Donald Trump

Q: "How do you define ceasefire?"

TRUMP: "In that part of the world, ceasefire is when you're shooting in a more moderate manner."

NBC News -   President Donald Trump did not rule out the government paying people who were charged with assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and he also contended without evidence that recent California elections were “rigged,” in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Forward Blue -  When Donald Trump ran for president, he made all sorts of promises to the American people. He broke every single one. 

He promised not to start any new wars. In the year and a half he’s been back in office, he’s started a war in Iran and ordered more military strikes than any other president in modern history.

He promised to make gas under $2 per gallon. Average gas prices have skyrocketed to over $4.50 per gallon.

He promised not to cut Social Security and Medicare. His so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” cut both programs.

... And Republicans in Congress? They went along with every bit of it.

Texas

James Talarico - “Since taking office, #KenPaxton’s net worth has increased 7000%, while our wages have remained stagnant. He now owns 11 homes when most Texans can’t afford one. He’s taken bribes from wealthy donors, all while blocking overtime pay for Texas workers and gutting our healthcare."

Hmm...

Rep Lieu: “Secretary Rubio, have you been at more than one meeting where President Trump has fallen asleep?” Sec Rubio: “That’s false, that’s false. I’ve never seen him fall asleep. On the contrary, the guy doesn’t sleep, which is a big problem because he calls me at two in the morning…five in the morning…I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rep Lieu: “Secretary Rubio, I’m gonna show you in a moment, a video that shows you just lied to Congress. This is a video of a cabinet meeting…from last month, where Donald Trump is sleeping while you’re talking...”

Immigration

Mother Jones -   Every single one of the 599 refugees the US admitted last month was a white South African, according to data the State Department’s Bureau of Population released Friday. In fact, so was every other refugee admitted this year. Since October 1, 2025, the US has accepted 6,668 refugees. Of those, 6,665 were white South Africans. Three—admitted last November—were from Afghanistan. No other refugees were admitted.

... In October, the Trump administration announced that it would cut the number of refugees admitted per year to the US to 7,500—practically all of whom will be white.

A country that made its name as a haven for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, the United States has long accepted refugees in numbers an order of magnitude greater—and from all over the world. The Trump figures mark a precipitous drop from from fiscal years 2022-2024; under Biden, in keeping with tradition, the annual limit was 125,000.

Federal Guidelines Threaten Graduate Arts Programs

NY Times -   The Education Department is finalizing guidelines for an earnings test that would punish nearly half of all graduate programs in visual arts, music and performance based on the low income of recent alumni, according to the government’s calculations.

The proposed guidelines apply to all university programs, and institutions whose alumni fail to meet them twice in three years could lose their ability to enroll students using federal loans. Those students would most likely need to transfer to other programs or quit their education. According to experts, that would lead to a sharp decrease in enrollment and the likelihood of school closures.

For master’s degree programs, the agency would calculate the earnings of alumni four years after graduation to see whether they earn more than the median salary for working adults aged 25 to 34 who have a bachelor’s degree. Previous tests measured all programs against the salary of working adults with high school diplomas — a lower threshold for universities to pass.

Polls

Fast Company - New research by the Fashion Institute of Technology, conducted with The Harris Poll, found that 80% of Americans say creative careers are undervalued, while 87% say cost prevents talented people from pursuing them. And further, when it comes to technology, 71% believe AI has made it harder to find work in creative industries.

Artificial Intelligence

Axios - Investors were confronted this past week with four difficult realities that may fundamentally change the way they think about AI the business vs. AI the technology, Axios' Ben Berkowitz writes:

1. 💰 AI is too expensive, say CEOs and even Microsoft itself.
2. 🗑️ It's not paying off nearly as much as companies expected, per a new Bain study.
3. ⛅️ Infrastructure demand is strong — but not as strong as the most optimistic wanted, as Broadcom showed with its "weak" forecast.
4. 🏦 Financing that infrastructure is going to be more expensive for longer, with signs pointing to the Fed raising, not lowering, interest rates.

Why it matters: Those realities challenge assumptions that powered markets to historic heights over the past few years. It's hard to justify chip or memory stocks rising 1,000%+ in a year if the boom isn't what everyone assumed.

The costs of AI are now. The profits are later — maybe. That "maybe" is what's making people nervous.

• AI the technology has a bright future. But AI the business is starting to look like a bottomless pit — especially amid news that even some of the world's biggest companies are rushing to sell historic (and dilutive) amounts of stock to justify their expansion.

The market sold off Friday amid those jitters, with the tech-laden Nasdaq having its worst day in 14 months.

• Broadcom's tepid outlook wiped $444 billion off its market cap alone in just two days.

