Historic WH Treaty Room To Become Guest Bedroom

tRump treats the White House the official residence and working office of the president. The longest any resident may live there is normally 8 years or 10 years if the vice president takes over after 2 years of the president’s term. A federal judge told tRump’s administration that he was only holding the White House in trust for the people and next person to hold the office. It did not give him the right to change it or do what he wanted with it as if it was Mar-a-Lago or one of his other properties. That judge ordered a stop to the ballroom until congress authorized it, which the people do not want at a time when all their social services are being cut. tRump is deluded into thinking the more gold in a room the fancier and wealthier the person seems. He is trying to keep up with other dictators palaces. Now he is talking about replacing the front of the white house, the iconic columns. It is almost like he thinks he won’t be leaving. And that every other president will share his clearly in his mind superior tastes in decorating. However most people will see it as tacky and pretentious, which both describe tRump. Hugs

Historic WH Treaty Room To Become Guest Bedroom

The New York Times reports:

President Trump has discussed turning the White House Treaty Room, historically a meeting place for diplomats and statesmen, into a guest bedroom with an en suite bath. He has added gold flourishes to the East Room of the Executive Residence in a style similar to the gilded trimmings he installed in the Oval Office. And he has affixed “challenge coins” that celebrate his presidency — including the newest medallions in red and gold — to the walls inside the West Wing.

The Treaty Room is one of the most historic rooms in the White House. Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley used it as a Cabinet room, and it was where the Spanish-American War peace protocol of 1898, and the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, were signed. Once known as the “Monroe Room,” because it was where President James Monroe worked, it also has been the setting for major wartime addresses by presidents George W. Bush and Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Read the full article.

The sharply conservative Supreme Court that Trump's three appointees remade is the first since at least the 1950s to reject civil rights claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities, according to a detailed analysis conducted for The Washington Post.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1.bsky.social) 2026-04-10T00:41:21.736Z

https://youtu.be/mPuQEG19BIM

Boise Has Moxie-

Tissue alert. Seriously. But, for happy tears.

Idaho Banned Pride Flags. Boise ‘Complied.’

Delicious compliance.

Doktor Zoom

The new Pride-themed flagpole wraps outside Boise City Hall. Photo: Doktor Zoom.

The Idaho Legislature is steadfastly devoted to terrible ideas, like banning abortion (and losing maternity care), eliminating “pornography” that isn’t in libraries anyway (and forcing some libraries to close), and making the lives of trans people miserable. Last year, just to be jerks, the Lege passed a bill aimed at forcing the city of Boise to stop flying the Pride flag outside City Hall, where it has flown for a decade, just a few blocks down the street from the state Capitol.

The 2025 law forbade any flags on public property other than the flags for US America, Idaho, cities and tribes, military services, and a few other official flags of “a governmental entity.” The bill’s Republican sponsor insisted that this wasn’t culture war, heavens no, it was about promoting unity, and America, and “stuff that we can all agree on.”

The Boise City Council promptly turned right around and passed a resolution adopting the Pride flag as one of three official City of Boise flags, and ran the rainbow colors up the flagpole again. Hooray!

Unwilling to accept such rampant disrespect to their edict, Republicans in the Lege this year passed a whole new flag law, this one adding a new rule saying that only official city or county flags “designated prior to 2023” will be allowed. The new law also added a $2000 per day / per flag fine, to show Boise what serious business this flag war is. The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Ted Hill (R), explained the fine was absolutely necessary to force compliance from “insubordinate government officials. […] It sets a tone of anarchy.” He too said that we must have “unity” under the stars and stripes, or else.

Screenshot of rainbow pride flags flying from light posts in the tree-lined median strip of a residential street in Boise. The grassy median and the trees are lush and green. (In more recent years, the trans-inclusive version of the Pride flag has made up about 50 percent of the flags) — Pride flags along Harrison Blvd. in Boise, 2023. Since Trump’s first term, assholes have stolen and even burned multiple flags each year. They’re then replaced by the volunteers who put ‘em up in the first place. Screenshot, KTVB-TV on YouTube.

In an extra little kick at Boise, where light poles on the median of one major residential street have long displayed Pride flags throughout June, the bill specifically applies to land along “parks, roads, and boulevards.” No nice things for you, Boise.

