Category: News / Information

This Week:

The Week Ahead

May 10, 2026

Joyce Vance

Here’s what to expect this week:

The Gerrymandering Epidemic Continues

The Supreme Court’s decision in Callais continues to make clear all the reasons we needed, and continue to need, a Voting Rights Act. And it isn’t about protecting white voters. Congress had an entirely different intent when it passed the Act, an intent that DOJ has forgotten to remove mention of from its website:

Section 2 “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the [specified] language minority groups,” according to the website, which hasn’t been updated by this administration, at least not yet. “[T]he Supreme Court explained that the ‘essence of a Section 2 claim is that a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters to elect their preferred representatives.’” Congress clarified that the courts should look to “the history of official voting-related discrimination in the state or political subdivision,” when determining if the law has been violated. In the states hurriedly enacting new maps that eliminate Black voting power, that history involves denying Black people the right to vote. Instead of using Section 2 to fix that, the Court and Southern state legislatures are turning the law on its head and making a mockery of the rights it was meant to protect.

When the Court gutted Section 5 of the act in Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accused the majority of shutting the umbrella that was meant to protect voters in the middle of a rainstorm who weren’t getting wet, because the umbrella was working. The case was decided in 2013, but even before the Supreme Court formally gutted Section 5 of the Act, repressive measures were being adopted in states like Alabama, which adopted a stepped-up voter identification requirement that made it more difficult for parts of the population, including Black voters, to exercise their rights, expecting that the Court would do away with Section 5’s preclearance provision.

A study at the Brennan Center explained the impact: “The racial turnout gap — the difference between white and nonwhite turnout rates in elections — has been consistently growing since at least 2008, reaching 18 percentage points in the 2022 midterm elections. If the gap did not exist, nearly 14 million additional ballots would have come from voters of color that year.” The analysis was based on nearly 1 billion vote records and controlled for factors like regional differences, income, and education.

The kind of behavior the Act was meant to prevent is exactly what’s happening, as Black voting power is diluted with new maps that are being adopted. And the Court seems to have abandoned its allegiance to the Purcell principle, which it has used in the past to prevent changes from being made too close to an election. Some of the new measures adopted by the states are being challenged, or will be challenged in court, and we’ll get a chance to see if the rules are different now that the Court is focused on protecting white voters from discrimination, which was the story behind Callais.

For instance, Tennessee’s extraordinary gerrymander was accompanied by a change to state law, so that election officials no longer have to advise voters about changes to their designated polling places as a result of the newly drawn maps. It’s easy to imagine how this plays out: voters with limited time because of family responsibilities go to what they think is the right polling place. They wait in a long line, maybe for hours, before being told they’re in the wrong location. At every step, the process is being redesigned to insert more friction, in hopes that Democratic-leaning voters will be dissuaded from participating. As Marc Elias noted, “Republicans defended the map by claiming that only population and politics were considered when the new map was created, not race.” But of course, the two are inextricably intertwined in Southern elections, despite the pretense the Court adopted.

To put all of this into context, consider the importance of the right to vote. At bottom, it’s the right that unlocks all of the other rights, the essence of democracy. Efforts by the Trump faction to impede that right—whether it’s by making it more difficult to register, more difficult to vote, or more difficult to have your vote count—is an effort to lock up all of our other rights.

The NAACP filed a lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s new gerrymander late last week. The complaint explains that “The timing of drawing Tennessee’s congressional districts is governed by Tennessee law, including Section 2-16-102 of the Tennessee Code, which provides: ‘The general assembly shall establish the composition of districts for the election of members of the house of representatives in congress after each enumeration and apportionment of representation by the congress of the United States. The districts may not be changed between apportionments.’” The NAACP is asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment that the late-decade redistricting violates the law and to enter an injunction that will prevent the new maps from going into effect.

There are reports that South Carolina is getting ready to join in this week, with a proposal that would gerrymander its only Black member of Congress, Jim Clyburn, into a district that, at least in theory, is designed to make it more difficult for the veteran Congressman to win. But it’s not clear that the South Carolina Senate will extend the legislative session to permit action to be taken. Currently, the state has seven seats in the House and only one Black representative, although the state is roughly 25% African American.

Alito’s Mistake in Callais

Late last week, The Guardian reported that Justice Alito relied on flawed data to justify his majority opinion in Callais. That opinion is predicated on the view that it is no longer necessary to apply the Voting Rights Act as a corrective for historic voter suppression because Black voter turnout has caught up. Of course, that doesn’t square up with the Brennan Center data we discussed up above. But Alito wrote that Black voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections, both nationally and in Louisiana. He relied on data that the Solicitor General of the United States, who was not a party to the case, but who filed an amicus brief, presented to the Court:

The data is flawed because it calculates voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of the total population of each racial group, for people over the age of 18. But that isn’t the same as calculating eligible voters, because total population includes non-citizens, people with felony convictions, and others who are ineligible to vote. For instance, Black people are more likely to have felony convictions in South Carolina than white people are, which skews the data.

Perhaps Justice Alito should have paid more attention to Justice Ginsburg’s explanation about closing the umbrella prematurely. She was right.

Oral Argument in the DC Circuit on Trump Executive Orders

On Thursday, the D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument in the cases regarding Trump’s executive orders that were designed to punish law firms. The terms of the executive orders made it more difficult, if not impossible, for law firms that the president viewed as representing clients or causes he disagreed with to do business. The cases brought by the law firms have been consolidated for the appeal. So far, every court to consider one of the orders has found them to be illegal.

We discussed the executive orders here when they were first issued, and again here, when the administration dismissed the appeals it will argue later this week before abruptly changing course and asking to reinstate them.

Four law firms are involved: Perkins Coie, Jenner and Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey. There is also an executive order against Mark Zaid, a lawyer known for his work representing whistleblowers. He is represented by Abbe Lowell. Lowell has argued in his briefs that the executive orders turn security clearances, necessary for lawyers in this field to do business, into political weapons.