Friction point: Tech selling off weighs down everything else.

• As charts expert Matt Cerminaro (a.k.a. "Chart Kid Matt") noted Friday, the S&P 500 was down more than 2%, even though the majority of stocks in the index were actually up on the day.

Why Europeans are getting taller —and Americans aren’t.

New Yorker -   The first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, was a giant for his time, towering well over six feet when he was anointed on Christmas Day, in the year 800. The moment marked a high point, at least in terms of height. For centuries afterward, Europeans got shorter and shorter, defying the common perception that humans have been on a steady ascent since antiquity. A thousand years or so after Charlemagne’s death, Europeans were getting taller again, but they were still three inches shorter than their white counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic—and even shorter than the men of the northern Cheyenne.

The New Yorker’s Burkhard Bilger examined the history of height in the spring of 2004, by which time the Dutch, formerly the shortest residents of Europe, had surpassed Americans to become the tallest people in the world. (Dutchmen averaged six feet one, while their female compatriots measured five feet eight.) With height comes great advantages: higher salaries, more romantic opportunities, and, if you’re in the U.S., better odds of reaching the White House, where occupants have overwhelmingly stood above average size. These days, Brady Brickner-Wood reported last week, height anxiety causes countless men to lie about their stature on dating apps, and has led to an N.B.A. crackdown on similar behavior by recruits.

The highs and lows of human height are influenced by obvious factors—diet, for starters—but also by more surprising variables, including weather and even a country’s political system. Still, our species’s upward mobility is ultimately limited, no matter how much we optimize. “We will not go through the ceiling,” a pediatrician tells Bilger about the Dutch. “But it is possible that we will grow another ten centimetres.”

Meanwhile. . .

The Guardian -   Tired, emotional and besieged by fans and enemies alike, by 1966 the Fab Four were ready to quit touring for good. A new collection of images by rock photographer Jim Marshall captures their last gigs

Reno has the greatest leap in summer temperatures

Newsweek -    A new analysis of U.S. temperature data has identified five cities where summer heat has increased the most over the past half-century, with one western city far above the rest.  

Reno, Nevada, has seen average summer temperatures rise by 11.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, according to research published May 20 by Climate Central. It is followed by Boise, Idaho, and El Paso, Texas (both +6.3 degrees), Las Vegas, Nevada (+6.2) and Salt Lake City, Utah (+6.0).

The findings are based on an analysis of 243 major U.S. cities examining changes in average temperatures across June, July and August between 1970 and 2025, with Climate Central finding that summers have warmed in 97 percent of the cities studied.

Study: Best states

NY Times -    A major new study finds that the No. 1 state in terms of its residents’ quality of life is Minnesota...

The new study, released Saturday, comes from the State of the Nation Project, backed by a bipartisan group of experts. This year’s assessment is based on 31 measures and was created by scholars and by advisers to the last five presidents, including Donald Trump.

The bad news is that just about every part of the country — even Minnesota — is seeing a decline in self-reported personal well-being and mental health. Likewise, people throughout the country trust less in institutions and in their fellow Americans. Overall, we increasingly are unhappy.

... The top 10 states for well-being in the study, in order, are: Minnesota, New Hampshire, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Utah.

Fueling boats

Independent -   The cost of fueling a vessel has become a significant concern, with regular gasoline prices averaging 34% higher than a year ago, according to motor club AAA. Diesel fuel, used by many larger boats, has seen an even steeper 53% rise over the same period.

For those who prefer ethanol-free gas – a common choice for boaters, classic car owners, and even lawnmower users – the premium can add an extra 20 cents to $1 per gallon, reports the National Association of Convenience Stores.

Credit card debt down again

WalletHub - The Federal Reserve released its latest Consumer Credit report ... and WalletHub’s analysis of the data reveals that consumers paid off $60 billion in credit card debt during the first quarter of 2026. 

• Q1 Relief: At $60 billion, the decrease in credit card debt during Q1 2026 was around 6% larger than the decrease in Q1 2025.
   
• Debt Is Well Below the Peak: Total credit card debt as of Q1 was roughly $1.35 trillion on an inflation-adjusted basis, or around 14% below the record high.
   
• Household Debt Has Some Breathing Room: The average household credit card balance was around $11,153 at the end of Q1 2026, after adjusting for inflation. That’s $2,263 below the record high....
  
  
• 2026 Projection: WalletHub projects that total credit card debt will rise by $60 billion during 2026.

Trump regime says it has the right to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty

New Republic -    During oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington Friday, lawyers for the DOJ presented the government’s case for continuing construction on Trump’s increasingly expensive White House ballroom without the approval of Congress.

