OK. Time To Rock and Roll.

I’ve been away a bit, but am back, and just finished reading this great Guardian piece about The Boss. Enjoy!

Bruce Springsteen is a model for how celebrities should resist Trump

His recent concerts are a thunderous call to fight for democracy. The nation could use more like him

The Bruce Springsteen concert I went to in Brooklyn last week was unlike any concert I’ve attended in decades. It was far more than a fabulous, joyous concert; it was also an inspiring resistance event.

From the get-go, the Boss made clear that this concert would be part of the anti-Trump resistance. It was a three-hour-long ode to the resistance and a thunderous call to Springsteen fans to step up and do more to fight for democracy and against authoritarianism. In this way, Springsteen is serving as a model for how celebrities can stand up against Trump and fight for what’s right.

As in the other concerts in his Land of Hope and Dreams tour, Springsteen began his Brooklyn concert with some uncontroversial, patriotic words: “We begin tonight with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We pray for an end to this conflict and for their safe return.” But in his very next sentence, the Boss plunged into full-scale resistance mode: “The E Street Band is here tonight in celebration and defense of the American ideals and values that have sustained our country for 250 years. We call upon the righteous power or art, of music, of rock’n’roll in these dangerous times.

How do we get more men to join the anti-Trump resistance?Read more

“Our democracy, our constitution, our rule of law,” he continued, “are being challenged right now as never before by a reckless, racist, incompetent, treasonous president and his ship of fools administration. So tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope 0ver fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, truth over lies, unity over division and peace over war.”

As soon as Springsteen uttered the word war, the E Street Band began blasting Motown’s leading anti-Vietnam war song, War (What Is It Good For). Immediately came the roaring answer: “absolutely nothing.” It was Springsteen’s not-so-subtle way of dissing Trump’s disastrous war against Iran. Next, to immense applause, Springsteen belted out his great anti-war anthem, Born in the USA.

One of the concert’s final numbers was another in-your-face song to our authoritarian president: Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom. Springsteen sang of those chimes flashing “for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight” and “for the rebel”, “the outcast” and the “underdog”. To an arena filled with young and old fans, he also delivered some of the oldies but goodies they hungered for: Born to Run, Hungry Heart and Dancing in the Dark. In a special bonus, Tom Morello raged against the Trump machine by joining Springsteen in an amped-up version of The Ghost of Tom Joad, about a depressing “new world order” with “families sleeping in [their] cars”. Throughout the turbocharged concert, Springsteen had phenomenal, unflagging energy, seeming more like 26 than 76.

If anyone harbored doubts about whether this was a night of resistance, Springsteen said, in a direct slap at Trump: “Honesty, honor, humility, character, truth, compassion, humanity, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength and decency – don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter any more – they do… So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people – by you. So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.”

Then he shouted: “Are you with us? Are you with us?” The crowd thundered back with thousands of yeses.

In another jab at Trump, Springsteen said: “Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth.”

Springsteen seemed totally comfortable as he laid into Trump, who has childishly (and preposterously) called him a “total loser” and “not a talented guy”. From his early days in Asbury Park, Springsteen has championed the working class, singing about “broken heroes” who “sweat it out”, Vietnam vets who “ain’t got nowhere to go”, and twentysomethings for whom there “ain’t been much work”. While Trump has delivered to billionaires, Springsteen has been fighting for working men and women, for those who get the short end of the stick. That has given him extraordinary cred with average Americans.

To be sure, many other celebrities have stood up to Trump, among them Stephen Colbert, John Legend, Jimmy Kimmel, Robert De Niro, Lady Gaga, the country superstar Zach Bryan, and the Chicks’ Natalie Maines. Unfortunately, the courageous Mr Colbert has seemingly been punished for criticizing the thin-skinned president. His last show was on Thursday (Springsteen appeared on Wednesday’s episode). Perhaps because Springsteen knows there are hundreds of thousands of Americans willing to pay $100 or more to see him perform, he takes on Trump with less hesitation and greater abandon than other celebrities. The Boss doesn’t have any corporate overlords watching his every word.

