Wednesday, June 17, 2026. Chump fizzles at the G7, he still won't release the memo passed off as a deal, Markwayne Mullin 'forgot' about disclosure, JD Vance has a book to pimp, staffers with the House Oversight Committee went to Bryan, Texas to check up on Maxwell, and much more.
The G7 took place. Chump attended. Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) reports how sad and humiliating it was for Chump.
Rob Gillies (AP) notes, "Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will leave the G7 summit on
Wednesday without a formal meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump as
the free trade agreement between their countries faces an uncertain future. Canadian
leaders typically get a bilateral meeting with American presidents at
summits of the world’s leading industrialized democracies, but Carney
dismissed any notion of a snub." Tom Nichols (THE ATLANTIC) adds:
Donald
Trump arrived in France yesterday for this morning’s G7 summit and
promptly confirmed America’s capitulation to Iran. Instead of merely
repeating the outlines of what looks to be a terrible peace deal,
however, Trump made a series of statements so bizarre, even by his usual
standards, that they raise the question of whether the president still
understands the words that come out of his own mouth.
The
president began with a classic Trumpian move, daring his listeners to
forget today what they knew yesterday. Just this winter, Trump had
promised the Iranian people that the tyrants who ruled them would be
gone. But now? “I never cared about regime change,” he told reporters,
waving away his failure to achieve a primary strategic goal by denying
that it had ever been a goal at all.
One
of the largest fertilizer companies in the world, the Mosaic Company,
is losing money because a small amount of a specific ingredient is stuck
in the Strait of Hormuz.
Mosaic makes
phosphorus fertilizer, which contains sulfur and ammonia. The war in
Iran has disrupted the world’s supply of sulfur, a fifth of which
travels through the strait. The price Mosaic receives for one ton of
fertilizer is about $800, and half that cost — before processing,
shipping and labor — now goes just to acquiring sulfur.
“If
we’re losing money every ton, the total losses can mount quickly,” Ben
Pratt, Mosaic’s vice president of public affairs, said in an interview.
Mosaic lost $258 million in its quarter ending March 30, and said it
would slow production at some of its plants. Even as the United States
and Iran reached a preliminary agreement on Sunday to end the war that
has roiled the region since March, it would take months for ship traffic
and supply chains to return to normal, and years for destroyed energy
and fertilizer infrastructure to be rebuilt.
A
full reopening of the strait will eventually cause fertilizer prices to
fall, but they will remain above their prewar levels for years to come,
said Shawn Arita, an agricultural economist at North Dakota State
University.
“The spike resolves with the
Strait; the premium resolves with reconstruction, and that looks more
like a 2028 story than a 2027 one,” he wrote in an email.
Chump
may have ended the Iran War he started, he may not have. We won't know
until Friday at the earliest.
But we do know fertilizer will remain high this
year and next. And we can all thank him for that.
The war has set in motion changes that will be hard to reverse.
The
near shutdown in oil and gas deliveries from the Middle East and the
leap in prices are causing a shift in power. Energy producers from the
Gulf to the Americas are jockeying to maintain or increase their
dominance, and customers are struggling to reduce their dependency and shore up their supply.
As a result, the energy market is changing, the energy mix is changing and the energy players are changing.
[. . .]
Inflation
is also starting to roar. In the United States, it rose for the third
month in row, hitting an annual rate of 4.2 percent in May. And instead
of planning for the next drop in interest rates, Wall Street is
expecting the Federal Reserve to increase rates at least once this year.
Last week, the European Central Bank raised rates to 2.25 percent. “The war in the Middle East is generating inflation pressures,” the bank said.
Drivers
hopeful that the U.S.-Iran framework deal will translate to lower
gasoline prices will probably have to wait weeks, or longer, to see
meaningful improvement.
Energy analysts refer
to the swing of prices as “up like a rocket, down like a feather” — a
phenomenon that means gasoline costs quickly rise alongside the price of
crude oil but are slow to follow its descent.