In order to demonstrate Trump’s supposedly far-reaching power to destroy and alter national monuments at whim, the DOJ lawyers claimed that if the president wanted to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty in New York, there would be no one with the standing to challenge him.

“If the government decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors—that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast—nothing can be done?” Judge Patricia Millett asked, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

“I think that’s right, yes,” the government responded.

The Statue of Liberty, like the White House, is managed by the National Park Service. Demolishing it would require legislative approval and rigorous public and regulatory review under the National Historic Preservation Act.

This argument features in the DOJ’s primary claim that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the group behind the lawsuit, has no standing to challenge the construction. The DOJ also argued that construction on the ballroom can’t actually be stopped by the courts, and could only be stopped by Congress.

Meanwhile. . .

Two dozen activists protesting U.S. military aid to Israel blocked the Golden Gate Bridge for four hours. They face up to 15 years in prison.

Children and unsecured guns

6.7 million U.S. children live in a household with at least one unsecured firearm — a stark increase from the previous estimate of 4.6 million children in 2015. That means roughly one in 10 children lives in a home with a loaded, unlocked gun, contributing to the eight kids a day who are unintentionally killed or injured by family fire: a shooting that results from someone misusing an unsecured firearm from the home. 

Wildfires

Inside Climate News - As bad as things got in Los Angeles in January 2025, when 31 people died and more than 16,000 buildings were destroyed by wildfires roaring into residential neighborhoods, many wildland firefighters look back on the rest of last year as a dodged bullet.

Across the nation, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which coordinates the federal wildfire response, the total area burned in 2025 was about two-thirds of the average over the past 10 years.

This year is shaping up to be a very different prospect, wildfire experts warn. Key environmental indicators show that the nation is a tinderbox, gripped by widespread drought and with a light snowpack in the mountains that will offer little relief as its remnants melt away.

At the same time, upheaval in the federal wildland firefighting effort and the loss of many staff qualified to join wildfire incident teams since Donald Trump took power for the second time have left firefighters deeply concerned about their ability to mount an effective response.

As of the end of May, the NIFC reported that some 2.4 million acres had burned in wildfires for which it had generated incident reports. That’s almost double the 10-year average for the time of year.

ICE

The Guardian -   s Mark was getting ready for his high school graduation, he thought about how his dad would have probably insisted on adjusting his slacks – they were a bit tight – and fixed up his tie. “He would want me to look my best,” he said. But his dad and namesake, Marco, was 2,000 miles away. He had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Maryland just before Christmas and deported to El Salvador in March.

When he walked up to the podium and got his diploma last week, he felt a sense of relief – like he had walked out of a nightmare. His mother, Rosie, told him afterwards: “Congratulations – we finally made it though.”

Mark used to love school – he took advanced placement classes, he had a girlfriend and a tight-knit group of friends that his mom calls “wholesome”. But everything began to unravel after Marco was arrested, and then deported. “For a lot of this semester, I just didn’t want to go to school,” he said. “Even after I came to terms with what happened to my dad, I never, never ever wanted to be there."

Mark is one of tens of thousands of US citizen children separated from their parents by the US immigration system. A Guardian investigation found that during the first seven months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration arrested the parents of at least 27,000 children – including 12,000 US citizen children. During that period, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was deporting about twice as many parents each month compared with 2024.

Trump and the GOP

The Hill -   Tensions are rising between President Trump and Senate Republicans, and their disagreements spilled into public view this week when GOP senators repeatedly used amendment votes on a $70 billion budget reconciliation bill to create distance from the president.

Three Republican senators facing tough races in November — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), John Husted (Ohio) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) — scrambled to distance themselves from some of Trump’s most controversial recent proposals, such as construction of a 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom or his proposed “anti-weaponization” fund, during a marathon vote series on the reconciliation bill.  

Republican senators who lost their re-election primaries last month due to Trump’s support for their opponents, such as Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), are becoming more assertive in voicing their independence.

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who is trying to keep Trump’s agenda moving on schedule, is having to put out fires in the Senate Republican conference left and right because the White House and the administration has announced some of its most controversial moves right before critical Senate votes, roiling GOP whip counts on Capitol Hill.

Who's supporting the White House ballroom?

AlterNet America -   According to a report released Thursday by Public Citizen, 14 of the 27 known corporate donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion in the six months since construction began.

The White House signed a secret funding agreement, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, that permits donors to remain anonymous. Lockheed Martin led the way with $43.8 billion in new or expanded contracts. Booz Allen Hamilton followed with $4.2 billion. Palantir received just over $1 billion. Other donors whose government business grew include Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar, and T-Mobile.

