This isn’t about the 2020 election, it's about 2026 and 2028

I finished the book The Mother by B. L. Blanchard. It is a companion book to The Peacemaker by the same author I read back in January. That book is set in a North America that had never been colonized and all the characters are natives. This book is set in a Europe, particularly an England, that had never colonized. Though the blurb on the back of the book starts with that I don’t see that it made much difference to the story. Yes, this is a different Europe and England, but how it became the way it is depicted doesn’t seem to depend on not colonizing. The England we see is modern – characters use phones and computers – but high in patriarchy and governed by Church Law, which appears to be Catholic Church Law, not Anglican. The main characters are from the aristocracy where a woman’s sole job is to produce a male heir. The story is mostly centered on Marie. However, I’ll start with her mother Charlotte. She was married to an Earl and had three daughters – Alice, Emma, and Marie. Since she hadn’t produced a son and her husband seemed to be auditioning successor wives she faked her death and disappeared. Alice was able to get a husband, though she was not beautiful and thus not a trophy, and produced three sons for him. Emma announced she was pregnant by the stable boy and thrown out and disowned. Marie married a Duke, a step up for her, but did not produce any children, son or daughter. When Marie hears her mother-in-law speak in a way that implied Marie had failed in her sole job and her son should should get rid of Marie, she fakes her death and flees, taking a few jewels and other valuables with her. Marie found Emma (who wasn’t hard to find) and learned Emma hadn’t been pregnant, she just wanted out of that life. Marie also wants to act on hints that her mother is still alive. So off they go. And they soon discover the Duke’s family is after them to drag Marie back to his manor house. The rest of the story is Emma and Marie rediscovering each other. That is mixed in with the chase. There are lots of dangers and narrow escapes as they travel across Belgium, Germany (still the Holy Roman Empire), and France. It’s a gripping story – I usually read in sessions a little longer than I usually do. And while I enjoyed the tale it was not the story I wanted it to be. I wanted a depiction of a Europe that had avoided the need to colonize. What I got was a Europe that was still very much in the mindset of the 15th century but with modern technology. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that while the Senate is refusing to pass the Save America Voting Act (which is full of voter suppression and other nonsense pushed by the nasty guy) Rep. Beth Van Duyne of Texas gave hints about what the next House budget will include.

Right now we are actively working on reconciliation 3.0. It’s gonna include healthcare, housing, election fraud, election integrity fraud, energy, defense, and tax portions.

I’m not sure what “tax portions” are and I’m afraid of what Republicans handling of “housing” would look like. I do know what “election fraud, election integrity fraud” means and I know “reconciliation” means crafting a budget using a process that doesn’t need Democratic votes. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guy is pushing so hard on the Save Act that he’s willing to sacrifice national security. The story is convoluted so forgive me if I’m not accurate in my summary. Bill Pulte was appointed as acting Director of National Intelligence, about to take over for Tulsi Gabbard, who is leaving to care for an ailing husband. Since the Senate soundly rejected Pulte (they didn’t have to take a vote to get their point across) the nasty guy nominated Jay Clayton. Clayton’s hearings were to begin this week, but the nasty guy halted them. He wants the Senate to pass the Save Act first. The Senate doesn’t have enough Republican votes to pass it. The nasty guy also wants a vote on James McDonald, the guy who is taking the job Clayton is leaving. Also in the mix Democrats are refusing to vote for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which expired. It, once passed, allows surveillance of foreigners in the US. But refusing to vote is different than voting no, meaning FISA is stuck too. With Clayton’s nomination stuck Pulte may be able to serve as DNI anyway. But the nasty guy’s snit means national security is vulnerable. Dion Nissenbaum and Alexander Shur, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos, reported the FBI is investigating the 2020 election. Agents were sent to Milwaukee to talk people who said they saw suspicious things, though suspicions are not evidence for a judge. But...