Just to be a real prick about it, Gov. Brad Little signed the bill on March 31, the Trans Day of Visibility. Little also signed another far worse bill criminalizing trans people who use bathrooms or locker rooms that match their gender identity, not only in schools and public buildings, but also in “public accommodations,” like private businesses. First offense is a misdemeanor, with up to a year in prison, and a second offense would be a felony, with up to five years in prison. The Idaho affiliate of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates called it “the most extreme anti-transgender bathroom ban in the nation.”

In response to the two new laws, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean ordered the Pride flag lowered outside City Hall, but also presided over a special session of the City Council to honor the Trans Day of Visibility. Choking back tears, McLean said to the Council and an audience of about 60 Boiseans, “Many people in this state and around this country are seeking to divide us. They’re seeking to divide us by targeting the most vulnerable among us. I want the people in this room to know that I see you. We see you. You are wanted, important, and unique members of our community.”

That night, City Hall was lit in the colors of the transgender flag.

Photo via Boise State Public Radio.

Then, a week after the Pride flag came down, the three flagpoles in front of City Hall sported new vinyl wraps in the colors of the Pride/Progress flag, and a big new banner was visible in the building’s windows, with the rainbow and the slogan, “Creating a city for everyone.” Yr Dok Zoom went downtown to take some photos, and damn right he plugged in his EV at one of the two free EV chargers at City Hall (still hadda feed the meter, though, so that explains the $1.50 on my company card, Rebecca).

You can see the poles up top, and here’s that nice new sign:

Photo by Doktor Zoom

Boise merchants downtown are also reminding us of that other heretical idea that got a local teacher forced out of her job last year, the divisive phrase “Everyone is welcome here.”

Lightpole banner reading 'Everyone is welcome here,' with colorful abstract blobs, musical notes, and two dancing human figures that resemble Keith Haring paintings if his figures were rounded off instead of angular. — Photo by Doktor Zoom

And now at nighttime, City Hall is lit up in rainbow colors as well. Gosh I like my city a lot!

City Council President Meredith Stead told local TV station CBS2 that the city is observing the new state law to the letter, and joyfully at that. “The law was based on the flag and we are using rainbows, and it’s not at all a flag,” Stead explained, and I hope she was grinning. “So I would say we are in full compliance of the law, that’s certainly the most important thing to us. So we’re going to be sure that we always are, and this was just a different way to celebrate our diversity and values.”

The cost of the flagpole wraps and new banners was $5,931.87, from the city’s operating budget. We think that may also have included the printing costs for these spiffy new stickers you can pick up at City Hall; I got a nice big one that looks great in the rear window of my EV:

Heart-shaped sticker with the multi-colored stripes of the Pride/Progress rainbow flag. Text in white letters: '"A city for EVERYONE means EVERYONE" — Boise Mayor Lauren McLean.' Text in black letters on the white stripe: 'City of Boise.' — We like this “everyone” thing the mayor is going on about! Photo: Dok Zoom.

Needless to say, while all the folks you’d like to hang out with in Boise are delighted by the city’s latest reply to the Lege, the Usual Suspects are big mad about this latest besmirch statement by the city, and we can only imagine what sort of stupid crap law the Idaho Lege will pass next year in another futile attempt to control the wayward capital city. We’ll close with this line from the very timely second season of Andor, which Dallas ally, former Obama official, and teamonger Brandon Friedman says nicely sums up Boise’s Rainbow Battle: “Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle.”

Keep up the good fight, Boise. (snip)

CDC Mulls Plan To Classify COVID Vaccine “Injuries”

*** Personal Note. By Monday things here should be back to normal. Ron will be in Texas driving his sister home. I will have had the weekend to rest. Ron is on his last full day of doing no exertion not even house work. They went into a major artery in his wrist. He had a wrist board to keep the wrist from flexing for 24 hours, shower lightly but leave the large bandaid on. Change the bandaid after showering for 72 hours. Call 911 if it starts to bleed. On Saturday morning he is off restrictions and flies to Texas. Then he and his sister will drive to Florida. She will stay with us for a few days as her house here is emptied and then she will settle her stuff and go to New Hampshire. She is flying up there. Hugs ****

CDC Mulls Plan To Classify COVID Vaccine “Injuries”

Axios reports:

Trump administration health officials are giving serious consideration to a plan that would make injuries from COVID-19 vaccines a formal diagnosis that can be coded in medical records. Increasing documentation of what’s still a loosely defined condition could help lay the groundwork for future lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

The ICD-10 system already covers general vaccine injuries and reactions to some specific vaccines, but it doesn’t have a designation for the COVID shot, whose safety has become a major point of contention within the administration.

