https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5905922-paxton-divorce-trial-canceled/

Aww. They reconciled!

♥️🥲

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-slush-fund-irs-taxes-b2988294.html

So, I keep seeing headlines like “Trump is taking a wrecking ball to U.S. alliances around the world”.

No, that’s the American electorate, not Trump. There’s no excuse. There’s no “we didn’t know!”

The American electorate has decided that science, art, international alliances, the lives of marginal people in this country and around the globe, social justice, all of it, just doesn’t matter.

The only thing that matters, the only thing, is the price of food and gas.

You knew. You knew what you were getting. And you chose. Don’t lie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/opinion/business-economics/groceries-expensive-price-fixing-consolidation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mFA.aqux.MbQfAPJanStK&smid=url-share (gift)

Thanks, Ronald Reagan. Yet another awesome thing you left us with.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/very-low-iq-trump-too-stoopid-to

This isn’t just Trump. We spent a decade or more getting ourselves into this position, including four years under Biden.

But Trump did take us over the line between tiger and paper tiger. And this just so much fun to read.

«For a certain type of MAGA, Trump’s performance as commander-in-chief is judged entirely by how many helicopter rides the Army gives Kid Rock.

But for people who prioritize winning wars, deterring adversaries, and protecting America’s interests, Trump has presided over the single biggest technological failure since Sputnik.

He did this. He did it because he is vain and stupid. And now we will all pay for his idiocy.»

https://cassidysteeledale.substack.com/p/the-spirit-of-the-twenty-first-century

Wow. A stupid essay about stupid comics that’s making me cry.

«And a reminder that — in the real world — crises create energy for change among people who refuse to let emergencies and danger or brokenness rule the world any more.

And they’re a way to remind you that you were formed from the lessons and the final morals of the last century — the first really great one, the one that gave more-than-half-of-humanity and even-more-than-that their first real chance in the history of this world — and that we will make this century better than the last rather than let these shitgibbons write its story and make its future.

Crises aren’t just danger and death and doom; they’re energy for What Could Be. They’re dynamos.

But if you need the math on that, the formula is simple:

    The size of these enormous overlapping nonstop crises multiplied by the size of your rage and the size of your love and your brilliance are the size of the change we are about to make.

And by now — after all this and how much it’s spun us up in the dynamo — we are made of lightning.»

(Cassidy Dale is worth a follow. I may have mentioned that before.)

https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-texas-senate-election-is-a-tossup

«The Texas Senate race is looking close. My gut is telling me to be shy here. History is telling me to be shy here. But the data is compelling, so I’m going to be bold… I think it’s a genuine tossup.»

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-tariffs-florsheim-shoes

«The ongoing trade uncertainty—plus Iran war–related cost spikes, and various erratic market interventions from this president—suggest that the tariff refunds trickling out may be less of an economic tailwind than once seemed possible. Multiple companies told me they’re not planning to use their tariff rebates to expand or hire because they needed it to patch holes in their balance sheet. Or they planned to sock the funds away just in case their tariff rates surged again.

Ironically, this lack of clarity about the tariff landscape may also be discouraging firms from reshoring manufacturing—Trump’s stated goal—because they too don’t know what their costs will be.

After all, Trump has tariffed not only finished consumer goods (appliances, bicycles, bathtubs), but intermediate goods, inputs, and raw materials, as well. Think: steel, aluminum, industrial machinery parts, electronics components, textiles, wood, chemicals, plastics.»

And some other points they didn’t have the energy to develop into full articles:

«— Despite Trump’s insistence that immigrants are taking all the jobs, a new NBER working paper examining Trump 2.0’s ICE raids finds zero benefit for native-born workers: “We see no evidence that employers increase wages to attract U.S.-born workers to fill these jobs in the face of immigration enforcement. Instead, our results are consistent with employers reducing labor demand overall, including for jobs often taken by U.S.-born workers.”

— Most of the immigration-related harm to the labor force, however, is likely happening through new constraints on legal immigration, rather than enforcement against the unauthorized kind. Case in point: Just two days ago, the government announced a surprise plan to effectively eject from the United States hundreds of thousands of green-card applicants, including spouses of U.S. citizens.

…

— Big international athletic events are usually a money pit for the hosting country, but at least they have some positive spillover effect for the local hospitality and tourism industry. It’s unclear whether that will be the case for the World Cup. A new report from the American Hotel & Lodging Association says that up to 70 percent of rooms reserved by FIFA in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle have been canceled.»

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/us/strait-of-hormuz-reopen-iran-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lFA.oCda.8jXilgn_ARaE&smid=url-share (gift)

HEY, NEW YORK TIMES!!! Why do I have to go look up the terms of the 2015 Obama deal? Why didn’t you, and put them in the article?

«But all that does is begin to restore the status quo to roughly where it was on Feb. 28, when Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel launched a war to finally bring Iran’s nuclear and missile programs to an end.

So far, they have failed to achieve those goals: Iran is still in possession of more than 11 tons of nuclear fuel, including 970 pounds that is close to bomb grade — though it is buried under rubble, deep underground. An early plan to essentially stage a coup, overthrowing the government, placing a former Iranian hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, into power, never materialized.»

We had a good deal in 2015, after 20 months of negotiation and allied pressure on Iran. It restricted development of nukes and implemented a thorough monitoring program. They had to give up 98% of their uranium, and, if they didn’t, the sanctions that brought them to the table would snap back in place.

Trump didn’t like it because it was negotiated by a Black man, so he unilaterally pulled out (no one should have to be reminded of that).

Stupidest U. S. President in history. Hands down. James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, and Warren Harding have all been displaced.

I think the U.S. electorate is tied with the British electorate for worst episodes of electoral stupidity (Trump, Brexit) evar. An abject lesson in how democracies destroy themselves.

Actually, Britain’s democracy is still in place. So I guess we rank with Hungary now, when it comes to democratically dismantling your democracy. Or Weimar Germany.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/jcpoa_what_you_need_to_know.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/14/iran-nuclear-deal-key-points

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33521655

Oh, look, New York Times. You did have your very own summary. AND YOU COULDN’T EVEN LINK TO IT??

https://apnews.com/article/nato-trump-troops-europe-poland-confusion-5ee39c29238cdee76c1780233cb6fddc

“Bewildered.” 🙄

Hey, Europe, maybe I can help explain it. He’s the King of Chaos. Does that help?