“This isn’t about the 2020 election, this is about the 2026 and 2028 elections,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research. “This is about intimidating election officials. This is about creating a stream of disinformation designed to delegitimize an election the president may believe he’s going to lose. This is designed by the president’s underlings to satisfy the unrealistic expectations of a president that still cannot comprehend that he lost an election that he definitely lost, and it’s incredibly destabilizing.” ... John Keller, a former acting head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section who resigned in 2025 after refusing the Trump administration’s demands to drop corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, said the administration appeared to be trying to normalize federal investigations of state elections to pave the way for future intervention. “They are using enforcement directed at the 2020 election as a test run for what they can get away with on Election Day this year, or after, to try and delay certification or invalidate an election” if the results don’t go their way, he said.

Thom Hartmann of the Kos community wrote about previous Republican efforts to rig elections. In 1968 Richard Nixon learned of the deal between President Johnson and the leaders of both North and South Vietnam. Nixon reached out to the South Vietnamese leaders, promising riches, of they backed out of the deal. Nixon won and Humphrey didn’t. The war lasted another seven deadly years. Everett Dirkson, Republican leader in the Senate, called it “treason.” In 1979 during the Iranian hostage crisis, Reagan promised the new regime weapons if they held onto the hostages through the 1980 election. The hostages were released as Reagan took the oath of office. That new regime is the same one the nasty guy has been battling. In 2000 Florida governor Jeb Bush, in order to help his brother George W. was aggressive in “cleaning” voter rolls. There were estimates of between 10,000 and 70,000 black people were unable to vote. GW Bush won the state by 537 votes, and thus the presidency. In all three cases we didn’t learn of the manipulation until well after the affected election. We didn’t have a chance to protest the action. In contrast, the nasty is openly trying to rig this year’s election.

If it’s true that Trump became president in 2016, as Robert Mueller’s investigation found, because of major help from Putin, then the last legitimately elected Republican who didn’t commit or at least flirt with treason to become president was Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961). By coincidence, he was also the last Republican president to reject the influence of America’s oligarchs and instead kept the top 90% income tax rate on oligarchs and actually worked to increase union membership and expand Social Security. So, get ready. We know in advance at least some of the dirty tricks they’re going to try to pull. Musk and Zuck spinning their social media outlets; Fox, CBS, and CNN under oligarch’s thumbs; ICE disruption; seized ballots; corrupted mail; and now realistic, highly deceptive AI-generated Republican deepfakes are already appearing in the Texas senatorial election.

In a second article Hartmann expanded on what the nasty guy is doing to steal the 2026 election.

The fraud claim was never an argument: it’s an excuse for voter suppression, its own form of election fraud. When you convince tens of millions of people that the only way your side can possibly lose is if the other side cheats, you’ve prepared them to swallow whatever you “have to do to protect the vote,” and to reject the result as illegitimate if you lose anyway. That’s the groundwork, and they’re laying it right now in the open. ... The Postal Service has proposed a rule that would let it refuse to deliver mail-in ballots in any state that won’t first hand over its complete list of mail voters to the federal government, a rule the NAACP says is built to disenfranchise voters and that twenty-three Democratic-led states are now suing to stop.

The nasty guy and others have talked about such things as have ICE surround the polls to intimidate voters. Todd Blanche, formerly the nasty guy’s personal lawyer and now acting Attorney General told a conservative crowd, “[E]verybody’s afraid that the next administration, if we don’t win, we’re going to all be investigated and indicted.”

He meant it as a rallying cry. What he actually delivered was a confession: you don’t spend your evenings bracing for an indictment unless some quiet part of you already knows what you’ve done. A reckoning is coming for the people breaking the law for this president, and they can feel it.

Blanche has reason to be worried. He knows the true nature of the nasty guy quite well. He isn’t being paranoid.

A Democratic majority doesn’t need to convict anyone to change everything. It can deny the appropriations that fund the deployments and the detention machine, it can compel sworn testimony and drag the concealed directives into daylight, and it can restore a Justice Department willing to enforce laws like Section 242, the Reconstruction-era statute that makes it a felony for any official to strip any citizen of their constitutional rights. ... These lawyers and judges aren’t afraid of impeachment as an abstraction: they’re afraid of the reckoning that oversight makes possible.

Make sure you’re registered to vote, then actually do it. Vote by mail if you can and do it early so the Post Office can’t interfere. Tell your senators and representative how you feel. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quotes the late columnist Molly Ivins on Thursdays. Yesterday was a quote from 1995 on why Rush Limbaugh was so popular. The reason is still true.