Perkins Coie’s brief to the Court of Appeals opens like this: “One year ago, the President did something no other president had done before: issue an executive order declaring a law firm whose clients and representations he dislikes ‘dishonest and dangerous’ and deploying the levers of federal power to try to put the firm out of business. That was a perilous moment for appellee Perkins, the legal profession, and the rule of law. Nine law firms, cowed by the threat of firm-ending sanctions, ‘settled’ with the President …Four different district judges recognized the President’s executive orders for what they are: shocking abuses of power that trample the constitutional rights of the law firms and their clients. This Court should recognize the same.” Two of the judges on the panel that will hear the case, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Cornelia Pillard, were appointed by President Obama. The third judge, Neomi Rao, is a Trump appointee.

Kash On The Hill

FBI Director Kash Patel will join the administrator of the DEA, the Director of the ATF, and the head of the U.S. Marshal’s Service for budget hearings in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. It’s typical for the four DOJ law enforcement agencies to do this jointly.

Despite the intricacies of the federal budget, the question on everyone’s mind will likely be whether Patel will be passing out bottles of his special Ka$h Patel, FBI Director, Bourbon.

Atlantic reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick, who wrote the original expose on Patel’s erratic behavior in office, had a new story last week. Fitzpatrick wrote, “it is not unusual for him [Patel] to travel with a supply of personalized branded bourbon. The bottles bear the imprint of the Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve, and are engraved with the words ‘Kash Patel FBI Director,’ as well as a rendering of an FBI shield. Surrounding the shield is a band of text featuring Patel’s director title and his favored spelling of his first name: Ka$h. An eagle holds the shield in its talons, along with the number 9, presumably a reference to Patel’s place in the history of FBI directors.”

Finally

The administrative stay in the mifepristone case ends on Monday. That means that unless the Supreme Court issues an order regarding whether the injunction should stay in place while the litigation proceeds, the Fifth Circuit’s ban on obtaining the abortion drug via telehealth goes into effect.

Given that the Court virtually disallowed nationwide injunctions last June in Trump v. Casa, it’s difficult to see the legally consistent path to permitting this one to go into effect. And, in the 2023-2024 term mifepristone case, the Court stayed efforts to restrict the availability of the drug from going into effect during the pendency of the lawsuit (before it dismissed it rather than decided the substantive issues, because it found the plaintiffs lacked standing). The smart money would seem to be on similar treatment here, but this is a Court that has been willing to ignore the past to put abortion out of reach for American women, so we will wait and see.

There’s a busy week ahead of us. But Donald Trump is spending the evening on Truth Social, reposting memes about his popularity.

The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll shows Trump with just a 37% approval rating; 59% of those polled disapproved of his performance. That’s the worst score this poll has given Trump in either of his terms in office.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Clay Jones, Open Windows

HantaPrez

Yes, Donald Trump has experience with a pandemic

Clay Jones

One of the many disqualifiers that should have prevented Donald Trump from becoming president again, and this one’s near the top of the list, is the way he handled the coronavirus pandemic.

When the pandemic hit our nation, Donald Trump should have been a leader. He should’ve been on the front lines in the response to the pandemic. He should have been telling the nation to follow the guidelines, even if they were changing as we learned more about the virus, and he should’ve been following them himself as an example. He should have been active in making sure that every state received the medical supplies it needed to save lives. (snip-MORE)

Animated movie titles and credits

A geeky post even non-animators might find interesting

Ann Telnaes

[Click Through To See Her Video-It’s Cool!]

I just love animated film titles and credits. It’s a great way to grab the audience’s attention and give a glimpse of the movie they’re about to see. In the case of end credits, a clever animated sequence keeps the audience in their seats so proper acknowledgement can be given, not only to the stars but to all of the people who have worked on the film.

Here are some of my favorites:

  1. Of course you can’t talk about animated titles and credits without mentioning the great Saul Bass. Anatomy of a Murder, North by Northwest, Psycho, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Ocean’s Eleven, I could go on and on. The end credits of Around the World in 80 Days is a masterclass in the use of stylized characters, design, color, music, and movement to tell a story (while managing to list the massive cast of the film.)Bass title sequences have obviously inspired other films, such as Netflix’s Feud: Bette and Joan and the television series Mad Men.
  2. There are several Pink Panther movies with animated titles but my favorite is the first created by DePatie–Freleng Enterprises because of its simplicity and the interaction between the character and text/graphics.
  3. Pixar’s Ratatuoille end credits, design lead Teddy Newton.Unlike the 3D computer generated style of the main body of the film, Ratatuoille’s end credits are in 2D. The character and background designs are wonderfully stylized and have the feel of loose sketches one would see in the conceptual stage of an animated feature. The color and music also contribute to this fantastic mini-movie. Love, love, love this.
  4. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids title sequence/ Kroyer FilmsAnother wonderful title sequence in a 2D style.
  5. City Slickers title sequence/ Kurtz & FriendsAnother great use of a character interacting with the text (cowboy and lasso).

The video posted above is the end credits to Democracy Under Siege, the documentary some of you might have viewed last week. While I created the hand drawn gifs, all the credit for this marvelous sequence goes to Antoine Vermeesch of Clin d’oiel films. His selection of sound effects and music melded perfectly with the animation.

FB-lie Detector

Kash Patel is forcing FBI agents to take polygraph tests to find out who told a reporter he has a drinking problem

Clay Jones

Kash Patel, the worst FBI Director in the history of the bureau, has ordered the polygraphing of more than two dozen former and current members of his security detail, as well as other staff, to find leakers among his team, according to two people briefed on the development.

They described Kash as being in panic mode to save his job after negative publicity about his drinking, partying, and other extracurricular activities had come to Donald Trump’s attention.

Kash demanded the polygraph examinations to determine if any members of the team that travels with him or staff who have access to sensitive details about his decisions have communicated with reporters, according to the people, who asked to speak anonymously due to the threat of retribution.

The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into Sarah Fitzpatrick, the reporter who wrote that “excessive drinking” was causing deep concern in the bureau. Patel is suing The Atlantic for $250 million over the story. Because of the story, more informers from within the FBI are contacting Fitzpatrick and the magazine to provide dirt on Patel.

And because of these informers, we have learned that Patel is handing out personalized, branded bottles of bourbon. (snip-MORE)

Appropriate Behavior

Blue language within.

