Politico: ‘Glaring red flag’: Treasury DOGE team discloses bank stock holdings

The Trump administration official overseeing the Treasury Department’s massive financial operations reported owning stock in many of the large banks and companies that do business with the department, according to disclosures obtained by POLITICO.

Tom Krause, who is also the lead official for Treasury’s DOGE team, reported hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in a wide range of financial companies, including those that provide services to the unit Krause oversees.

He and two other Treasury DOGE team members — Todd Newnam and Linda Whitridge— also reported owning shares of Intuit, the parent company of TurboTax, which has lobbied heavily against IRS Direct File, a program targeted for elimination by Elon Musk and DOGE.

&c.

Who cares about a little conflict of interest when you’re working for the Grifter-in-Chief?

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/14/treasury-doge-disclosures-bank-stocks-00347972

Associated Press: 2-year-old girl reunites with her mother in Venezuela after US deportation

A 2-year-old girl arrived Wednesday in Caracas to reunite with her mother after she was separated from her parents when they were deported from the U.S. in what Venezuela denounced as a kidnapping.

Maikelys Espinoza arrived at an airport outside the capital, Caracas, along with more than 220 deported migrants. Footage aired by state television showed Venezuela’s first lady Cilia Flores carrying Maikelys at the airport. Later, Flores was shown handing the girl over to her mother, who had been waiting for her arrival at the presidential palace along with President Nicolás Maduro.

The U.S. government had claimed the family separation last month was justified because the girl’s parents allegedly have ties to the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang, which U.S. President Donald Trump designated a terrorist organization earlier this year.

The girl’s mother was deported to Venezuela on April 25. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities sent her father to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in March under Trump’s invocation of an 18th-century wartime law to deport hundreds of immigrants.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-deportations-trump-maikelys-maduro-migrants-89caaeed43cfb92369626435bfa6483e

The Nation: Don’t Be Fooled by Trump’s Loudmouth Immigration Policy

As a candidate he promised a “massive” crackdown. But since taking office his actions, though designed to be as frightening as possible, have fallen far short of that.

A desperate family, rushing their sick child to a Texas hospital, is forced back into Mexico… And a young Salvadoran, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, becomes one of the best known of millions of migrants, receiving his Maryland senator while remaining imprisoned—uncharged, untried in the US or in his homeland.

The Trump administration has shown it is willing to test both public tolerance and long-established legal principle. It has repeatedly labeled millions of undocumented residents of the United States “terrorists” and “criminals.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and “border czar” Tom Homan use exaggerated threats to create a country where an almost entirely law-abiding population—of construction workers, hotel cleaners, home healthcare workers—can be treated with brutality and summary justice.

Throughout his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised a swift and enormous federal effort to round up and deport millions of people living long-term in America. Signs calling for “Mass Deportation” were held up in cheering crowds at Trump rallies all over the country. Meeting almost no resistance or reply from Democratic candidates for high office, Republicans were able to define the battlefield, equating millions of workers, students, and homemakers scattered across American communities with cartel drug mules, rapists, and members of the notorious MS-13 gang.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-immigration-crackdown

New York Times: As White House Steers Justice Dept., Bondi [Bimbo #3] Embraces Role of TV Messenger

Attorney General Pam Bondi [Bimbo #3] has adopted a conspicuously performative approach, willing to execute White House directives with little fuss.

Pam Bondi [Bimbo #3], the attorney general of the United States, circled the Roosevelt Room in late February, handing out bulky white binders labeled “Epstein Files: Phase 1” to a conclave of Trump-allied influencers summoned to the White House for their first visit.

That Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3], the nation’s top law enforcement official, would prioritize a case of importance primarily to conspiracy theorists was telling. Anxious to appease the restive MAGA base, she hyped the disclosure as “breaking news” on Fox the night before, part of an effort to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to reveal new details on the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s misdeeds and death.

It was a dud. There were “no bombshells,” she said, according to one of those invited.

Later, activists on the right lashed out at Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3]. She responded by blaming others, and then dispatched F.B.I. agents and prosecutors from the Justice Department’s national security division to scour the archives, officials familiar with the situation said. They found little. No one knows when Phase 2 is coming. But it is not likely to amount to much, those people said.

Since taking office as U.S. attorney general in early February, she has adopted a conspicuously performative approach to survive inside a Trump cabinet that rewards self-promotion, ritualized public flattery and, above all, a willingness to execute White House directives with little fuss.

Over the last few days, Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3] signed off on Mr. Trump’s acceptance of a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane upgraded to serve as Air Force One donated by the Qatari royal family, which raised a host of ethical and legal questions. As a lobbyist, Ms. Bondi [Bimbo #3] herself received six-figure consulting fees from Qatar.