The new code could allow providers “to identify, track, and study patients who experience adverse effects specifically related to COVID vaccines,” Mary Stanfill, a CDC health information specialist, said during a public meeting on code proposals last week.

Read the full article. You will recall that the cult has claimed that COVID vaccines cause the human body to become literally magnetic, and that they cause “turbo cancer,” autism, miscarriages, myocarditis, pericarditis, hearing loss, and taste loss. Oh, and the vaccines also supposedly contain graphene nanobots meant to connect people to the internet for the purpose of mind control.

https://x.com/abettel/status/2037116250225020969?s=20

Olympic Athletes Rapinoe and Bird Slam IOC Trans Ban: “I’m Sickened By It”

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/olympic-athletes-rapinoe-and-bird

“It’s just a total acquiescence to the Trump Administration,” Rapinoe said.

s. baum

Apr 07, 2026

Holly Rowe

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

In the latest episode of their podcast A Touch More, all-star athletes Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird denounced the International Olympic Committee’s new rule requiring sex testing for athletes competing in the women’s category.

The anti-trans policy will subject athletes competing in the women’s division—and only women’s, not men’s—to invasive sex testing to determine whether they have an SRY gene. Why this is where the International Olympic Committee chose to draw the gender line is arguably arbitrary.

No major medical organization endorses this litmus test as a reliable marker of athletic skill or “biological sex.” Even the scientist who discovered the SRY gene has slammed this practice in sports, saying “science does not support” this “overly simplistic” approach. Rather, it’s an arbitrary line in the sand used to cram unscientific ideas about gender and sex into manmade, binary boundaries.

Nonetheless, if a woman tests positive for the gene, she could be forced to compete in the “male” category. This has had dire consequences the last few times it was deployed against women’s athletes. From 1992 to 1999, cisgender women were forced into testing and found out, on the world stage, that they had intersex conditions they never knew about. The spectacle led to ostracization, disqualification, and at least one suicide before such testing was abolished.

“What we’re doing is subjecting everybody, all women and all people who are identifying as women, to this really invasive testing that only to me just says like, oh, so we’re just trying to whittle it down to a certain type of woman,” Rapinoe said.

Rapinoe is one of the most high-profile athletes in the country, a soccer player with three Olympic competitions under her belt and a decorated career in the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT). Bird, meanwhile, is among the most successful athletes in history—the retired WNBA legend spent her 20-season professional career as a point guard for the Seattle Storm, and is a record-breaking Olympian in her own right. The athletic power couple has been engaged since 2020. Together, they’ve long been outspoken advocates for the LGBTQ community.

Rapinoe connected the anti-trans vitriol in sports to the right wing’s broader attacks on queer and trans people, calling the push for sex testing “hateful.”

“They sort of like, lost the battle on gay marriage,” Rapinoe said. “So, it’s just like, we’re going to have this whole campaign for all these years to just hate trans people, which is such a small percentage of the population.”

Countless women, cisgender and transgender alike, have faced harassment and persecution because of the anti-trans athlete witch hunt.

“It’s just a total acquiescence to the Trump Administration,” Rapinoe said. “It’s just horrible, and I’m just sickened by it.”

The IOC rule is part of a broader pattern. In the United States, sports bans have served as a Trojan Horse for more sweeping anti-trans policies. The DOJ’s recent lawsuit over “women’s sports,” for example, also demands that transgender students be banned from bathrooms and locker rooms.

“Can we please stop obsessing over trans people and, I don’t know, maybe focus our time, energy, and resources into real problems women’s sports face?” Bird chimed in. She rejected the idea that sex testing, as the IOC claims, “protects women,” instead calling it a “fear-mongering” political ploy meant to generate support from conservative voters.

“That’s all this is,” Bird said. “If you crack this door open, it gets blown open. You’re now policing women’s bodies across the board.”

Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.

Science And Wonder And Beauty

I remember seeing a headline or a hyperlink somewhere, maybe yesterday or the day before, but I didn’t get to the story. Lucky for me, it’s linked again in an email today, so here it is!

Whale filmed giving birth, with a little help from her friends

Paris (France) (AFP) – Scientists have managed to film a spectacular event rarely witnessed by humans: a sperm whale giving birth while other females worked together to support the mother and her newborn.

A team from Project CETI, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, were in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on July 8, 2023.