Justin Jones Burning The Confederate Flag In The TN State Capitol. That’s It, That’s The Post.

White racist Tennessee Republicans think they birthed a nation yesterday. Looks like they birthed something else instead.

Evan Hurst

Democratic TN state Rep. Justin Jones burns a Confederate flag in the state Capitol, Thursday, May 8, 2026, video screengrab

Yesterday, the Ku Klux Klan, we mean Tennessee state Legislature, rushed through new maps to eliminate the state’s last remaining Democratic congressional seat in Congress, and racist pigfuck Governor Bill Lee signed them, because that’s what white supremacists do when Donald Trump’s partisan hack Supreme Court says it’s unconstitutional for them not to hurt Black people by gutting the last remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act.

The lawsuits are already being filed, and to be sure, Republicans don’t even understand the war they started yesterday. As we wrote, it’s useful to remember that Republicans always, 100 percent of the time, overplay their hands.

We quoted Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, who until yesterday was running in a primary against long-serving Congressman Steve Cohen to represent what was the Ninth District, in Memphis. We guess how exactly that will end up is undetermined at this exact moment, but Pearson said earlier this week at a rally that “[I]f we keep marching, if we keep pressing, if we keep fighting, the future that our descendants will live into will be a better one than this one. And our message to the Republican Party, our message to that racist, white-supremacist president Donald Trump is that we will fight.”

Pearson, if you remember, is one of the two Black men in the Tennessee Three, back when the grand wizards of the Tennessee Lege first bent over and showed everybody their Klan-hood-shaped buttplugs, expelling the two men from the state House for taking to the House floor to try to defend their constituents against gun violence. Also for being Black men, because they didn’t expel the white woman, Knoxville Rep. Gloria Johnson, for being part of the same protest. (Voters of course sent the two Justins right the fuck back to the Legislature.)

Both Justins were of course present yesterday to witness what white supremacist Tennessee Republicans really think was the Birth of a Nation. And there were many protests in the Tennessee state Capitol yesterday. Justin Jones of Nashville set a Confederate flag on fire, or at least a paper version of it.

And then he stomped that sad loser little bitch of a flag — a flag the greatest losers who ever lived died defending, and their family legacies are less valuable than dried dogshit because of it — right on out.

And what are people saying about that, and about iconic pictures photographers captured of that? “Hang it in the Louvre.”

Oh, it’s gonna be in museums and history books all right.

Rep. Jones, “Brother Jones” as he refers to himself on Instagram, posted videos and images of the already iconic moment.

And he typed:

The South will not rise again, until it’s paid for all its sins of racism and white supremacy.



Today, I left the Capitol Klan Rally, where my white Republican colleagues took off their white hoods and dismantled Black political power in our state. It’s shameful, it’s immoral, and it will go down in the history books alongside the legacy of George Wallace and Bull Connor.



Tennessee has shamefully become the first state to pass a new, racist congressional map following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which dismantled the Voting Rights Act of 1965.



When I walked into the building it was 2026, and when I walked out it was pre-1965. This racial power grab against Black voters is purely rooted in control and elimination of their voices in our democracy. Today’s Jim Crow laws passed in our legislature spit on the graves of our Civil Rights martyrs who bled and died for the right to political power and representation.



They are dragging us backwards in history but we refuse to be moved.



I burned the Confederate flag, because the neo-Confederate caucus that assembled today will be defeated again. Their vision of the South, rooted in plantation politics and racial division will not win. Instead we must use this moment to ignite our rebellion and movement even more towards real justice and multiracial democracy. We must build towards a South that can RISE ANEW.



We will not go back!

“Burn it, young brother,” said Joy-Ann Reid in response. So say we all.

Burn. That. Shit.

The Word Of The Term Is Corruption

I’d run across this article linked somewhere earlier this past week. But, I couldn’t read it or post it, because it was behind a paywall. Well, thanks to Punctuated.Equilibrium over on MPS Friday night, here it is! Well, a goodly snip of it. Give ’em a click to read it all, because they lifted the paywall so that everyone who wants to know can read it.

The everything, everywhere, all at once corruption story.

I’m pleading with you to look at the president’s self-dealing.

1 May 2026 Written by: Isaac Saul

(snip-skipping a bit at the top)

During President Joe Biden’s term, the Department of Justice could say, at least, that it had investigated the president’s son. Republicans in Congress also conducted a yearslong investigation into the Hunter Biden business ties and how they might link back to the president. Here, though, we have nothing; every story I’m about to point to has not produced even a unified statement of concern from, say, a half dozen Republican senators worried about government corruption. 

Remember, Hunter’s story was about drawing a $50,000/month salary while his dad was vice president and then allegedly trying to arrange some business ventures he might cut Joe Biden in on once he was out of office. Republicans’ yearslong investigation never turned up any hard evidence of the latter, though there was enough smoke I still think the story was plausible.

Today, we’re talking about the president’s children launching multi-billion dollar business ventures — several of them — while the president is in office, and then explicitly exchanging all manner of domestic policy victories, foreign policy concessions, and literal pardons in the construction of those deals. Trump himself has all but admitted this is happening. He told The New York Times that “nobody cared” when he tried to separate his family business from his administration during his first term, so he isn’t even trying now.

I have tracked these stories with one of my senior editors for the last year and a half. The list of things that have happened is so long and shocking when you see it all together that I’m not entirely sure how to present it. I’ve gone back and forth; maybe I should build a flow chart? What about a spreadsheet? Should this be a YouTube video, instead of a written piece? Will anyone actually read the entire thing? Can anyone actually process this level of self-dealing, corruption, and shadiness at once? 

Ultimately, I decided that the best I can do is try to write all these instances down in an engaging way that might grab your attention and wake us all up from whatever stupor we’re in. So… here goes.

Let’s start with the cryptocurrency.

Perhaps the largest vehicle for Trump’s self-dealing has been his foray into cryptocurrency. This is a complicated space that I will try to make as straightforward and simple as possible.