His resistance is unflinching. In Brooklyn and at each concert, he gives a variation of this broadside: “So many American families struggle while our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars trading on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history … This White House is destroying the American idea and our reputation around the world. We stood as a beacon for hope and liberty as an imperfect, but strong defender of democracy– standing for the global good, and to many now we are just America, the reckless, unpredictable, predatory, untrustworthy, rogue nation that is this administration and this president’s legacy.”

Every resistance movement needs an anthem, and Springsteen has obliged by writing The Streets of Minneapolis, which denounces Trump’s deployment of thousands of masked agents to intimidate that deep blue city, to essentially step on its neck.

When he began singing Streets of Minneapolis, the crowd went wild. I excerpt it:

Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice

Singing through the bloody mist

We’ll take our stand for this land

And the stranger in our midst

Here in our home, they killed and roamed

In the winter of ‘26

We’ll remember the names of those who died

On the streets of Minneapolis …

At song’s end, he led an earsplitting chant: “ICE out now!” and gigantic photos of Renée Good and Alex Pretti suddenly appeared behind the stage.

Springsteen has carried his resistance message across the nation. At the flagship No Kings rally in St Paul in late March, he told the immense crowd: “The power and the solidarity of the people of Minneapolis and Minnesota was an inspiration to the entire country … You gave us hope. You gave us courage. And for those who gave their lives, Renée Good, mother of three, brutally murdered, and Alex Pretti, VA nurse, executed by ICE and left to die in the street without even the decency of our lawless government investigating their deaths. Their bravery, their sacrifice, and their names will not be forgotten.”

At his Minneapolis concert on 31 March, he poignantly told of Good’s last words: “To the man who she was protesting against, the man who would take her life, she said: ‘That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you. I’m not mad.’ God bless her.

“So tonight, when you go home,” Springsteen continued, “hold your loved ones close. And tomorrow, do as Renée did, find a way to take aggressive, peaceful action to defend our country’s ideals. And as the great civil rights leader John Lewis said, ‘Go out and get into some good trouble.’

“God bless Alex Pretti, God bless Renée Good, God bless you and God bless America.”

What’s giving me hope now

I, along with many others at the Barclays Center concert, came away jazzed and inspired. I imagine that hundreds of thousands of fans who have seen Springsteen in concerts across the US in recent weeks felt the same way. That gives me hope. That many young people are attending the Boss’s resistance concerts also gives me hope.

Springsteen does what celebrities should do. He uses his star power to fight the good fight. He talks to people. He doesn’t talk at them or down to them or lecture them. He voices common concerns, he rallies, he inspires. It’s perhaps easier for the Boss to do this than it is for other stars because he has a tremendous, decades-old fan base and is widely embraced as a man of the people. Let’s hope that his hugely successful Land of Hope and Dreams tour inspires other celebrities to do more to speak out and resist.

I wish that Springsteen would give dozens of free, outdoor concerts across the US over the next year or two or three, but that might be too complicated and expensive to pull off. I don’t doubt that those concerts would attract hundreds of thousands of people each, and that might help turn the tide further against Trump, the most corrupt authoritarian president in US history.

Springsteen is an unarguable leader of the resistance. The nation could use more like him.

Long live the Boss.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Mentions, We Get Mentions!

Also linked are a couple of great blogs, which we appreciate as well!

We Hate To Intrude Upon Your Weekend…

It’s That Saturday Bird Post-

Red-naped Sapsucker

Sphyrapicus nuchalis

Néʼézhiin (Diné / Navajo)

Also Known As

Chupasavia Nuquirroja (Spanish)
Carpintero Nuca Roja (Spanish)

About

The Red-naped Sapsucker is one of four species in the genus Sphyrapicus, the sapsuckers, which are a distinctive group of North American woodpeckers with a peculiar and unique foraging strategy. The sapsuckers are accurately named in that they do, in fact, drink sap, but not by sucking. Rather, these industrious birds create rows of small openings in the bark of specific trees to allow the sweet, nutritious sap to flow, much like a syrup maker tapping a maple tree. They then drink the sap directly from these wells, lapping it up with their specialized feathery tongues. Sapsuckers maintain these openings or “wells” throughout the breeding season, regularly expanding existing holes and opening new ones to take advantage of changes in sugar flow through the season. Their sign on trees is conspicuous: Neat grids of shallow holes that create rings around the trunks of thin-barked trees such as aspen, willow, alder, birch, lodgepole pine, and young Douglas-fir.