A large segment of Limbaugh’s audience consists of white males, eighteen to thirty-four years old, without a college education. Basically, a guy I know and grew up with named Bubba. Bubba listens to Limbaugh because Limbaugh gives him someone to blame for the fact that Bubba is getting screwed. He’s working harder, getting paid less in constant dollars, and falling further and further behind. Not only is Bubba never gonna be able to buy a house, he can barely afford a trailer. Hell, he can barely afford the payments on the pickup. Limbaugh offers him scapegoats. It’s the “feminazis.” It’s the minorities. It’s the limousine liberals. It’s all these people with all these wacky social programs to help some silly, self-proclaimed bunch of victims.

Between 2010, when I started having Blogger track viewership, and October 2025 this blog received one million views, most of that in the two years before then. Now just eight months later the number of views has passed two million and is at 2,008,968. In the last 30 days there have been 32.9K views from Brazil, 17.4K from Bangladesh, 17.1K from Iraq, and 16K from the US. Surprises include 12.1K views from Saudi Arabia and 10.2K views from Tunisia. This is post 5646. I’ve spent a lot of evenings over 18 years writing this blog. Brother is coming again for a short visit, this time with his daughter and her family. So I probably won’t post again until the middle of next week.

Ten years since the Pulse massacre

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos marked that last Friday was the tenth anniversary of the gay Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The gunman killed 49 people and wounded 58 others. At the time it was the worst mass shooting in the country and was passed by the Las Vegas shooting the following year. It was, of course, a hate crime and an act of terrorism. In 2023 the city of Orlando bought the property. Just three months ago the building was torn down and the location is being turned into a memorial park, to open in 2027. The Wikipedia entry on the shooting likely has much more detail than most people would want to know. As a war is in urgent need of diplomats Max Burns of Kos discussed the current condition of the State Department. Since the nasty guy retook the Oval Office more than 2,000 career diplomats have left, either retired (sometimes early), voluntary departures, or fired for perceived disloyalty. That includes 195 people with skills in crisis management and important language skills. Secretary Mark Rubio seems very good at not showing up at important times, such as for talks to end the war in Ukraine hosted by Britain. Naturally, morale is low. These departures mean there are a lot of places where the US is not responding to economic and security threats. And China is stepping in to fill the void. This is happening in Latin America and in Africa. When US diplomacy is reduced trade deals are too. American companies and farmers lose out. Iran is enjoying that there are no confirmed ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Iraq, or Kuwait, countries that are the war’s front lines. A crippled State Department also means Iran can easily surprise Rubio and the nasty guy.

Trump’s mismanagement and Rubio’s yes-man complicity will take more than a generation to repair—if it can ever be fully repaired at all. In the meantime, the United States will continue its accelerating decline into a second-tier power less likely to control events and more likely to be controlled by them. Our adversaries couldn’t ask for more.

Clytemnestra of the Kos community went out quite early this morning to get a prime viewing spot to see workers come to the Kennedy Center and take the nasty guy’s name off the side of the building. A judge had ruled since Congress had named the Center only Congress could change its name and his name had to come off yesterday. A lot of people wanted to witness the name coming off. But before the workmen began their work heavy tarps went up, blocking view of the removal. The crew was all done by 3:15am. But at 11:48am the tarps were still in place. So if no one can see that the letters came down how can we verify the judge’s order was followed? Was the tarp put up to spare the nasty guy’s feeling? This all gets so old. Joey Garrison, Susan Page, Michael Loria, and Aysha Bagchi of USA TODAY posted a full article about the removal at 3:00pm today. They did not include a photo of the wall with the name gone and without the tarp. Emily Singer of Kos reported:

President Donald Trump is reportedly trying to expunge his two impeachments—his latest attempt to rewrite history from his disastrous first term. “It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.” But forcing Republicans to pass a meaningless resolution just to soothe Dear Leader’s fragile ego would be politically disastrous for the GOP. First, the majority of Americans want Trump to be impeached again—not see his first two impeachments erased.