In 2024, the Trump family launched a crypto company called World Liberty Financial. Trump is listed as a “co-founder emeritus.” By December of 2025, they had profited roughly $1 billion from proceeds while holding $3 billion in unsold cryptocurrency tokens, amassing a fortune larger than their entire real estate portfolio. At the same time the president was pushing his family’s new crypto venture, he was cutting crypto regulation, touting the potential of private digital currencies to help the U.S. economy, and promising to unleash the industry he and his family were simultaneously profiting from.

But the president wasn’t only directly making money in an industry he was deregulating; the Trumps benefitted through intermediaries, too. Last summer, World Liberty Financial bought a publicly listed firm and raised $750 million from investors to buy its own cryptocurrency, WLFI. The Wall Street Journal tepidly described this setup as an “unusually circular transaction with the same party as buyer and seller” that could net the Trump family an additional $500 million. 

Essentially, the Trump family launched a cryptocurrency firm while deregulating the crypto industry, then bought a separate firm that it used to buy its own cryptocurrency while also raising three quarters of a billion dollars from investors to buy that same cryptocurrency. 

Just days before he was inaugurated, Trump also launched a personal “memecoin” called $TRUMP. Memecoins are cryptocurrencies made about internet jokes, pop culture moments, or viral trends. They have no underlying value or technological purpose; the value of the coin is driven entirely by social hype. Trump created hype for his memecoin by launching it months after being elected and just three days before being inaugurated. He promoted $TRUMP on social media and, while president, even held a dinner for the top 220 holders of the coin at one of his golf resorts in Virginia. He held another one at Mar-a-Lago this past weekend. The initial coin offering released 200 million tokens of its billion-token supply to the public on the first day. The price skyrocketed 300% overnight and hit an all-time high of $74.27 on January 19, right before Trump’s inauguration. $TRUMP has since cratered, losing 97% of its value (for context, if you had bought $1,000 at its peak, your $1,000 would now be worth about $30). 

Trump, naturally, profited. The exact figures are hard to pin, but The Financial Times estimated that the scheme netted him personally about $350 million, while Trump’s holdings of the coin through a separate partnership could be worth billions more. It wasn’t just the president, either; First Lady Melania Trump launched her own memecoin, which also skyrocketed in value before a massive sell-off that she profited from (what people in the industry call a “rug pull”). Most of the people who bought and held the coin based on the hype the Trumps created ended up losing most of their money, but the coin’s creators got rich (or, in this case, richer).

This cryptocurrency foray hasn’t just been a vehicle for self-enrichment, but also a vehicle for quid pro quos. Perhaps the most obvious and overt involved Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire who was being investigated by the SEC for fraud. Sun, in the midst of his investigation, bought $75 million of WLFI — the World Liberty Financial coin — and then became an adviser at the company. Shortly after that investment, the SEC backed off its investigation and settled with him for $10 million, a small fraction of the expected penalties he was set to pay (on top of potential prison time). Of course, it’s possible that the SEC, an organization now openly being influenced by the president, just happened to back off its investigation in the weeks following Sun’s $75 million investment into Trump’s crypto firm. 

It’s also possible that the two events are related.

The crypto story, though, hardly ended there. In late April, CBS reported that Sun was suing the Trump administration’s World Liberty Financial, alleging fraud. That’s right: Sun, whose initial case has since concluded, has now turned around and sued the Trump family, alleging that the president and his sons are illegally blocking him from selling his digital tokens that are worth as much as $1 billion. Sun also claims that World Liberty Financial tried to pressure him into investing in its stable coin, and that the company froze his tokens after he refused to commit more money to the business. 

It’s hard to identify the villain.

Sun’s apparent quid pro quo to get out from under government oversight is just one example. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, was pardoned by President Trump shortly after Zhao helped boost WLFI’s prominence by allowing the currency to be traded on the crypto exchange Binance, which Zhao started. After the pardon, Zhao became one of the Trumps’ business partners, boosting the family’s crypto empire while skating serious charges that he allowed money to flow to terrorists, cyber criminals, and child abusers on his platform.

If that’s not enough, more shocking news broke this week. According to The Wall Street Journal, World Liberty Financial inadvertently partnered with two men the U.S. government had sanctioned a month before for helping run a transnational criminal syndicate that had stolen billions of dollars from Americans through online scams. To repeat: Last fall, the Trump administration announced criminal charges against a transnational criminal syndicate for stealing billions of dollars from Americans in online scams. A month later, two of the men it sanctioned partnered with the Trump family’s crypto company. 

The evidence of crypto investments from foreign nationals operating as de facto bribes doesn’t end there. Consider the story of Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) president and one of the most powerful politicians in the Middle East (he’s served as the UAE’s national security advisor since 2016). He stewards an empire of wealth worth roughly $1.5 trillion, and a firm closely tied to him secretly signed a deal for a 49% stake in WLFI worth $500 million — including $187 million paid upfront to Trump family entities just days before Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after Trump took office, the administration undid a national security block that would have prevented the UAE from getting up to 500,000 advanced Nvidia AI chips. 

Some right-wing writers, like National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, have been brave enough to take this story head-on — but many have ignored it.

Sometimes, the favors happen en masse. The crypto industry as a whole was a top donor to Trump’s 2025 inauguration fund, and the SEC then dropped or paused over a dozen cases against crypto firms, or simply handed them huge access to government-directed crypto entities. Several of those cases, like Sun’s, were tied directly to donations. Coinbase donated $1 million; its lawsuit was dropped. Ripple ($4.9 million) and Solana ($1 million) had their tokens added to the national Digital Asset Stockpile.

I want to pause here to remind people that we spent all four years of the Biden administration talking about Hunter Biden’s alleged $50,000 a month salary while working at an energy firm in Ukraine, and the possibility that he was setting up some business deals for his father after he left the vice presidency. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced articles of impeachment alleging Biden “abused the power of the Office of the Vice President, enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, by allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits—including financial compensation—from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.” 

Conversely, the final tally of investments from parties with conflicts of interest into crypto assets personally managed by the Trump family safely enters the range of billions of dollars — a scale of thousands of millions, in just one sector and in just over one year, while the president was actually in office.

It’s not just cryptocurrency.

