerfer, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, likewise bowed out when it was revealed he had vacationed on the yacht of a wealthy friend.
Seventy years later, it all sounds so quaint.
The following decades saw scandals featuring legislators and political operatives of both parties who were accused of conflicts of interest, which were generally defined as a person’s private interests. These were usually financial and directly clashed with their duties, making it difficult for them to act objectively. Many were even determined to have the appearance of conflict of interest — the distinction being that even if a person were acting ethically, someone else might look at their situation and believe they could be compromised — in which case they were required to either divest themselves of the conflict or resign their public position. At one time, it was considered an absolute necessity for public officials to observe these rules and take proper action to avoid them. If they didn’t there would be consequences: dismissal or resignation, and sometimes legal action.
The way money and power converge in our political system, some amount of corruption is probably inevitable. In fact, the system is built for it. But Donald Trump and his cronies have made all the previous cases look like child’s play. As the president himself would say, “We’ve never seen anything like it.”
And if you want to really see why these prohibitions once existed, you have only to look at Trump’s special envoys for peace: Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, whose lack of experience and conflicts of interest have turned the Middle East into a raging fire and even helped lead to the Iran war.
The New York Times reported on Monday about an event that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago when Republicans were shrieking that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be disqualified from running for president because she would supposedly sell out America’s national security to procure money from foreign leaders to fund her family’s global charity. In late March, as the Iran war was dragging into its 26th day, Kushner appeared at a Saudi investment conference in Miami. The president’s son-in-law, who had represented the U.S. in the failed talks that led to war breaking out with Iran, was not in south Florida as an American official but as the founder and chief executive of Affinity Partners, an investment firm that had received billions from the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund.
Advertisement:
Kushner was reportedly fundraising for another massive cash injection from the Saudi crown prince at the same time he was serving as a special envoy in the administration’s negotiations with Iran — and as the Saudis were reportedly pushing for war with the Islamic Republic. It is one of the most egregious examples of conflict of interest in American political history. And nobody said a word.
Within days he was off to the Middle East for more talks with Trump’s other special envoy, Steve Witkoff, another arrogant real estate investor with no diplomatic experience who is botching American foreign policy all over the globe
Like his partner in duplicity, Witkoff’s conflicts are numerous. He previously joined with the Trump family in the cryptocurrency World Liberty Financial, and after he was named special envoy, Witkoff leveraged his position to argue for an export deal to export the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates, a deal which had not been previously approved due to national security concerns. Coincidentally, I’m sure, a UAE government-backed company handed World Liberty a $2 billion investment in its stablecoin. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon issued a statement saying that “[the deal] appears to have aided a foreign power’s effort to acquire U.S. technology with serious economic and national security implications — and [Witkoff] potentially did so in exchange for his personal financial benefit.”
This is a marked contrast to the Clinton Foundation, which did accept foreign and corporate donations in support of programs to fight HIV/AIDS and economic empowerment for women. But when issues about the appearance of conflicts of interest were raised during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president, how did the organization respond? By pledging to stop taking foreign and corporate corporations if she were elected, and by ending the Clinton Global Initiative regardless.
Ten years later, it’s apparently fine for Kushner and Witkoff to allegedly be profiteering from their diplomatic partners.
The epic failure of this duo in dealing with the Iran war — at least from a national security perspective, if not their own personal portfolios — shows how this sort of conflict of interest can warp someone’s ability to do the job. As the Times lays out, Kushner and Witkoff represent Donald Trump’s mindset — “a rogue version of diplomacy that’s focused on the flashy and theatrical, a reflection of the Trump real estate developer ethos. But that ethos has failed, and Iran is proof.”
But they also symbolize his blatantly corrupt view of government as a legitimate tool for growing their own personal fortunes. As Trump himself said in January after being asked by Times reporters why he was no longer abiding by any ethics rules about conflicts of interest, “because I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to.”
Blatant corruption, it seems, has become just another perk of the job.
The White House is not requiring Kushner to file financial disclosure documents, and certification of Witkoff’s has been inexplicably delayed for months. Since Trump has promised to issue mass pardons to his staff before leaving office, it’s highly unlikely the pair will be held accountable for their behavior.
But the lesson is clear: Allowing government officials, even so-called special envoys, to leverage their positions for personal financial gain is a recipe for disaster. When Democrats return to power, those arcane rules about conflicts of interest should be codified into law — and made to stick.
The Trump administration wants automakers and other American manufacturers to play a larger role in weapons production, reminiscent of a practice used during World War II.