In creating these wells, Red-naped Sapsuckers also open an irresistible opportunity for other animals with a taste for sweets. Many birds, especially warblers and hummingbirds, are drawn to sapsucker wells. Researchers have also reported a range of mammals visiting wells, including chipmunks, squirrels, mice, deer, and even bears. Insects feed at these wells too, especially butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, and ants. In turn, the insect activity can attract additional birds that prey on insects, such as flycatchers. (snip-MORE)

“Americans overwhelmingly oppose data centers. Women most of all.”

New polling shows women have stronger concerns than men over the implications of the massive and costly complexes used to power AI.

This story was originally reported by Jenae Barnes, Climate Reporter of The 19th. Meet Jenae and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

As data centers rapidly emerge at unprecedented rates across the country, they are being met with increasing opposition — particularly from women, according to a recent Gallup poll.

More than two-thirds of adults oppose the construction of the massive and costly complexes used to power artificial intelligence, with a majority saying they’d prefer to have a nuclear power plant in their backyard instead. While women and men overwhelmingly expressed opposition, women did so more intensely. Out of 1,000 adults surveyed, 55 percent of women said they strongly oppose data centers, compared to 43 percent of men. In fact, men were more likely to favor data centers, citing their economic benefits and job opportunities.

Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup and the study’s author, attributed the distinction to women having more empathy for public-facing issues like the environment and healthcare, and favoring Democratic policies that protect the environment. Resistance to data centers often focuses on the imposition of environmental and financial problems, like water scarcity, noise and air pollution, and excessive energy use that can result in higher utility bills and increased health complications for the low-income communities of color who live near where they are usually built.

“A lot of the opposition is based on environmental concerns about using too many resources, especially water,” Jones added. “Centers need a lot of water to cool the computing machines that they’re using. Land, electricity, and resources are the most common concerns people have.”

Gendered fears about the environment are nothing new, experts say. Women are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation and at higher risk of poverty, food insecurity and gender-based violence when displaced by climate change, the United Nations reports. Studies have consistently shown that women are also key to driving inclusive, effective action to address the impacts of climate change.

“I’ve been organizing for 15 years, and it’s always been the case that women are leading our fights,” said Danny Cendejas, a campaign specialist for MediaJustice, who works with grassroots movements across the country that are opposing data centers. “We are definitely seeing everyone join the fight, but we have to recognize the truth, and it’s women, trans, queer and nonbinary people leading the work.”

Cendejas pointed to environmental justice movements in places like Memphis, Tennessee, and Amarillo, Texas, which have already been overburdened by environmental pollutants and health impacts from gas and oil industries. Those impacts are now being exacerbated by data centers.

“There’s a big connection where big tech is targeting Black, Brown and Indigenous communities,” Cendejas said. “The progress that has been made over the years to shut down coal plants or gain protections… a lot of that is being undone, by big tech and the demand for data centers.”

Data centers have become an increasingly pressing issue for candidates and their campaigns heading into the midterms in November. They’re also a rare source of bipartisan concern in a polarized political environment.

“There are really strong feelings about this. I see this playing out as a political issue, and now people who are running for governor, Senate, or local offices, are having to take a position on this, whereas this is not something people were talking about two years ago,” Jones said. “And now politicians across both parties are coming out as against data centers, which seems like the more popular viewpoint.”

During a House hearing on Wednesday featuring the Environmental Protection Agency’s Assistant Administrator for Water Jessica Kramer, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York held up jars of an opaque, brown liquid that she said had come out of a rural community east of Atlanta where Donald Trump got 70 percent of the vote in the last election. Meta has disputed the claim.

“This is the current drinking water in Morgan County, Georgia, right after a data center was constructed, the Meta data center was constructed,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The only difference between the clean water and this was that data center.”

In New Mexico, first-time candidate Daisy Maldonado is running for county commissioner in Doña Ana County on a platform that includes opposition to Project Jupiter, a $165 billion mega data center under construction in the area. Maldonado was recently endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a proponent of data center regulation, adding to the national conversation about community resistance to AI infrastructure and environmental accountability.

Women are also at the forefront of the opposition in Pittsburgh, where the majority of the data centers in Pennsylvania are being built.