(snip-MORE. It reads just as quickly on the page)

Mehdi CHALLENGES Graham Platner on His Tattoo and More

In this interview Graham Platner responds to his detractors accusations against him.  He discusses the tattoo and the Jewish times report that says he had talked about it while working at a bar during the time frame he was not working there.  So there is not any credible evidence that he knew what the tattoo was.  As he said why would he have danced with it in full display to his extended Jewish family?   He makes sense.  He understands that people may not like him because he is not polished as a politician.  He also says he stumbles verbally and struggles to correct and improve himself.    It was a hard hitting interview and Platner came off as very reasonable.  Hugs

Now, in this must-watch interview, Mehdi Hasan speaks to Platner not just about his vision for a progressive “political revolution” in Washington DC but also about some of his controversies, including his social media and his tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol.

Clay Jones, Open Windows

So much winning

Trump keeps claiming he’s won the war

Ann Telnaes

And Don’t Call Me, Shirley

Surely Donald Trump should not be allowed around children

Clay Jones

Anytime Donald Trump is accused of being a pedophile, his base runs to the rescue as if they were personally slapped in the face. Currently, there are over 80 comments on this cartoon on my Facebook page, with the bulk of them being MAGAts demanding “verifiable” evidence that Trump is a pedophile. Of course, the same people who are demanding “verifiable” evidence are posting memes with fake quotes about Joe Biden and his daughter.

But how is this for verifiable evidence? Donald Trump went on the Howard Stern show in 2005 and bragged about walking into dressing rooms for teenage contestants in his beauty pageants. He bragged about it as if he had just won Michigan.

Here’s a small portion of that conversation: (snip-MORE; go read it!)

Now Here’s An Idea-

“This person is already thinking bigger, writing, ‘If this succeeds the people can band together to buy even more companies that get intentionally bankrupt by private equity and we can start bringing back consumer friendly practices or seizing the means of production maybe.’”

Man crowdsourcing to purchase shuttered Spirit Airlines exceeds $437 million in days

“Get in losers, we’re going to buy an airline.”

By Jacalyn Wetzel

“Get in losers, we’re going to buy an airline” is the short bio next to the smiling face of Hunter Peterson, an aviation enthusiast making waves as he tries to disrupt the air travel industry. On Saturday, May 2, at 3 a.m., Spirit Airlines abruptly shuttered, leaving thousands of employees out of work and thousands of travelers holding unusable tickets.

There was no notice or warning. One day, people were booking tickets, and the next, the budget airline went dark. The airline made air travel affordable to a subset of people who otherwise couldn’t afford it.

spirit airlines, man buys spirit, hunter peterson, buying airline, spirit airline shut down
Spirit airplane.
Canva

The FAA and other airlines scrambled to offer solutions for those booked with the budget airline. While Spirit is offering refunds, the loss of a budget airline giant will be felt. Peterson decided to go further by doing something unheard of in the airline industry–crowdsource to buy an airline.

The idea behind crowdsourcing funds is to make the airline people-owned. This means there would be no corporation backing the airline. No overpaid CEO, and no large shareholder who gets to decide the fate of the company. Peterson calls it Spirit 2.0, and much to his surprise, an astonishingly large number of people were interested.

What started as a zany idea quickly turned into an unexpected movement. Peterson set up a website where interested people could pledge money starting at $45–the average price of a Spirit ticket. The potential CEO wanted to keep the price point within reach. None of the money has left anyone’s accounts. Their pledge acts as a placeholder for future funds, but the clock is ticking.

It may sound like an elaborate joke or scheme to go viral, but Peterson is doing the work. Not only has he met with the Spirit Flight Attendants’ Union, but he’s also spoken with attorneys. In videos shared on Instagram, he explains the importance of doing the legal footwork before money leaves people’s accounts.

“I just got off two calls,” Peterson says. “One, with one of the largest law firms in the world that specializes in mergers and acquisitions, aviation distress assets, and debt, and they basically said, this is doable. We can do this. I also got off a call with someone that represents high-net-worth individuals who may be interested in basically giving us some money to just burn to figure out the legalities of this.”

Peterson explains that in less than a week, they’ll be auctioning the operation certificate for Spirit. This means that if this lofty goal is going to be reached, potential small-donor investors need to reach the astronomical $1.75 billion total. Yes, billion.

Before giving the brief update, Peterson’s site letsbuyspiritair.com had already raised over $24 million. The total continues to climb rapidly, with people pledging amounts anywhere from $45 to $850. Since the website popped up, the total pledged has reached $437 million, and it’s restoring hope in people trying to make this proposed people-owned airline a reality.

“ITS ACTUALLY HAPPENING WE CAN DO THIS,” one person screams.

“Is this feeling I have…. hope? It’s been so long since I’ve felt it lol,” another says.

This person is already thinking bigger, writing, “If this succeeds the people can band together to buy even more companies that get intentionally bankrupt by private equity and we can start bringing back consumer friendly practices or seizing the means of production maybe.”

Someone else shares, “This Spirit Airlines 2.0 project is giving me hope for America. I know there are more important fish to fry when it comes to issues in America. But if we are successful with this, imagine all the other issues we can address (e.g. healthcare, reparations, homelessness, etc.) using this framework. Like truly power to the people.”

Two From Clay Jones

A Spirited Press Briefing

Is Donald Trump the Spirit of presidencies or is Spirit the Trump of airlines?

Clay Jones

When Spirit Airlines shut down on Saturday, it left thousands of customers and employees stranded. Customers finding themselves without a flight couldn’t even complain at the ticket counter, as there were no employees there. So basically, the quality of Spirit’s customer service didn’t change because of the bankruptcy.

Spirit, a budget airline whose business model forced other airlines to change the way they did business, had a reputation as the worst airline. If you ever purchased a flight on Spirit and told a friend, their reply was probably, “I’m so sorry.”

I did fly on Spirit once from Washington to Atlanta, which, fortunately, is a very short flight. But yeah, it was cheap. The seats don’t recline, and they feel very cheap, as though they might break underneath you.