Senior defense officials have held talks about producing weapons and other military supplies with the top executives of several companies, including Mary Barra, chief executive officer of General Motors and Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The Pentagon is interested in enlisting the companies to use their personnel and factory capacity to increase production of munitions and other equipment as the wars in Ukraine and Iran deplete stocks. The talks were preliminary and wide-ranging, the people said. Defense officials said American manufacturers might be needed to backstop traditional defense companies and asked whether the companies could rapidly shift to defense work.
GE Aerospace and the vehicle and machinery maker Oshkosh were among the companies involved in the talks with defense officials. The Defense Department “is committed to rapidly expanding the defense industrial base by leveraging all available commercial solutions and technologies to ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage,” a Pentagon official said.
The discussions are the latest by the administration to put military manufacturing on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called a “wartime footing.”
The Trump administration has abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone, ending a relationship between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government dating back to the first arrivals of Cuban exiles in South Florida.
The development comes amid rising tensions between the administration and American Catholics over President Donald Trump’s heated criticism of the Vatican’s first American pope, Leo XIV. The pontiff has made opposition to the U.S. war with Iran, as well as concern for the welfare of migrants, a cornerstone of his ministry.
There are no lengths to which they will not go to punish their enemies — priests and kids.
Over at Slate this morning, Mark Joseph Stern examines a lawsuit brough by lawful Maine resident, Juan Sebastián Carvajal-Muñoz, against masked immigration agents who brutalized him in January and violated his constitutional rights. Stephen Miller may claim that they have absolute immunity from legal liability, Stern writes, based on the Bivens case we discussed here in February (Sue The Hell Out Of Them) about a way victims might get around such prohibitions (and threatened Trump blanket pardons).
Carvajal-Muñoz is now putting this theory to the test. It turns out that Maine already has a law on the books that authorizes damages against federal officials who deprive people of their constitutional rights. (So do several other states, including California.) Carvajal-Muñoz sued his kidnappers under this statute, alleging that they stopped, arrested, and imprisoned him on the basis of race in violation of the Fourth and Fifth amendments. (He is Latino.) He sued one ICE officer, Jack Cory Ravencamp—who can be seen on video pointing a Taser at Carvajal-Muñoz—by name. If his suit moves forward, he will likely uncover the identities of the many masked agents who participated in his abduction. He has demanded both compensatory damages to redress his own harms as well as punitive damages “to deter future unconstitutional conduct.”
Legal accountability seems to be on the minds of a lot of Trump officials just now.
Zeto’s First Draft touches on it this morning. Seeing a strong possibility that Democrats take control of the House in January 2027, Trumpers are doing some preemptive ass-covering:
Last year, various Trump administration officials made sure to purchase new legal insurance and professional-liability plans, sources familiar with the matter tell me, in anticipation of future investigations or subpoenas from prosecutors and Democrats. (It’s a smart move: Staffers on the House committee investigating Jan. 6 did the same thing before the 2022 elections, anticipating a Republican-run Congress around the corner.)
But in the past few months (including during Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, which has turbo-charged the levels of leaking, backbiting, blame-shifting, and paranoia within Team Trump’s own ranks), I’ve noticed something.
In my conversations with several senior administration officials, as well as other Trump advisers and elite Republicans close to the White House, their anxiety – over what Democrats might do to them after the midterms, or once Trump is out of power – has kicked up a conspicuous notch. Some of them have told me they’ve noticed a growing trend of Democratic politicians making public calls for aggressive prosecutions of Trumplanders in the future – a trend one Trump aide privately lamented as “kind of worrisome.”
Whether Democrats will follow through is something I find kind of worrisome. God help us that they don’t look forward not backward and let the criminals walk.
Pardons don’t cover state offenses, and many federal corruption offenses violate sister statutes at the state level. Pardons can’t stop Congress or inspectors general or a post-Trump truth commission from investigating, and airing their findings. Pardons can’t stop disbarment proceedings. And Democrats should absolutely put Republicans on notice that all of it is coming for them.
One way to keep Dems accountable for holding Trumpers accountable, Beutler suggests, is primaries:
Primaries (next cycle) Brian Schatz and Chuck Schumer will both be up for re-election starting next year. Schumer may step down from leadership and/or retire, but Schatz won’t. Both of them should draw primary challenges if they establish anything resembling a “look forward, not backward” policy for the caucus. Same with Hakeem Jeffries.
“[U]ntil there’s a major shakeup in Democratic leadership, we’re going to have to watch like hawks,” Beutler believes.