But her approach represents a noticeable departure from that of her predecessors at the Justice Department who saw themselves, to varying degrees, as guardians of institutional independence, attentive but not beholden to the presidency.

https://archive.is/fr5Xq#selection-4629.132-4629.368

Raw Story: ‘Wholesale overthrow’: Expert furious as Trump lawyer replaces ‘American hero’ librarian

The Trump administration announced Monday that it was replacing longtime Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden — fired last week for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs — with Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche.

Blanche is currently second-in-command at the Department of Justice, and will also serve as acting Librarian of Congress, according to Politico.

He famously defended Trump in his 2023 “hush money” case in which the then-former president was convicted on 34 felony counts.

A loser of a lawyer taking over the Library of Congress?

https://www.rawstory.com/library-of-congress-2671937161

Alternet: Trump admin resurrects a dissenting argument that already went before the Supreme Court — in 1898

For more than 150 years, people who were born within U.S. territory automatically received citizenship – regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship – stating that children born in the U.S. to parents who are not in the country legally, or who are not permanent residents, cannot receive citizenship – threatens to upend this precedent.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the case on May 14, 2025.

This comes after federal judges in three cases that took place in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington banned Trump’s order from going into effect, determining that the president cannot change or limit the Constitution by executive order.

Birthright citizenship been obvious to anyone with half a brain for a century and a half. King Donald just isn’t that bright.

https://www.alternet.org/birthright-citizen

Alternet: ‘A flagrant violation of the law’: Michigan AG blasts ’embarrassing and disturbing’ Trump admin

Public health and infectious diseases know no borders, Nessel said, warning that the decision to shutter regional health programs, close CDC labs and close all 10 of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services’ regional offices jeopardizes public health in every community.

“Also it’s just a flagrant violation of the law. Disregards the separation of powers, and it places this new burden now, of course, on the states, because there are certain things that you rely upon the federal government to do, especially in terms of coordinating efforts between the states,” Nessel said.

In addition to their case on the mass firings, Nessel and 23 other attorneys general filed suit against Kennedy and the DHHS for terminating almost $11 billion in critical public health grants across the country.

https://www.alternet.org/a-flagrant-violation-of-the-law-michigan-ag-blasts-trump-admin

Boing Boing: Trump walks back problem he created; declares victory

As US ports sit empty, convicted felon #47 Donald “Two Dolls, Five Pencils” Trump announced he has victoriously dropped his disruptive tariffs on China.

“Winning!” ala Charlie Sheen, Donald Trump’s big success with China seems to have massively disrupted the economy for very little change. These stops and starts to the economy are supremely damaging, have already cost jobs and serve a purpose no one beyond Trump and his inner circle of dimbulbs seems to understand.

I suspect that Trump ran out of ass-kissing, glorious leader lapel pins and didn’t want to pay his own 145% tariff to take delivery of more.

Daily Beast: MAGA Stars Turn on Trump for Selling Out to Qatar

MAGA influencers are demanding President Donald Trump turn down a $400 million luxury jet the Qatar royal family is in talks to gift his administration, saying the emirate is “not our friend.”

They’re not concerned about the legality or ethics of a foreign country giving Trump a gift that’s been described as a “palace in the sky,” even though the Constitution expressly prohibits such gifts absent congressional approval.

They’re mostly upset that Qatar—specifically—would be the one donating the luxury Boeing 747-8, which the administration would use as Air Force One for most of Trump’s remaining time in office before transferring it to the Trump presidential library foundation.

“Taking sacks of goodies from people who support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, all the rest—that is not America first,” conservative pundit Ben Shapiro said during the most recent episode of his show. “It just isn’t America first in any conceivable way.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-stars-turn-on-donald-trump-for-selling-out-to-qatar

Independent: Trump puts white South Africans on citizenship fast track while rejecting all other refugees: ‘As subtle as an air raid’

President claims Afrikaners are victims of ‘genocide’ while denying entry to refugees fleeing famine and war

Since taking office, Donald Trump’s administration has virtually shut down refugee admissions and blocked funding for resettlement groups, stranding thousands of people who were granted entry to the United States for humanitarian protections only to have those offers rescinded.

But the president has singled out one specific group of people who will be allowed entry into the United States and appear to be on a fast track to citizenship: white South Africans.

A group of 59 white South Africans admitted to the United States as “refugees” have been “essentially extended citizenship,” Trump said on Monday.

They were greeted by State Department officials on Monday after landing at Washington Dulles International Airport on a taxpayer-funded flight following their fast-tracked refugee vetting process under the administration’s radically reshaped admissions program.

King Donald is welcoming white racists from South Africa as he terminates the refugee status of 530,000 legitimate refugees already in the U.S.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-south-african-citizenship-refugees-b2749548.html