Spirit had been in financial trouble since at least the pandemic, and there are several reasons why it went out of business so suddenly. Many blame a court that would not allow them to merge with JetBlue, but Spirit itself cites the “megaspike” in fuel prices caused by Donald Trump’s chosen war with Iran. There was also an attempt by the government to bail Spirit out, but since Donald Trump is not the best negotiator in the world, those talks collapsed. Maybe Trump should have brought in his negotiating dream team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. (snip-MORE)

Expensive Balls

Mexico still has not paid for Donald Trump’s border wall

Clay Jones

For months, anytime Donald Trump’s planned ballroom, which he destroyed the East Wing, was criticized, a MAGAt would come along and point out that it was only being paid for by donors and Donald Trump himself. Now that we know that is no longer true, where are those guys?

Of course, it’s not new that what Trump was telling us was a lie. We always knew it was a lie. Remember the lie that Mexico was going to pay for the border wall? Trump began his 2016 campaign on that lie, along with telling us that Mexico was sending us rapists and murderers.

When a promise by Donald Trump falls apart, and it is undisputed that it is a lie, we’re supposed to forget about it. We’re supposed to forget that Donald Trump promised that he would be “too busy” to play golf if he won the presidency. We are supposed to forget that he would eventually release his taxes. We are supposed to forget that he was going to give us a brand new healthcare plan in two weeks, way back in 2016. We are supposed to forget that Donald Trump was going to lower the price of gasoline. We are supposed to forget that promise about no new wars. We are supposed to forget that Donald Trump was going to make housing more affordable. We are supposed to forget that Donald Trump was going to drain the swamp. We are supposed to forget that Donald Trump was going to lower the price of groceries. We are supposed to forget that he was going to release the Epstein files. We are supposed to forget that he was going to end the Russia/Ukraine war in his first 24 hours back in office. And we are supposed to forget that Mexico was going to pay for his racist border wall. (snip-MORE)

From “The White Pages”

I have appointments throughout today, so I’ve set up a few things to read. This one is interesting in that it ties several things together to show us how not only our government but our companies are selling us into thinking we might actually get some fair treatment. It piqued my interest because of the strike last week; it seems “brands” are trying to work against being seen as part of those needing to understand what we the people don’t like how things are and that we expect change. Resist-

Endless shrimp is a force that gives us meaning

The brands heard that you were lonely and would like to propose a solution

Garrett Bucks

Red Lobster wants your attention. You can tell, because their current ads deploy not one but two separate announcers. There’s the expository guy. He’s a little pushy but at least he sticks to the facts. And then there’s the loud guy. He’s got a deep voice. He sounds like he’s broadcasting live from the submerged city of Atlantis. He says it with feeling, and also reverb.

“Because you’ve been asking… a lot… and we made it happen.”

So claims the not-from-Atlantis announcer. But what’s he talking about? We have been asking for many things. To be able to afford homes, for example, or not to have war crimes committed in our names, or to have our planet still exist twenty years from now.

Oh, this is about shrimp. Endless shrimp. It’s back, or so I’m told, in multiple forms. Every time the less pushy guy shares one of the currently available shrimp offerings, his partner pipes up with a complementary point straight from the bottom of the sea.

“Walt’s favorite shrimp.”

“ ENDLESS!”

“Garlic shrimp scampi”

“ENDLESS”

“Shrimp linguini alfredo”

“ENDLESS?”

“And all new marry me shrimp”

“ALL ENDLESS!”

The duo isn’t wrong. Endless shrimp is back. While the previous iteration didn’t technically bankrupt the chain (the real culprit was private equity and real estate chicanery) it was, by all accounts, an absolute mess. American consumers, who rightfully identified that they were getting ripped off in every facet of their lives, leapt at the opportunity to get one over at least one big business.

Back when Endless Shrimp was a permanent feature, shrimp hoarders would occupy tables for hours at a time, not leaving until they beat the house. The real victim of this behavior was, of course, the chain’s underpaid servers (if you walk into a restaurant with “me against these suckers” mindset, you’re less likely to view your waiter as a fellow victim of capitalism and you’re definitely not going to tip well). For the C-Suite, though, the larger concern wasn’t the dignity of their employees. It was a jumbo-sized hole in their bottom line.

It’s like The Boss once sang. Endless shrimp dies baby, that’s a fact. But maybe the endless shrimp that dies, some days comes back. Put your make-up on, do your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight at the only Red Lobster still open in your city.

I’m not all that interested in the relative success or failure of chain restaurant promotions, but I do care about the various ways corporations try to win our affection (meaningful cultural signifiers, or so I’d argue). And contra the two announcer voices, the most interesting thing about Red Lobster’s promotion isn’t the shellfish, either of the Walt’s Favorite or Marry Me varieties. It’s what’s whispered rather than shouted.

You see, the biggest difference between the current iteration of Endless Shrimp and its unprofitable predecessor is that now Red Lobster wants you to know that you (the shrimp-loving consumer) and they (the company) are in this together.

If you want the full story, I highly recommend this piece by Luke Winkie in Slate, but here’s the truncated version. There are varieties of shrimp on the Red Lobster menu that aren’t officially part of the promotion. They’re on the menu, but excluded from the benevolent blanket of endlessness. But if a customer were to ask for unlimited quantities of a non-official item (for example, Crispy Dragon Shrimp, a food item that I’m assured contains no actual dragon), the server is to welcome them into a cool secret. Their official, handbook-mandated line? “These items aren’t on the menu for this promotion, but I would be happy to make an exception for you.”

It’s like they say, “the exception is the rule.” Except literally, and by mandate. Servers are required by corporate policy to act like you and they are cheating the system, in hopes that when you remember the night you rode the dragon (shrimp), you remember it not as a conspiracy-of-one, but a sneaky secret between you and your best friend (Red Lobster restaurants, a subsidiary of the Thai Union Seafood Company).

This is not a new psychological trick. It’s a classic low stakes confidence game. The most effective way to a mark is to convince them that they are, in fact, in on the con themselves. It’s the same move that car salesmen use when they leave the room to “talk to their manager” before returning with a report that “he didn’t want me to give you this deal, but…”

It’s still striking, though, to see the strategy laid out in grandiose internal strategy documents. A beleaguered but iconic American brand name, flailing for its survival, hedges its survival on two bets. First, that you are tired, angry and aware that you’re on the wrong side of a rigged game (correct). And second, that, by offering you a facsimile of camaraderie and a very real pile of seafood, that they can win your loyalty (huh).