One
of the main reasons is that gas station owners tend to lose money or
make only small profits when prices are shooting up because they are not
able to raise prices fast enough to make up for soaring costs. So when
wholesale prices start to go down, station owners are slow to bring
retail prices down to make up for their poor financial performance on
the way up.
The average price of regular
gasoline in the United States went up roughly 50 percent between Feb.
28, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran, and the middle of
May. It has receded since then and was $4.04 a gallon on Tuesday,
according to the AAA motor club.
But a new CNN/SSRS poll,
conducted between May 7 and 31 among 2,480 adults, shows Republicans
are facing growing political headwinds ahead of the November elections,
with fewer voters identifying as Republicans.
The
survey found that among registered voters, Democrats now hold a slight
advantage over Republicans, with 31 percent identifying as Democrats
compared to 28 percent who identify as Republicans. Another 41 percent
say they do not identify with either major party.
That
marks a notable reversal from 2024, when Republicans held a three-point
advantage in party identification among registered voters. At that
time, 34 percent identified as Republicans, 31 percent as Democrats, and
35 percent said they belonged to neither party.
Young children often struggle to
admit blame. Demented old man can suffer from the same avoidance. With
young children, their emotional regulating is still developing and a
mistake can cause them to question their self-worth and activate
feelings of shame. Apparently, elderly men suffering from dementia,
like Donald Chump, go through something similar. Owen Scott (INDEPENDENT) reports:
The
Trump administration has hit out at former President Obama after the
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool water turned green, despite a
much-touted $14 million renovation.
Work on the
pool was completed last week, after President Donald Trump vowed to
paint the space an “American flag blue.” However, the familiar green
algae often spotted in the pool returned just days later.
The
Washington Post revealed on Tuesday the latest cost estimates for
President Donald Trump’s highly controversial ballroom, which he
promised the American people would be funded entirely by private donors.
The Post obtained
a “detailed project summary prepared for the White House by the
contractor” that instead showed the cost would come in at $600 million,
with over half the cost being burdened by the public. Even more
remarkable, the Post notes, Trump received the estimate three weeks
before publicly saying the project would cost $400 million and include
no public funding.
“This is taxpayer-free. We have
no taxpayer putting up 10 cents,” Trump declared in the Oval Office on
March 31, well after receiving the estimate.
“President
Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the
tune of approximately $400 million, which will be a secure and
appropriate venue for Presidents for generations to come,” White House
spokesman Davis Ingle wrote in a statement to the Post.
The
Post also reached out to the contractor that prepared the estimate,
McLean, Virginia-based Clark Construction, which said through a
spokesperson that “all project details are confidential and referred
questions to the White House.”
On the topic of childish Chump and actual children, he continues his war on education. Annie Ma (AP) reports,
"President Donald Trump’s administration is further dismantling the
Department of Education, moving oversight of special education and civil
rights to other agencies. The Department of Justice will take on
enforcement of civil rights in education, while the Department of Health
and Human Services will oversee special education. The Trump
administration made the announcement on Tuesday." Bianca Quilantan, Mackenzie Wilkes and Rebecca Carballo (POLITICO) add:
The
shift of special education in particular is likely to garner some
pushback on Capitol Hill, including among Republican lawmakers who want
to ensure that the federal government is meeting its legal obligations
to students with disabilities.
Advocates for
children with disabilities have warned that moving special education out
of the Education Department could derail progress made in educating
students with disabilities and splitting its responsibilities between
multiple agencies could dampen coordination among offices responsible
for enforcing civil rights laws and carrying out K-12 programs. The
special education office is also responsible for ensuring states are in
compliance with the federal disability education law.
As
of last June, over 30 states and territories need assistance with
meeting IDEA requirements for students with disabilities ages 3-21. And
roughly 20 states and territories need assistance meeting federal
mandates for early intervention services for infants and toddlers,
according to an analysis of Education Department information. A handful
of states “need intervention” which could mean a state has to create an
improvement plan or strike a compliance deal with the federal
government.