A 19-year-old female named Rounder was surrounded by family members and others as she was about to give birth to her second calf.

Over nearly five and a half hours, the scientists documented the group’s behaviour, watching them from the boat, filming them with drones and recording the sounds underneath the waves.

The data they collected, which was published in the journals Scientific Reports and Science on Thursday, represent an exceptional rarity in the history of science.

Out of 93 species of cetaceans — a group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises — only nine have ever been observed giving birth in the wild.

Rarer still was that whales not related to the mother were helping out.

“This is the first evidence of birth assistance in non-primates,” Project CETI team member Shane Gero told the New Scientist.

“It is fascinating to see the intergenerational support from the grandmother to her labouring daughter, and the support from the other, unrelated females.”

Lifting up the newborn

The birth lasted 34 minutes, from their tails emerging from the water to the calf being born.

During labour, other adult females dove under Rounder’s dorsal fin, often on their backs with the heads facing her genital slit.

Immediately after the birth, the pod’s behaviour “rapidly changed” as every member became active, according to the study in Scientific Reports.

All the adults were “squeezing the newborn’s body between theirs, touching it with their heads”, the researchers wrote.

The whales pointed their noses towards the newborn, “pushing it around, under the water, and onto and across their bodies above the surface”.

The remarkable behaviour dates back more than 36 million years and is believed to be due to the unique history of cetaceans.

After their distant ancestors left the water and adapted to life on land, cetaceans are the only mammals that returned to the ocean.

This dive back into the water required some evolutionary tricks to prevent newborns from drowning.

For example, whale calves are born tail-first, rather than head-first like other mammals.

However, while newborn sperm whales become talented swimmers within a few hours, they still sink right after birth.

So other whales have to lift the calf up “to prevent the newborn from sinking while also facilitating its first breaths”, the researchers suggested.

Primates — including humans — are the only other mammals known to help assist each other out during birth.

Excited vocal sounds

The scientists also recorded the whales making many sounds, including significant changes in “vocal style” during key events, the study said.

This included when a group of pilot whales approached the pod after the birth.

The changes in vocalisation suggest that the group was coordinating to support the birth — or protect the newborn, the researchers said.

Sperm whales have one of the longest pregnancies in the animal kingdom, with a gestation period that lasts up to 16 months.

When calves are born they are already four metres (13 feet) long. They will rely on their mother’s milk for at least two years.

As they grow, the young become the centre of their pod’s social unit, with others helping out with babysitting while the mother searches for food.

After the birth was filmed in 2023, the pod was not spotted again for over a year. Then the newborn was spotted with Accra and Aurora — the other young members of the pod — on July 25 last year.

Surviving its first year is a good sign that the sperm whale will reach adulthood, the Project CETI team said.

I am in the waiting room

Hi everyone. I am in the waiting room and they just took Ron into the OR. So we got up at 3:30 am. We showered and packed our stuff. I forgot the sandwiches but I do have my chips and pretzels. Of all the people waiting I am the only one eating. I did not eat at home because Ron couldn’t eat and I felt it would be mean as he couldn’t eat and it would’ve mean. I am not really hungry but I took my medications and I am diabetic so I need something in my stomach.

The good news is his OR nurse is a friend of ours from our ICU days. She is a really great nurse and it is grand Ron had someone he knew. The bad news is the doctor was not sure if stents were the best course of action. Instead of by pass surgery. He will check to see how bad it is and if stents would work as Ron is a diabetic and stents tend to clog in a few years. So once he gets in there he will measure the pressure. Then he will explain to Ron if stents are appropriate or if a bypass operation would be a better option. Pretty scary. Hugs

Sign The Card For Ron & Scottie!

Put whatever you’d like to inscribe with your sig. in a comment. Scottie is with Ron as Ron gets his stents today. Here’s to all the best from all of us, with positive and healing energy to you both!

Trump’s “Endorsement” Of Susan Collins Is Hilarious

You could tell he did not want to do this endorsement. Hugs

Democrats Are FED UP With Party Leaders

This is a great clip on the situation with the democratic party, democratic leadership, and the democratic message. Also the polls on democratic leader ship is in the negative numbers. One reason is the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the minority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer has said his number 1 priority is making sure the left keeps supporting israel. The democratic party leadership has been totally captured by the big money donors, corporations, and large lobbying groups like the Israeli lobby AIPAC. It doesn’t make the people feel they are important to him or the party leaders. Hugs