“[This is] about more than just shrimp,” the document proclaims. An absolute work of art, that sentence.

“[It’s] about creating an experience that says, ‘We listen to you.”

“When guests see Endless Shrimp back on the menu, they feel heard and valued.”

I have never addressed a sit-down chain’s internal strategy document, but I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say, tears in my eyes: Red Lobster, thank you. THIS is what democracy looks like.

As Eli Zeger argued in his 2020 essay about companies that talk like snarky teens on social media, this particular iteration of the “brand as friend” canard is the product of the marriage of late stage capitalism (and its reliance on the selling of “ideas” rather than goods and services) and the post-Citizen United codification of corporate personhood. Red Lobster isn’t a restaruant anymore. It’s your rule-breaking, shrimp loving, newly empathetic pal. It sees you. In fact, it is the only one who see you. It gets that you’re broke, but more so that you’re alone. It’s no longer offering you cheap shrimp (the price tag for the promotion has risen markedly since its last iteration). It’s promising you something more important– belonging, connection, a port in the storm of alienation and precarity we’re all weathering.

Red Lobster’s friendship?

“Endless”

Or that’s the idea at least. Apparently, the promotion hasn’t been as lucrative as the company had hoped, at least so far. It’s not 2016 anymore. We’re seeking something more these days. Bread and roses? Perhaps, but definitely not just shrimp.

But Red Lobster isn’t alone, in surveying a landscape of mass alienation (economic, relational, spiritual) and seeing a business opportunity. Advertising agencies are publishing unironic blogs chillingly titled “the loneliness crisis: how brands can step up?” Silicon Valley’s greatest minds heard that you wanted community and responded with sycophantic AI chatbots. Apparently, our tech overlords’ understanding of human relationships is a robot who agrees with you all the time, including when you muse about harming yourself. Even the outright scammers get it. Gone are the days of far flung princes offering you a financial windfall. As you may have experienced personally, the hot new con is… pretending to be an acquaintance and inviting you to a party.

This is a step beyond the classic commodification funnel, as documented in nineties leftist classics like No Logo and The Conquest of Cool. The brands are no longer promising a great deal, or even hipness. What’s on offer now is the dream of a welcoming community, one deep enough to solve for the isolation that the companies themselves helped create.

That’s very depressing, of course, both the reminder that our economy has always been built on the exploitation of vulnerability, and the reality that there’s just so much more vulnerability to be exploited at this particular moment.

But there’s another truth, not a counterpoint, but a complement. How fortunate, for those of us who actually want to connect with other human beings, rather than just make a quick buck off of them. We already have what every corporation in the world wishes they had– the fact that, when we offer a space by our side, to either a stranger or a friend, we actually mean it. We’re not trying to trick you into springing for a Main Deck Margarita Flight to go along with your shrimp. We’re not trying to mine your data or add you to a marketing funnel or load you up with debt and junk. We just think this world would be more navigable together rather than apart.

And as an organizing opportunity? From union drives to neighbor-to-neighbor activism to the precious few political campaigns that care more about building community than personal brand building? My goodness. Why do you keep hearing about neighborism these days, and not just from true believers like me? Because more people are admitting every day how hungry they are for connection, and then taking the risk of making an offering.

The terrible news right now is that the hucksters are going to keep selling us a flim flam simulacra of belonging. Yes, the consultants, but also (I fear) the politicians. I strongly suspect the 2028 Democratic primary to feature a million text messages about “neighbors” and “community” penned by a well-heeled K-Street consultants. But the good news is that we aren’t that dumb. We know the brands aren’t our friends. We’ve lived through the great social media con together. We know what the lie looks like, and now we’d much prefer the deeply imperfect, thoroughly messy alternative.

They’ll offer us endless shrimp. And we’ll say no thank you. We’d prefer each other, please. Even if that’s not on the secret menu. (snip-end notes, the Boss, and general other stuff on the page)

Precious Brady-Davis is no stranger to being a first. Could she take that to Congress?

She’s the only Black trans person currently in public office in the country, and her political profile is growing.

This story was originally reported by Kate Sosin of The 19th. Meet Kate and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Could she be the first Black trans person in Congress?

Every step Precious Brady-Davis has taken has been a first. 

She was the first transgender bride on the TV show “Say Yes to the Dress.” She and her husband are the first transgender parents in Illinois history to be listed as their accurate genders on their children’s birth certificates.

 “This idea of, ‘I won’t be erased,’ that’s something that brewed in my childhood,” she said. “I think that’s where the fight comes from. … I don’t want to fail, and I haven’t failed yet. I think that’s the scary part. I’ve never, ever had a floor beneath me.” 

Brady-Davis is currently the only Black trans person holding public office in the United States, serving on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. She previously shared that title with Minneapolis City Councilor Andrea Jenkins, who retired in January.

And while water reclamation commissioner, a job that involves juggling budgets and managing wastewater and stormwater for Cook County, might not sound like a big title, those in the know are eyeing Brady-Davis carefully. She recently toured Washington, D.C., with Rep. Sarah McBride, who made history herself as the first trans person elected to Congress. 

Brady-Davis doesn’t rule out the possibility of a congressional run. But she’s coy about her ambitions, talking around a bid for national office. 

“For now, my focus is on being effective at the local level — but I’ve thought about how that work could expand to have a broader impact on issues like the environment, LGBTQ rights, and education,” she said. 

“I absolutely think she could be a congressperson,” said Tracy Baim, co-founder of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ newspaper Windy City Times, who has watched Davis’ rise. “There’s no doubt in my mind she has the qualifications.”

Precious Brady-Davis sits at a desk with her hands raised as she speaks. A sign behind her reads, “We are not going back.”
Precious Brady-Davis speaks during an interview in her office. (Erin Hooley/AP)

Early life

Brady-Davis largely grew up with her grandparents but eventually wound up in foster care, where she was confronted with a version of Christianity that saw homosexuality as sinful. 