Zachary Schermele (USA TODAY) points out, "The
announcement is also the latest attempt by the Trump administration to
use so-called "interagency agreements" to, effectively, kill the
Education Department without congressional action. Over the past year,
the Education Department has initiated more than a half dozen
partnerships with other federal agencies, including the Labor and
Interior Departments, to outsource much of its work." He's dismantling
the entire cabinet. Arthur Jones II (ABC NEWS) notes, "President Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on closing the agency."
For
years, federal health officials have warned about the risks associated
with a supplement derived from the leaves of kratom trees that adherents
say can kill pain or boost energy. Sold in gas stations across America,
kratom has been linked to liver toxicity, seizures and thousands of
deaths.
Powerful figures close to President
Trump, including Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, pushed to
downplay those concerns.
Mr. Mullin, until
recently a Republican senator from Oklahoma, played a key role in a
sprawling influence campaign spearheaded by the kratom industry that
courted Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vice President JD
Vance, among others in the Trump administration, an investigation by The
New York Times found.
Only when he was
nominated by Mr. Trump in March to lead the Homeland Security Department
did it become clear that Mr. Mullin had a financial connection to the
supplement. In a disclosure statement,
he listed an investment worth as much as $1 million in a kratom
company, Botanic Tonics, that could benefit from the changes he has
sought.
[. . .]
In
July, while still a senator, Mr. Mullin showed up at a Food and Drug
Administration news conference and endorsed proposed federal
restrictions on more powerful synthetic supplements that compete with
kratom for shelf space. In explaining his position, Mr. Mullin pointed
to a history of addiction in his family, though health experts say
kratom products have also been shown to be addictive.
His
disclosure form did not indicate when he acquired his stake in Botanic
Tonics, but he has not filed paperwork to indicate that he has divested
from it.
The Homeland Security Department did
not answer questions about the investment. In a statement, the
department said that Mr. Mullin “follows all ethics and conflict of
interest standards and has not lobbied for any individual or company.”
It's
been months since the Department of Homeland Security issued a press
release accusing a Rhode Island federal judge of knowingly ordering the
release of an international homicide suspect in a habeas corpus case. The falsehood is still online
in its original form to this day, "despite the government's knowledge
that it is false," and the suspect remains at large, according to the
court. And now, a DOJ lawyer has been called on the carpet for making
the equivalent of an "affirmative false statement" to protect his
client.
On Tuesday, the
U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island provided
Law&Crime with a statement and the outcome of an investigation into
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Bolan. Law&Crime previously reported
that U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose, in late April, granted the release
of Bryan Rafael Gomez. In response, DHS posted a press release calling
the ruling "yet another example of an activist judge trying to thwart
President Trump's mandate from the American people to remove criminal
illegal aliens from our communities."
The
problem then and the problem now is that the government claimed DuBose
knew Gomez had a homicide warrant out for his arrest in the Dominican
Republic, but that the Joe Biden-appointed judge ordered his release
anyway to endanger the American public. Once the judge forced Bolan to
testify in court, however, it became clear that DuBose had no such
knowledge about the warrant.
Bolan said that he
"sincerely" apologized for the "consequences" of his "lack of
disclosure," claiming he was following ICE's guidance that he was not
allowed to "disclose that information," not knowing that ICE "had
previously disclosed that same information on April 16, 2026," and
publicly, though not directly to DuBose.
In case that representation wasn't clear enough, acting Attorney
General Todd Blanche's name appeared on a filing that clarified DuBose
"did not have knowledge at the time of her ruling that Gomez was wanted
by authorities in the Dominican Republic."
When
DuBose questioned Bolan during a show-cause hearing, he said he reached
out to anyone capable of getting the DHS post taken down, but those
efforts were in vain. The judge heard the apology and explanation but
nonetheless referred the matter for potential disciplinary action,
considering the government's withholding of "highly relevant information
and their lack of candor to this Court[.]"
The
statement Tuesday comes after a special counsel he appointed to
investigate alleged misconduct by a Justice Department attorney
concluded that the lawyer had made a serious ethical violation, but that
he should not face formal disciplinary proceedings.