Second, voting to expunge would remind voters why he was impeached the first two times and that Republicans failed to convict him then. That would not be good for Republicans in November. Now that Bill Pulte has been replaced with Jay Clayton to be Director of National Intelligence please do not assume we dodged a problem. Lisa Needham of Kos reported he’s just as vile and still doesn’t have Intelligence experience as required by law. To get appointed to big jobs by the nasty guy a candidate must audition. Clayton passed the audition by hopping on TV to spread election conspiracy theories about the California primary election. He has no experience in election law either and the new gig is supposed to prohibit him from participating in domestic affairs (not that such a thing stopped Tulsi Gabbard, his predecessor – see Fulton County, Georgia).

So, Clayton’s pick violates the law just as much as Pulte’s would have, but enforcing that law requires a Congress willing to do so. GOP senators have the power to force Trump to pick someone who meets the legal requirements for the job. But if they won’t, then it is going to be Jay Clayton—and it is going to be just as bad as you think.

AI described as heaven

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about the initial public offering of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. That happened today and the economic news said the price of the stock went up nearly 20% and the public offering fattened Musk’s net worth enough he is now a trillionaire (so it went up by at least $100 billion). Needham wrote about an annoying aspect of the public offering. The major stock indices, such as S&P 500 have rules for which companies are allowed in their index and which aren’t. The reason is to assure the company is stable and profitable and the offering isn’t overhyped. They usually require waiting a year and Musk’s Tesla waited ten years. The S&P 500 rejected Musk’s request that SpaceX be added to its index immediately. But Nasdaq said sure, welcome in. That means if you own shares in an index fund linked to the Nasdaq that fund is required to buy shares in SpaceX. Which means Musk is requiring you to own shares of SpaceX. Whether you want to or not. While the SpaceX Dragon is a reliable way to get to the International Space Station, the company’s much larger Starliner has frequently exploded and has not yet achieved orbit. News reports say that the nasty guy has nominated Jay Clayton to be Director of National Intelligence. That means the job isn’t going to Bill Pulte, the guy who had no intelligence experience but was nominated to the job in an “acting” capacity to avoid Senate confirmation. The Senate was not pleased with the choice or with being frozen out. At least Clayton has actual intelligence experience, as required for the job. Before Pulte was replaced Max Burns of Kos discusses why the nasty guy keeps nominating temporary flunkies. He’s done it several times, such as with Todd Blanche for Attorney General.

Under normal circumstances, Blanche would be required to leave the acting attorney general role on Oct. 29, which would set up a heated confirmation fight just five days before voters head to the polls. But if Trump “nominates” Blanche for the permanent job without ever moving his confirmation forward, the countdown clock would effectively stop. That also explains why Trump has failed to nominate any permanent successors for the multiple roles currently being held by his hand-picked acting appointees. Trump is wagering that Senate Republicans, already beaten down by months of brutal polling and the prospect of losing both chambers of Congress in November, will be in no rush to have hearings for Trump’s nominees. He’s probably right. In place of the transparency and accountability of public hearings, the American people will get only silence and excuses from a White House that long ago stopped caring about any opinion other than Trump’s.

Pope Leo recently was in the news because he released a teaching on AI, calling it “colonialism,” exploiting people’s data and resources similar to empires. NPR’s Steve Inskeep wasn’t able to discuss it with the Pope, but did talk to Karen Hao, who wrote Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. That certainly puts it in colonialism terms. Hao also says the AI bros use religious terms to describe their work. To me that’s also scary. The AI guys describe their product as trying to benefit all of humanity. Hao says “Essentially, what they're describing is a heaven.” They promise utopian outcomes – cure cancer, end poverty, stabilize the climate – while saying if we don’t act we’re heading to catastrophe. Hao says that is similar to the missionary logic behind colonialism. I add that AI might be a help in curing cancer or other diseases. But ending poverty and stabilizing the climate depend on things AI cannot control – they depend on rich ending their effort to oppress those lower in the social hierarchy. Hao says data centers reflect a concentration of wealth at a time when more people are struggling with basic costs. That’s one reason for the massive protests against them. The idea of building public information can be seen as growing the economic pie for everyone. But the economic pie is shrinking for most people. As for some tech leaders...

“They just admit they do believe that the way that they are currently developing these AI technologies will, in fact, inflame inequality,” Hao said.