“I see a lot of moms concerned,” said Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes, a researcher at the nonprofit Data & Society Research Institute who studied Pittsburgh’s data center industry. “It’s very connected to ‘I want a good future for my kids and if things go this way, I don’t know what world we will have for them in 15 years.’”

To Nunes, the Gallup poll’s results serve as a reminder and reflection of the gendered impacts of AI in society.

“A lot of the interviewees we had in Pennsylvania, when it comes to developers, or people in government, are mostly men, but people who are activists and doing work on the ground, they are mainly women,” Nunes said.

DNI Resigns

I think we could leave it alone at this; she’s got a hard road ahead.

Tulsi Gabbard resigns as director of national intelligence, citing her husband’s health

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tulsi Gabbard resigned as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence on Friday, saying she needed to leave office as her husband battles cancer. She is the fourth Cabinet member to depart during Trump’s second term, all of them women.

In her resignation letter, which she posted on social media, Gabbard said she told Trump she would leave her job overseeing the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies on June 30. She said her husband had recently been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and “faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months.”

“At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she wrote in the letter, which was reported earlier by Fox News.

Trump, in his own social media post, said “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.” He said her principal deputy, Aaron Lukas, will serve as acting director of national intelligence.

While Gabbard says her departure is for personal reasons, the juxtaposition between her long-held, anti-interventionism stance and Trump’s series of overseas military operations had seemed to put them on a collision course. (snip-MORE)

A Quick Newsy Tidbit

Judge dismisses human smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported

By TRAVIS LOLLER Updated 2:38 PM CDT, May 22, 2026

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, was thrown out Friday.

Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador last year became an embarrassment for Trump officials when they were ordered to return him to the U.S. Abrego Garcia claimed that both the timing of the criminal charges and inflammatory statements about him by top Trump officials demonstrated that the prosecution was vindictive.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, ruling from Nashville, granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss for “selective or vindictive prosecution.”

Without Abrego Garcia’s “successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution,” said Crenshaw, dismissing claims of “new evidence” against him.

In earlier court filings, Crenshaw wrote he had found some evidence that the prosecution against Abrego Garcia “may be vindictive.” The judge said many statements by Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern.” He cited a statement by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that seemed to suggest the Justice Department charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.

Happy/Sad Friday Lunch

Over lunch a bit ago, I watched the finale of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” What a mix of happy and sad. Joy Reid gives us a good rundown on her Substack, along with pertinent history. I subscribe for free, so do give her a click to finish reading and watching; I promise you’ll be happy you did! And sad, too.

A Daily Reid

Stephen Colbert was too good for Paramount CBS

The end of Late Night is a shameful moment in history, but it’s also a pivot point

Joy-Ann Reid May 22, 2026

Late night TV is all but dead, anyway, right? Colbert made it into the lifeboats before the ship went down.

Viewership of the three major network offerings is down 70-80 percent in the “money demo” (18-49) and 9 percent overall versus the peak year for the genre, 2015; the year Colbert took over The Late Show from David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon succeeded Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel moved to 11:35 p.m. That said, Colbert was the highest rated late night show and still brought in an audience north of 2.4 million every night; a number CNN would kill for.

In reality, the declines in viewership really only account for the very much dying medium of network (and cable) television. The realty is, most people who watched Colbert, and still catch Kimmel, Fallon and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, watch on YouTube or catch (and share) the clips on social media (well not the clips – since these geezer broadcast companies will ding any creator who posts their clips on a YouTube channel – as if sharing their content hurts them…) Or they subscribe to the app where John Oliver’s show runs. The real death of the genre has nothing to do with the talents of the hosts. It’s about the audience moving online (and the younger audience choosing streamers over everyone): (snip; skipping to a fun part, but seriously do go read and watch in the entirety!)

Still, for the Ellisons to unceremoniously end not just Colbert’s tenure on The Late Show, but to end the show altogether, is a sign. It’s a sign of the right wing billionaire stranglehold on our media — with the MAGA Zionist family in control of Paramount CBS and soon of Warner Bros and CNN, too, Jeff Bezos ruining the Washington Post, and the Murdochs controlling Fox, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. Between that and the rotten billionaire boys club that controls every social media app, we live in a MAGA hellscape that answers the question: what would happen if old time South African apartheid went global?