The contracts are only half the story. Public Citizen also found that 16 of the 27 known donors face federal enforcement actions or have seen government scrutiny reduced, including antitrust cases involving Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Nvidia.

Workers

Wolves & Sheep

House votes support for Ukraine

Antiwar -   The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill to provide Ukraine with billions in additional military aid and increase sanctions on Russia, a move that comes as the more than four-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine is escalating.

The Ukraine Support Act passed in a vote of 226-195, with 18 Republicans joining Democrats in supporting the effort. Just one Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN), voted against the bill.

The legislation was introduced last year by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and, according to media reports, would provide Ukraine with over $1 billion in military and reconstruction aid. The legislation states that it will make up to $8 billion in direct loans available for Ukraine and the US’s NATO allies.

The bill also includes $250 million for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US state-funded media outlet, and authorizes it to open “new bureaus to help expand its ability to reach audiences on the periphery of the Russian Federation.”

Supreme Court vs. black voters

New Republic  -    The Supreme Court handed down a bombshell order on Tuesday night that made racial gerrymandering effectively impossible to challenge in court, expanding upon last month’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais to eliminate the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—and with it, the primary mechanism for protecting multiracial democracy in the American South.

Tuesday’s 6–3 order in Allen v. Milligan, which was technically unsigned, allows Alabama—and, in the future, other states—to enact legislative maps even if a federal court rules that they were enacted with racially discriminatory intent. This decision goes well beyond the court’s ruling in Callais, which focused on VRA claims under Section 2 about gerrymandered maps with a racially discriminatory effect.

The decision gives carte blanche to Southern state lawmakers to eliminate majority-Black districts as soon as they feasibly can—or, in Alabama’s case, even if it is not actually feasible or practical. In 1957, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered Southern states to desegregate their schools “with all available speed.” In 2026, the court’s conservative majority is demanding the elimination of Black electoral power in the South on the same timescale.

New jail construction quietly booming

In These Times -   New jail construction is quietly booming across the United States. Some may be surprised to learn that during the most intense jail-building years, from 1990 to 2005, a new facility opened every 10 days.  There are nearly 2 million people presently caged in more than 6,000 correctional facilities across the country, including 1,566 state prisons and 3,116 local jails. Recent data shows that number has only grown, and the push to build new jails and prisons continues.

Currently, a new $3 billion jail in Brooklyn is moving ahead, a $1.25 billion prison in Alabama is nearly complete and, among many others, lawmakers in Hawai’i are considering a new $1 billion mega-jail, a facility with more than 1,000 beds.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, while the stated goals of jail construction are safety, security, and solving jail overcrowding, the result is most often hundreds or thousands of new jail beds to incarcerate even more people and a windfall for contractors in charge of designing and building new jails.

Workers

Independent -    The American job market is showing unexpected resilience this year, rebounding from a challenging 2025 despite persistent economic uncertainty and elevated energy prices exacerbated by the war in Iran. While unemployment is projected to hold steady at a low 4.3% in May, according to FactSet, the pace of job creation remains significantly slower than the boom experienced in the wake of pandemic lockdowns.

This complex landscape has left workers, jobseekers, and employers navigating an awkward "no-hire, no-fire" environment.

This rebound has been partly attributed to substantial tax refunds, a result of Donald Trump’s 2025 tax cuts, which have provided an economic boost, helping to offset the impact of higher energy prices following the United States and Israel's attack on Iran in late February

Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, described the situation as a "labor market purgatory," noting, "Those who have jobs are clinging to them, while those without are left wanting."

This stagnation is particularly acute for young people entering the workforce and for individuals who have been laid off. In April, more than a quarter of the unemployed had been jobless for over six months, a notable increase from less than 20% two years prior.

NY Times - The economy added 172,000 last month, more than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate stayed at 4.3 percent.The robust reading follows other data suggesting that labor demand has found its footing after a year of trade policy swings, immigration enforcement disruption and an exodus from the federal government. With revisions, March and April added 93,000 more jobs than previously reported.

Average hourly earnings grew 3.4 percent from a year earlier, the slowest rate since August 2021. That’s now substantially behind the rate of inflation, although it may reflect the composition of job growth, as more lower-wage jobs have been added in recent months.

The economy added 172,000 last month, more than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate stayed at 4.3 percent.Leisure boom: Growth was led last month by leisure and hospitality, which packed on 70,000 jobs. Some of that may have been early hiring for the World Cup as cities across the country prepared for an influx of tourists. Health care, which has been the steady fuel of job growth over the past several years, added another 35,000 positions.

The federal government was about level, after having lost about 350,000 jobs since peaking toward the end of 2024. But local government surged, adding 55,000 jobs in May, mostly outside education.