Last weekend while Brother was visiting we heard a portion of the NPR show This American Life that prompted us to wait a few minute in a parking lot to listen. The episode is not yet up on the show’s website, but I did see a corresponding article in last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press and Brother found other online sources. I found the article on the USA Today website (USA Today owns the Freep). The story is features Jeremiah Schofield. He was an employee (perhaps a mid level manager) at the Social Security Administration and is now a whistleblower talking to Congress. According to the portrayal on This American Life people from the Department of Government Efficiency (now well known as DOGE) came to him with a list of 6000 people they wanted assigned a death date and added to the Death Master File. The DMF is a list of all the people that have ever been issued a Social Security number and have died. There are a high level of internal controls to making changes to it because when you are added your financial life is frozen. Bank accounts, credit cards all frozen. Other areas of a person’s life become a serious mess and if the change was made when it isn’t true a person can spend days to a year getting it all straightened out. Schofield was assured they 6000 people were all illegal immigrants. Schofield did some searching and testing of 25 of the names. A large number (23?) were citizens are lawful residents. But the changes for the 6000 were put through. And the next day people started showing up at SSA offices to declare they were still alive. Then DOGE gave a demand to add death dates to 2.7 million people. According to the radio show Schofield went to his boss with the suspected reason for the demand. The boss said that couldn’t be right. Schofield said call them. The boss did and was surprised at how casual and candid the DOGE person was. From the news article:

Schofield, according to their letter, alleged a DOGE staffer said “the lives of these individuals would be ruined... and they would be driven to ‘self-deport’” or “they would have to go to a local Social Security office, at which point SSA field office staff would send them to DHS offices” where officials would “detain them for deportation.”

Shortly after that Schofield resigned, so he doesn’t know the details of what happened to the 2.7 million people. I suspect the SSA refused the demand, otherwise 2.7 million people showing up at SSA offices would have been in the news. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. The first is in response to the nasty guy declaring there was cheating in the Los Angeles primary because the Republican didn’t go on to the general election:

Wow, that is remarkable. Somehow, the Democrats rigged the ballots but only for the parts where people voted for [L.A.] mayor [in which the top two winning candidates were Democrats]. The votes for governor they left untouched. It’s diabolical. It’s a miracle that people who are so stupid can be so incredibly smart at the same time. In a sane world, that statement would’ve been the moment where the nurse came in and put him to bed. —Jimmy Kimmel Live Republicans calling [James] Talarico dangerous while nominating Ken Paxton is like warning people about the health risks of blueberries while smoking meth through a leaf blower. —John Fugelsang on BlueSky

In the comments of yesterday’s pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a meme using the words of Rep. Robert Garcia:

If you think California is taking a while to count votes, wait until you hear how long the Trump administration is taking to release the Epstein files...”

In the comments of today’s roundup Acyn posted a tweet with words from Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago.

We’re about to enter the period of maximum leverage for Iran. When we hit the oil inventory cliff, as we’re going to do in the middle of July, end of July, that means when our inventories go down, Iran’s leverage goes up and will stay up through the midterms. So that is why there’s no chance, very little chance Iran is going to cut a deal right now. Why would it cut a deal when its leverage is about to grow? Everybody know it’s going to grow. President Trump can talk down oil prices only for so long. Once that oil inventory dries up here at the end of the first week of August, as all the world’s experts, the actual experts are predicting...

Hmm. I have plane tickets for overseas travel starting at the end of July. If oil inventories dry up, rather than just become hugely expensive, will I be able to get home? Then again, extending a foreign trip might be rather nice. At least for a while.

Who gets to embody national identity

Kos of Daily Kos is finally able to tell the story of his website being subpoenaed by the nasty guy’s Department of Justice. The DOJ wanted information about a particular user who was critical of the nasty guy (sheesh, the whole site is!) though there was no threatening language. The order also said there was a gag order around the subpoena. Of course, Kos fought back, refusing to comply, which confused the US attorneys. But lawyers cost money, so he told the story on the site being very careful not to violate the gag order. Members of the community gave enough to lessen the financial worries. The US attorneys threatened search warrants. But three weeks later they dropped the case. Now that the gag order has expired Kos could explain the details. He wrote:

They were counting on fear doing the work for them. They assumed most organizations would comply quietly rather than endure the cost, pressure, and uncertainty of a legal fight. Send a subpoena. Threaten search warrants and public raids. Wrap everything in national security language. And for Trump, that worked out well in those days, when way too many targets simply folded. That’s how authoritarian systems function—not through constant dramatic displays of force, but by making examples out of a few targets so everyone else learns to preemptively comply. But with us, they picked the wrong target. And we were able to stand firm because this community had our backs. Your donations turned what they assumed would be a routine compliance exercise into a time-consuming, difficult legal fight backed by serious counsel and a community unwilling to be intimidated. At some point, they clearly decided to focus on easier targets elsewhere. And that’s the story. The DOJ came after Daily Kos, and we told them to pound sand until they decided to move on.

Speaking of the DOJ... An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported on the nasty guy’s $1.776 billion slush fund meant to pay the Capitol attackers. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the creation of the fund will not move forward. There was rejection by the courts and fierce political backlash, even from Republicans, so they canceled the fund. There were two notable things about the announcement. One, the Blanche wouldn’t put the cancellation of the fund in writing (as I heard elsewhere). Two, a secondary proclamation made along with the fund’s creation that the nasty guy, his family, and his companies would not be investigated by the IRS, that part still stands. Emily Singer of Kos reported that a new acting director of National Intelligence has been named. The job opened up when Tulsi Gabbard resigned. She was pretty bad (such as being way too favorable to Russia). The new guy is worse. He’s Bill Pulte. We in Detroit know him as an heir of Pulte Home construction fortune. He has been and will continue to be the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage assistance agencies. Heading National Intelligence will be an additional gig. This is why Pulte is worse: First, he has zero, repeat zero, experience in Intelligence work. Second, he has used his position at FHFA to harass people, including accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James (in the news because she had successfully prosecuted the nasty guy) and Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud. And third, his appointment as “acting” director means he doesn’t face Senate confirmation. His accusations of mortgage fraud mean he has shown he is willing to do the nasty guy’s dirty work. And as the head of National Intelligence he can bend their work from the necessary spying of actual enemies of America and towards spying on the nasty guy’s perceived enemies, as in fellow Americans. Singer wrote: “Pulte’s appointment is so bad that even Republicans are criticizing it.” Singer wished us a happy Pride Month! Then she reported there are a few states that won’t be participating.

But homophobic Republicans are refusing to mark the occasion. Instead, they are replacing Pride with Christian Nationalist-laced celebrations of “fidelity” and the “nuclear family”—which they unsurprisingly declare to be families led by married male-female pairs. At least three states—not surprisingly all of which are in the South—have refused to recognize Pride and instead made their own sad holiday months.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas declare June as “Fidelity Month.” In Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill that says June is “Nuclear Family Month.” And in Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey declared June as “Strong Families Month.” So continues attempts at our erasure. Back in 2011 I wrote about Zach Wahls. At the time he was a 19 year old college student. The Iowa Senate was hearing testimony about their constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. Wahls, raised by a lesbian couple, spoke passionately and articulately against the ban and became an internet sensation. The Senate voted for the ban anyway. At the time the House was controlled by Democrats, so it died. It would have been overturned in 2015. I wrote about Wahls again just after the 2018 election. Then he was 26 and was elected to the Iowa Senate, yes, the place where he made is passionate debut. Wahls is in the political news again. He’s now 34. He was a Democratic candidate for the US Senate. Alas, he didn’t win the primary. Since Iowa is turning against the nasty guy this year Democrats have a better chance to take that Senate seat. But it won’t be Wahls, at least not this time. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a tweet from Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York.

Today, I signed an Executive Order temporarily repealing bedtimes in the City of New York so that kids of all ages can watch our team in the NBA Finals. As Mayor, you’re forced to make many difficult decisions. This was not one of them. Go Knicks.

The Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago’s South Side will open Juneteenth (June 19th). Kos was invited by a friend to get a preview. He was able to see the whole building (which I’ll let you read about). I will quote some of his impressions.

It was impossible to move through the exhibits without the elephant in the room: the knowledge that everything Barack Obama did, personified, and represented was so deeply offensive to wide swaths of America that the backlash delivered the White House to Donald Trump—twice. And that made the experience disorienting, because the museum itself is a stunning architectural and artistic achievement.