And the number of CBS employees who are now unemployed because a Zionist family and their MAGA claque wants to give a weak, whiny president who can’t take a joke comfort TV to watch as he drools himself to sleep in his gold-covered Barcalounger every night is both sad and infuriating. (snip-skipping again)

My next appearance, and the first time we met in person was in July 20 2021:

(snip-skipping again)

But beyond the personal, I think it’s important to recall that Colbert has been, alongside people like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Myers and others outside the very white, male confines of network late night — a brave voice of resistance against Trumpism and autocracy. And that voice will be missed. Silencing Stephen was clearly the Ellisons’ goal. But in this new world of independent media, silencing people isn’t so easy.

Good reads:

This throwback piece on the initial Colbert announcement is great, and not just because it also mentions me. And I love the title:

The Uppity Minority: Stephen Colbert and Joy Reid—Fired, Freed, and Unleashed

Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ ends with a swan song and a giant wormhole

NYT: Colbert’s exit marks the end of an era (gift link)

Colbert exited the way he entered: feisty

(snip-MORE, and it’s fun!)

A Bit Of An Antidote To Daily News:

Tennessee Officials Find Out About First Amendment The Hard Way

They have to pay retired cop Larry Bushart $835,000 for sharing a post disparaging Donald Trump after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which it turns out is not illegal.

Robyn Pennacchia

We’re hearing a lot this week about how the DOJ is going to take over a billion dollars of our tax money and give it to those whose feelings were, like, really hurt when they got in trouble just for doing a little insurrection and maybe pooping on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. So you know what we need? We need a palate cleanser. And, thankfully, the state of Tennessee has deigned to provide us with one. Rejoice!

Officials in the state will have to pay 61-year-old retired police officer Larry Bushart $835,000 in restitution after having imprisoned him for 37 days over a meme he shared to Facebook following the death of Charlie Kirk — which caused him to lose his job and miss both his wedding anniversary and the birth of his granddaughter.

Bushart was arrested back in September after he refused to take down a bunch of posts disparaging Kirk after his assassination, specifically over one that actually just criticized Donald Trump. Because, reportedly, people in his community thought it meant he was threatening to shoot up a school, as I guess they are not very good at reading comprehension.

The post he shared in the Perry County, Tennessee, community Facebook page was a meme that existed long before Kirk was assassinated and featured a picture of Donald Trump along the famous words of comfort he shared after the 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa: “We have to get over it.”

Yes, just one day after 17-year-old Dylan Butler shot eight people, injuring six and ultimately killing two (a sixth-grader died the day of, the school principal died 10 days later from his injuries), Donald Trump said to Iowans at a campaign event in Sioux Center, “It’s just horrible — so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”

You know, because godforbid we start thinking that gun control might be a good idea.

Anyway, the aforementioned not-very-good-at-reading-comprehension people saw the meme and thought that this was Larry Bushart threatening a mass shooting at Perry High School in Tennessee. Or at least claimed that they did.

Via The Tennessean:

Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems told The Tennessean in September that participants on the page were planning to host a Charlie Kirk vigil in Linden, Tennessee on Sept. 23.

Bushart posted multiple photos in the comments referencing Charlie Kirk’s death, which Weems called “hate memes,” but stated were “not against the law and would be recognized as free speech.” […]

Weems said Bushart posted the picture “to indicate or make the audience think it was referencing our Perry High School.”

“This led teachers, parents and students to conclude he was talking about a hypothetical shooting at our school,” he said. “Numerous reached out in concern.”

According to the statement, “investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community.”

Yeah, I’m pretty certain that was not at all the point of posting that meme. It seems fairly clear that Bushart had the same reason for sharing it as the millions of other people who shared it that week had — to point out how very callous Trump has been when people who are not his rabid supporters are killed. Nevertheless, Bushart was arrested, held on $2 million bail and imprisoned for over a month.

Weirdly enough, however, the Constitution does not actually have any kind of clauses specifying that the First Amendment can be thrown out the window in cases involving the hurting of Republican feelings, so now the officials involved with his arrest have to pay.