Polls

A new poll shows the bloc of Zionist parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu winning a governing majority on its own for the first time, a major shift in the political landscape ahead of elections that must be held by late October.  The survey, published Thursday by Zman Yisrael, a sister site of The Times of Israel, gives the anti-Netanyahu Zionist bloc 62 seats in the 120-member Knesset, one more than the 61 needed to form a government. The pro-Netanyahu bloc wins 50 seats, with the two mainly Arab parties, Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al, taking the remaining 8.

Artificial Intelligence

The American Prospect - Most people involved in artificial intelligence can agree on one thing: AI is coming for your job.  Anthropic’s CEO predicts Great Depression levels of unemployment in the next five years. Bill Gates says that within ten years humans won’t be needed “for most things.” Corporate leaders say AI-driven layoffs are already starting, with Intuit firing thousands just this week, citing AI.

Businesses justify their huge investments in AI by committing to spending less on labor, and AI firms sell their products promising to help them do it. Regardless of whether AI is yet good enough to replace workers, their plan is clear: lay off millions of workers, justified by AI.

One entity seems totally unaware: the United States government. The only major AI proposal advanced this Congress was a failed effort to prevent states from regulating the industry.

The path we are on is clear: AI will make a small number of investors and executives even richer, while it eliminates jobs for millions of Americans—and the government does nothing about it.

... An AI tax should target the companies that stand to make billions of dollars by laying people off. 

ICE

Congressional Insider, New Jersey Anti-ICE protests at Delaney Hall in Newark turned violent, with assaults on federal officers and clashes stretching over multiple nights.

• A conservative journalist, Cameron Higby, says protesters swarmed, assaulted, and robbed him while he filmed — a pattern seen at other ICE facilities.
• Evidence confirms a volatile, sometimes lawless protest environment, but public records on the specific Higby attack remain incomplete.
• Both left and right see a justice system that cannot keep order or tell the full truth, deepening distrust in institutions and media narratives.

Canada more fair to gay and transgender folk

Congressional Insider -   Government of Canada policy openly states that people facing persecution because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics can seek refugee protection through its in-country asylum program or resettlement channels. Canada’s rules instruct its refugee board to apply specific guidance for these claims, recognizing the extra barriers people face when they do not fit social norms. That is a stark contrast with a U.S. system where backlogs and shifting rules leave many feeling the door is effectively closed...

Canadian immigration and refugee lawyers report a “noticeable increase” in transgender Americans looking for ways to leave the United States and seek refuge in Canada as political hostility rises. A peer-reviewed study of asylum migration found that Trump-era immigration policies were a major driver of people heading north, even if they do not fully explain every case. At the same time, Canada’s own data and caps show that the government’s dedicated LGBT resettlement scheme is still numerically small, suggesting a growing trickle, not yet a wave.

Immigration

The Hill -  A federal judge on Friday vacated a series of Trump policies enacted in the wake of a deadly attack on National Guard members, forcing immigration agencies to again process immigration applications from citizens of nearly 40 countries.

In the days surrounding last Thanksgiving, President Trump barred the processing of any immigration application for those from 39 travel ban countries, halting the ability to get green cards and leading to widespread cancellation of naturalization ceremonies. 

He also put a stop to the processing of asylum claims from any country and ordered a review of all immigration benefits bestowed to those from the 39 travel ban countries under President Biden.

Rhode Island-based U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell found all of the actions were unlawful.  “More than six months ago, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) enacted a series of policies that threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” McConnell wrote in the 135-page ruling.

“USCIS’s hold on adjudications cannot be attributed to anything that these individuals did wrong; rather, it arises solely by the happenstance of their birth.”

The ruling is a major victory for immigrants and their advocates, who had seen processing come to an abrupt halt — a pause that threatened to push some legal immigrants on time-limited visas to overstay the bounds of their status.

The Guardian -   Detainees at Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail said guards were denying them food and fresh water on Thursday until they signed documents presented to them in English that they did not understand.

In an audio recording of a telephone call to an immigration advocacy group heard by the Guardian, more than half a dozen detainees alleged that the water given to them over the last three days was “rotten” and containing mosquito larvae, in an apparent attempt to pressure them to sign.

.....“They took all the water, and they don’t want to give us water,” one detainee said in the call to a representative of the Workers Circle, an advocacy group that has acted as a liaison between detainees and their families. “They haven’t given us lunch, and they are mistreating us here. Right now, at this very moment, half past one in the afternoon, we haven’t had lunch here in Alcatraz, and they wanted to make us sign a paper in English that we don’t know what that paper says.