In her memoir, “I Have Always Been Me,” Brady-Davis recalls going to a Pentecostal youth retreat and having a pastor call her out specifically: “I bind the foul spirit of homosexuality out of you,” she recalled him saying. “You are not a woman. You are a man.”

The preacher and others in the group lunged toward her; Brady-Davis later awoke prostrate on a kitchen floor, traumatized from the experience.

While she worked to conform for a while, as she learned about the world and herself, she gradually rejected those ideas. In college, she began performing in drag, first in her home state of Nebraska and then in Chicago. 

At this time, two transitions were taking place. Brady-Davis was starting to live full-time as a woman. And her professional career was starting. 

She took a job doing HIV prevention work among youth of color at Chicago’s Center on Halsted, the LGBTQ+ community center in the heart of Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood, amid tension over violence at the 2011 Pride parade and the subsequent crackdown on crime. 

Glass-fronted building with a sign reading “Center on Halsted” at street level.
Center on Halsted, an LGBTQ+ community center in Chicago’s Northalsted neighborhood, where Precious Brady-Davis worked in HIV prevention among youth of color early in her career.
(Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th)

The job would prove difficult to impossible. While residents were angry with the Center, youth advocates claimed that the Center over-policed young people, calling law enforcement on homeless kids looking for safe places to sleep. Brady-Davis was forced to defend an institution that was being attacked from all sides. It would be her first political test.

“I advocated for those young people the best I could,” she said. “It was just cruel. … When I think that something is wrong, I’m going to speak up about it.”

Baim said she watched Brady-Davis  turn every challenge into an advance.

“Precious has managed to navigate so many of the land mines that others have not survived, and came from a very, very grassroots approach to the work, and has really reimagined herself for each iteration,” Baim said.

Brady-Davis would do a stint with About Face Theatre, the LGBTQ+ youth theatre troupe in Chicago, and then join the Sierra Club, where she eventually became northeast communications director and battled President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency during his first term. 

It was work that made sense for her, she said. 

“How can I say that my work is invested in diversity, equity and inclusion when I’m not working in all kinds of diversity?” she asked. “Environmental justice felt like another kind of diversity.” 

A family legacy

During Brady-Davis’ stint at Center on Halsted, a young man came literally knocking at her door without an appointment. The man, Myles Brady, was bald and eager to chat. He wanted to get involved in programs with youths. He shared that he was transgender, too. The fact surprised Brady-Davis. But he was so talkative that Brady-Davis didn’t know what to make of him.

“Like it was weird to me, and I was very protective of the young people at the Center,” said Brady-Davis. She decided to never follow up with him again. 

Brady was persistent. He kept appearing at events. One night he asked Brady-Davis to dinner. She reluctantly agreed.

“I was like, at least I’ll get dinner out of it, right?” she said laughing. “I was like, I’ll go on this date, and I’ll never have to see him again.”

But a few months later Brady-Davis was headed to the Philadelphia Health Conference. She got an email from Brady. “I can’t wait to see you in Philly,” it said.

 The message struck her as cute. Later that night while she was out to dinner with trans friends Brady walked in and sat down. Brady-Davis didn’t know it, but he had been invited by others at the table. She was being set up. Brady told Brady-Davis she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and that he wanted to build a life with her and take care of her.

“I saw him so differently that night,” she said. “It was the first time that I truly saw him.”

The two left the conference together and have been together ever since.  They were married in 2016, and Brady-Davis appeared on TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress,” the first transgender bride to be featured on the show. 

“Myles and I have shown that two trans people can love each other and that we are worthy of love,” Brady-Davis told Buzzfeed News at the time. 

Precious Brady-Davis and Myles Brady-Davis sit on the back of a convertible and wave to a crowd at the Chicago Pride Parade. Pride flags are visible throughout the crowd behind them.
Precious Brady-Davis and her husband, Myles Brady-Davis, wave to the crowd during the Chicago Pride Parade. The couple were the first transgender parents in Illinois history to be listed as their accurate genders on their children’s birth certificates. (Chicago Pride)

They had two daughters, Zayn and Zyon. 

The birth of their first daughter, Zayn, provided another opportunity for advocacy. Brady, who was carrying the child, learned in 2019 that the state of Illinois would list him as a “mother” on the birth certificate and Brady-Davis as “father.” The two teamed up with Lambda Legal and petitioned the state, successfully changing the policy. Brady would be recognized as Zayn’s father, and Brady-Davis was listed as her mother.

“I always say it brings me the most joy to take my kids to school in the morning,” said Brady-Davis. “It’s one of the most normal things that I get to do as a human being. And it’s not about me being trans at all. It’s about me being a mom. …I’m proud of the ways in which I’m parenting my girls to be a part of a world that I hope is more inclusive, diverse.”

Into politics

Sierra Club positioned her well for her next big move, into electoral politics. In 2022, she vied for a spot as a commissioner on the Water Reclamation District. Though she fell short in the primary, the next year Gov. JB Pritzker appointed her to finish the term of the candidate who had beaten her, who had since joined the state legislature. 

“Precious Brady-Davis distinguished herself as a trailblazer even before her historic appointment to public office in Cook County,” Pritzker said of Brady Davis in a statement to The 19th. “Throughout her political and nonprofit career, Precious consistently stepped up as the first — first to speak up for the LGBTQ+ community, first to share the story of her path to activism and public office, and first to encourage others to claim their seats at the table.” 

Precious Brady-Davis stands at a podium with the seal of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, speaking into a microphone during a public meeting.
Precious Brady-Davis speaks at a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago board meeting. After being appointed to the board in 2023, Brady-Davis won her primary this year by large margins. (Courtesy of Precious Brady-Davis)

When time came for her reelection bid this year, Brady-Davis won her primary by large margins.

But whether she finishes her six-year term remains to be seen. Apart from her time in D.C. with McBride, she  has been chatting up major political donors. McBride says she would not be surprised to see Brady-Davis serving alongside her in Congress. 

“I think the sky is the limit for her, and she is someone who I respect deeply,” McBride said. “It was personally meaningful to walk these halls with a trailblazer whose story is only just beginning.”