Chief
Judge John McConnell said that that a special counsel “found sufficient
evidence to conclude” that Kevin Bolan, a top lawyer in the Rhode
Island US attorney’s office, hadn’t followed his obligation to be honest
and transparent in court when he deliberately withheld information
about a years-old homicide arrest warrant for a migrant. District Judge
Melissa DuBose later ordered officials to release the migrant from ICE
custody.
[. . .]
The
situation in Rhode Island is among a series of professional mishaps by
Justice Department lawyers over the past 16 months that have frustrated
federal judges sifting through thousands of cases stemming from
President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation push and other
controversial moves that have been challenged in court.
Earlier
this month, a different judge in the Ocean State referred several other
government attorneys for disciplinary proceedings after their conduct
in a case over the administration’s probe into the provision of
gender-affirming care for minors raised questions about whether they
were acting improperly in court.
Miss Sassy JD
Vance has a book to sell and with his personality? It's a stretch.
But he's going around to anyone who will have him. Monday it was FOX
AND FRIENDS. Kathleen O'Boyle (THE MIRROR) notes the reaction to that appearance:
But
while the vice president spoke about the alleged threat, social media
was zoned in on what some viewers believed was his eyeliner.
One
person wrote, “JD Vance [went] heavy on the eyeliner this morning.”
“Guess the Senate’s new makeup includes a touch of glam, because even
politicians need a good winged liner for those filibuster selfies,”
someone else responded.
A third
person joked, “JD: I’m sorry, but My Chemical Romance is not going to
hire you as their rhythm guitarist.” “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe
it’s Maybelline,” one person quipped.
Another
added, “The more stress he’s under the more eyeliner JD applies,” and
one more saying, ““This is very, very dark stuff.” Clearly referring to
his guyliner.”
“What’s up with JD Vance using heavy eyeliner this morning on Fox and Friends?” a final person asked.
This
is not the first time Vance’s appearance has sparked conversation
online. He has long faced speculation about whether he wears eye makeup
or has enhanced lashes. During the 2024 election debates, viewers, both
familiar and unfamiliar with Vance, questioned his appearance, with some
suggesting he appeared to be wearing makeup around his eyes.
Sunny Hostin then brought up the Epstein files, asking why the administration has yet to release the entirety of the documents.
“I
wanted to have full transparency. What I disagree with is the idea the
White House wasn’t committed to full transparency,” Vance said. He
added, “I have to defend my boss,” noting that “Epstein hated Donald
Trump” because “Trump literally reported Jeffrey Epstein to the police.”
(According to a recently released FBI interview summary, Trump
reportedly told police officers in Florida “thank goodness you’re
stopping him” in relation to Epstein in 2006.)
Behar
pushed back on Vance, saying of Trump and Epstein, “They were best
friends for a decade.” And Navarro argued that Trump and Epstein’s
fallout had nothing to do with the latter’s sex crimes but rather a
“real estate deal they got into a fight over.” “Let’s be truthful and
transparent. They didn’t just know each other. They were close friends,”
she said.
On
the topic of Epstein, he confirmed reporting in Maggie Haberman and
Jonathan Swan’s forthcoming book “Regime Change” that says White House
chief of staff Susie Wiles privately described Vance as a conspiracy
theorist.
“I love Susie, but absolutely, she
thinks I’m a conspiracy theorist on the Epstein stuff,” he said,
“because I think that it’s crazy that you had this guy who is clearly a
sex predator who was hanging out with a lot of very wealthy and powerful
people. Like, that really bothered me. I don’t know what’s there, of
course, nobody knows exactly what happened unless you were there, but
that really bothered me, and I wanted to have full transparency.”
Vance
repeatedly pushed back when the co-hosts pointed out Trump’s past ties
to Epstein. He falsely suggested that the friendship was “back in the
1980s,” when in fact the close relationship was documented throughout
the 1990s.
According to an FBI document, Trump called
the Palm Beach Police Department when the police opened an
investigation into Epstein in the mid-2000s and said, “Thank goodness
you’re stopping him. Everyone has known he’s been doing this.”