“It’s in times of turmoil and heightened tensions that our national commitment to free speech is tested the most,” said Bushart’s attorney, Cary Davis of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “When government officials fail that test, the Constitution exists to hold them accountable. Our hope is that Larry’s settlement sends a message to law enforcement across the country: Respect the First Amendment today, or be prepared to pay the price tomorrow.”

Yes, and while many conservatives believe that the First Amendment only exists to keep other people from calling them assholes on social media or kicking them off social media sites for being assholes, it’s actually meant to keep the government from punishing people for speech — which is why these government officials now owe Larry Bushart almost one million dollars. Whoops!

Open Windows and Clay Jones

Grifty Like Daddy

I hope Eric Trump doesn’t sue me for this cartoon

Clay Jones

Eric Trump is threatening to sue Jen Psaki for a segment on her MS NOW show.

Psaki questioned on her show, The Briefing with Jen Psaki, if there’s a conflict of interest by Eric joining his father on his trip to China. She cited an article by the Financial Times that reported that Alt5 Sigma, a company with ties to Eric Trump, was pursuing a deal to build data centers in the US with a Chinese chipmaker that American lawmakers have warned is connected to the ruling Communist Party.

Presidents usually put a blind trust in charge of their finances while they are in office, but not Donald Trump. Instead of a blind trust, he has put Eric in charge of the family business. That does not prevent Donald from controlling his money, and in fact, he has been making a lot of trades and investments lately himself. Psaki pointed out that this arrangement with Eric was supposed to prevent conflicts of interest, “but there he is.” (snip-MORE)

Kars4Grifters

You don’t need an annoying jingle to know that Donald Trump is a scam

Clay Jones

Usually, when someone tells you about a news item you may not have heard about yet, they’ll leave out some pertinent facts. When I first heard that California had banned the Kars4Kids jingle, the most annoying song in the world, they did not tell me why. I thought to myself that California couldn’t do that because of the First Amendment. Right? No one has banned Nickelback yet.

As it turns out, the supposed nonprofit group, Kars4Kids, has to stop airing its jingle in California because the judge found that it violated the state’s false advertising and unfair competition laws. (snip-MORE)

Trump is simply a mobster & a thief

and Todd Blanche is his accomplice

Ann Telnaes

Grifting with Puppets

Trump strikes a deal that the IRS cannot audit him

Clay Jones

The $1.8 billion slush fund that the Justice Department is awarding to Donald Trump’s criminal allies is so blatantly corrupt that even Republicans can’t defend it. Some Republicans are so upset that they’re actually speaking out publicly against it.

Referring to acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, and the fact that J6 terrorists are eligible for the so-called “anti-weaponization fund,” Mitch McConnell said, “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong – take your pick.”

Senate Republicans derailed a massive immigration enforcement bill and left town until early today, despite Donald Trump ordering them to pass the $7o billion bill before June 1. How disgusting do you have to be to sicken sycophantic MAGAt Republicans? (snip-MORE)

A Jenny Lawson That Was Just Disinterred From My Inbox!

Don’t begrudge yourself happiness, sweet friend.

Jenny Lawson (thebloggess)

Hello, lovely!

This is my last week of book tour for How To Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay and I have conflicting emotions because touring can be hard with anxiety and chronic illness, but it’s also so uplifting to see people in real life and remind myself that the work I do does make a difference even when my mind says otherwise. It can be so easy to listen to the lies that depression tells, and it helps me refill my cup in a way that I can’t explain.

I suspect that you also probably have no idea how much the work you do in your own life (including the work of just being human, kind, and yourself) makes ripples in fantastic ways you’ll never see, but never doubt that it does.

I drew a lot last week because I was in a depression and it helped, but my brain wouldn’t work enough to put together the words I wanted on the drawings so instead of showing you the three unfinished sketches that I’m still working on, here’s a drawing from the book that I’ve been reminding myself of during this depression:

“Don’t begrudge yourself happiness.”

Because there isn’t enough joy in life to just let it pass you by. When it arrives, celebrate it…enjoy it…don’t let guilt or the drudgery of life get in the way of grabbing joy and whimsy and relief whenever it comes and however it shows up. Because you deserve it.

And I do too.

And when this depression passes completely I want to be ready for it.

I super crazy love you,

~ Jenny