Many museums name wings or galleries after wealthy benefactors. This museum required benefactors to name galleries after someone else. “Wealthy liberal philanthropist Fred Eychaner named his wing after Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor.” There is also a Worker Appreciation Wall to honor the thousands of people who physically built it. Kos noticed there are many inspiring messages about the nature of democracy placed around the museum.

And somehow, rather than inspiring me, those messages made me angrier. Why would telling people they could improve their communities inspire such hatred? Was it really that offensive to suggest that public service matters? That democracy is participatory? Because this wasn’t simply ideological disagreement. Republicans could have nominated any number of conventional conservatives promising tax cuts and deregulation. Instead, the backlash to Obama became something darker and more existential—a rejection not merely of his policies, but of the broader idea of who fully belongs in America and who gets to embody national identity.

Obama could have placed his museum in downtown Chicago, the polished and safe place. He placed it in the South Side. Kos got the message. This isn’t about reverence for Obama.

Beyond the nostalgia and the optimism was something quieter, but more durable: the belief that ordinary people can help shape the American story.

Brother arrives tomorrow and will stay for the weekend. I’ll post again after he leaves.

Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election

Yesterday I wrote about the world’s largest honeytrap operation – Jeffery Epstein inviting powerful people to his properties to have sex with underage children, filming them as they did so, and giving the recordings to Putin and the KGB. I based my writing on a post on Daily Kos by Thom Hartmann, who based his on an article in the British Daily Mail. My friend and debate partner objected. He asked Google about the reputation of the Daily Mail. What he got back included words such as: misleading, biased, sensationalistic, alarmist, dramatic language to drive reader engagement, and even fabricated. Good point. Amplifying sketchy sources is not something I should do. So I went back to Hartmann’s post. Yes, he linked to the Daily Mail article. However, when discussing various things that show the nasty guy is working for Putin rather than Americans Hartmann provided links to much better quality sources. His links go to: New York Times, The Hill, The Guardian, American Progress, NPR, BBC, CNN, ABCNews, NBCNews, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Insider, Vox, Politico, Slate, and Daily Beast. So while Hartmann was inspired to write by a “deeply researched investigative report” (Hartmann’s term) in the Daily Mail he backed up his own post with reputable sources. My friend wrote, “Now, I'd love to see the world have the goods on Trump. And everything you wrote might be true.” Friend, I hope you can now think the world does have the goods on Trump. Whether anyone will act on the goods is a completely different hope. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Germany has updated its travel guidance to tell its citizens that due to the violence of the nasty guy’s federal agents in Minnesota and elsewhere that travel to such cities is not advised. If you go stay away from crowds and follow the instructions of the local security forces.

The irony is not lost on us that Germany, which has a sordid history with fascist leaders who violently murdered citizens based on their ethnic backgrounds and political beliefs, is now warning about the same thing happening in the United States.

That advisory also contradicts what the nasty guy has been saying about the US to the world. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the nasty guy has said he will close the Kennedy Center for two years for repairs. He says it is “tired, broken, and dilapidated” though people who have been there recently would disagree. Besides, it was renovated in 2019. The real reason he wants to close it is, after he slapped his name on it, many performers have refused to perform there, canceling performances. Membership has dropped. Tickets aren’t selling. New performers aren’t signing up. The place is good for propaganda, such as a showing of the Melania movie.

Internationally famous composer Philip Glass announced in January that he was canceling the performance of his symphony “Lincoln,” scheduled for the Kennedy Center in June. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership,” Glass said in a statement. ... The conveniently announced closure is an effective way to bury stories of performers canceling in between propaganda screenings. The Kennedy Center joins the ever-growing lineup of failed Trump ventures, from Trump Steaks to Trump Airlines to Trump University. But this time a beloved part of America’s cultural heritage is also taking a hit.

My personal fear is this renovation will make the place look gaudy and tacky, like what he’s done to the White House. And somehow Kennedy’s name won’t make it back on the side of the building. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Amanda Marcotte of Salon:

To people outside the MAGA bubble, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center is just plain weird. Obviously, he feels intimidated by the looming cultural power of the 35th president and his wife, Jacqueline, and excluded from circles of people with good taste, even though he has no interest in actually learning to appreciate art or music beyond middle-of-the-road Broadway showtunes from the 1980s. He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots. ... Yet the faith that they can seize people’s hearts and minds through force has not abated in Trumpworld. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it.

Last week Wednesday Willis reported that the FBI raided the Fulton County’s Election Hub and Operations Center in Georgia. The ballots from the 2020 election were taken. This county includes most of Atlanta and has been the center of the nasty guy’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election, lawsuits related to that are why the ballots haven’t been destroyed yet. Conspiracy theories about the election were in the news for months, though no evidence was produced in 60 court cases. The nasty guy has obsessed with this loss since then, including an attack on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn that election. The next day Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, reported this marks a significant escalation in the nasty guy’s breaking of democratic norms, something that has not happened before.

The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. ... Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.

Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said the ballots had been safe in the county’s custody, but now the county can no longer say the ballots are still secure. The county will fight back through the courts. This action triggers fears of federal interference in the midterm elections. On Monday Singer took up the story.

Democrats have warned that the raid was a corrupt fact-finding mission in which Trump would concoct evidence to use as the basis to rig the 2026 midterms. And on Monday, that’s exactly what he said he’s trying to do.

Singer then quoted the nasty guy, which was his usual word salad, though the implication was clear. The nasty guy also threatened prosecutions against those who “falsified” the 2020 election results. Singer concluded, “If Trump keeps meddling in elections, at least he’ll finally get that fraud he’s been after.” On Saturday Jessica Huseman, in an article for Votebeat posted on Kos reminds us that the nasty guy cannot cancel the November election, though he has been saying he wants to. He doesn’t have the legal authority and US elections are too decentralized for him to try – there are more than 9 thousand local elections run by local officials and more than 90 thousand polling locations. Even intimidation efforts would face challenges and injunctions and would not affect those who vote early or by mail. And all those election officials are talking to each other on ways to protect the vote. Wrote Huseman:

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Want to help? Don’t spread fear or distrust. Don’t moan that the election is already lost. Know how the election system works and speak up when you hear something that is wrong. Be a poll worker or volunteer to register voters.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

Mark Sumner, Kos staff emeritus, wrote about Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and a fan of Putin. Strangely, she was on-site when FBI agents hauled away Fulton County ballots. Maybe not so strangely – she made wild claims about the 2020 election. The important part of Gabbard’s story starts eight months ago. A US intelligence official serving as a whistleblower filed a complaint against Gabbard. It probably has something to do with a “grave threat to national security,” implicates another department in the government, and has something to do with executive privilege. But we don’t know the details. A whistleblower allegation is supposed to go to Congress. But in those eight months Congress is still hasn’t seen it. That’s a long time for a “grave threat.” Gabbard has decided that no one in Congress has the necessary security clearance to look at the charges against her. Revealing the contents would cause “grave damage to national security.” So it was locked in a safe. Gabbard claims the whistleblower was politically motivated – which, according to the law, is what Congress is to determine.

Gabbard isn't performing the legal role of a DNI in terms of evaluating intelligence and coordinating a response to threats. Instead, she's leading Trump's efforts to exhume every false claim he's made over the last six years and create a unified narrative of election vulnerability. She's the chief fabulist to the fabulist in chief; the Sheherazad of his thousands of ways to lie about an election. And he can't afford to lose her.

Nasty guy ally attorney Cleta Mitchell noted that the president has a limited role in elections “except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States.” The nasty guy has already declared national emergencies so he can send in ICE, attack renewable energy, bomb fishermen, and many more. He does so because declaring an emergency give him a long list of powers, some of which sound like they are for authoritarian regimes.

Trump may not be able to stop the elections, but he can declare a national emergency and station masked stormtroopers outside critical polling stations. He can make every effort to undermine the nation's faith in the election, to make voting seem both pointless and dangerous, and declare that the system of state-run elections is corrupt. The Georgia search and Gabbard’s involvement is happening at the same time that Trump is calling on Republicans to “nationalize elections” and take control away from states.

Don’t expect that safe to open soon. The Olympic Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow night. Until the Closing Ceremonies on the 22nd my usual posting schedule will be interrupted. If the TV schedule of the past is followed figure skating will be shown late in the evening so I may be able to do some writing before then.