Vance
depicted the call this way: Trump “narced on him to the police and led
ultimately to Jeffrey Epstein’s downfall.” But an investigation was
already underway at the time.
Vance
told the show that “I have to defend my boss,” and in doing so, he
cited how Trump kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago resort and reported
Epstein to police, according to the files.
He
also signed the Epstein Transparency Act, Vance said, only to be told by
Ana Navarro that this was done “under duress” after a MAGA backlash and
dissent within his own ranks.
Vance rejected this. “I was there, he called the senators and said, you know what, pass this bill, I’ll sign it,” he insisted.
“Why haven’t we seen the release of over 2.5 million additional Epstein final documents?” asked Sunny Hosten.
“I’m
going to check on this to make sure, but my understanding is that a lot
of those are duplicates of things that have already been released,”
Vance replied.
“We’re not holding anything back.”
What
I disagree with is the idea that the White House wasn't committed to
full transparency. We need to remember, like, I was inside the room when
some of these decisions were made.
Yes, he was. And last week, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (NEW YORK TIMES) reported on
the Situation Room meetings of Todd Blanche, Pam Bondi, Susie Wiles, JD
Vance and other members of the administration to plot on how to deceive
the American people about Epstein and specifically Chump's closeness to
Epstein. That would have been a strong topic to address.
Ghislaine
Maxwell has reportedly assembled a "highly secretive" prison group
behind bars as more details behind her incarceration at a minimum
security facility have been revealed, The Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
The
former partner and co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein has befriended
three women and allegedly sees them as the "finest and best educated"
among the population at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, according to
The Mail. These friends include Bethany Cataldi, 54, "a disgraced
doctor serving eight years for charging the government for non-existent
procedures." Another is former CFO Antonietta Nguyen, 58, "who plundered
$9 million from company funds to splurge on purses and luxury
vacations."
Maxwell's reported
best friend is Jennifer Bengston Cook, 58, a former bookkeeper who
"wrote checks worth $1.6 million to herself."
"They
are highly secretive. They whisper to one another and cover their
mouths so nobody can understand what they are saying," a source told The
Mail.
There are also reports of special privileges
for Maxwell behind bars, including the decision over who she bunks with
at the location. She has also only had one roommate, while most other
prisoners have to bunk with two other people.
"The
cozy arrangement caused a stink because it's normally up to prison
counsellors to decide who sleeps where inside the 37-acre compound that
accommodates 635 women," The Mail reported.
Yesterday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee issued the following:
Washington, D.C. — Today, Rep. Robert Garcia,
Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on
the Judiciary, issued the following statement after Todd Blanche’s
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) failed to answer basic questions relating the
Committees’ investigation into Ghislaine Maxwell’s unprecedented prison
transfer and preferential treatment at Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan,
following a Committee staff visit to the facility.
“Today, investigators from our Committees traveled to FPC Bryan,
where Ghislaine Maxwell is serving her sentence, despite BOP policies
barring sex offenders from this minimum-security facility absent a
special waver. We went to Camp Bryan seeking answers about Ms. Maxwell’s
unprecedented transfer and VIP treatment.
“While the Camp Bryan staff provided an extensive tour of the grounds
and programming of the facility, Bureau of Prisons leadership
repeatedly shut down our lines of questioning or could not provide basic
information about our central concerns, including Ms. Maxwell’s
extraordinary treatment, allegations of sexual assault at the facility,
and retaliation against inmates who tried to blow the whistle. We also
have serious concerns about the accuracy and veracity of information
received by our investigative staff.
“The American people are tired of seeing the Trump Administration
pamper a sex trafficker and obstruct Congress’s investigation into
Attorney General Blanche’s role in ensuring Ms. Maxwell remains
comfortable and quiet.
In
a note written on July 22, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein appeared to portray
himself “as a victim of the #MeToo movement,” and also compared his
situation to the 19th century antisemitic persecution of a French Army
officer, The New York Times revealed Tuesday after obtaining a collection of “never seen before” notes from the convicted child sex offender.
The
note in question was written four days after Epstein had been denied
bail, and scrawled across the top was the phrase “J’ACCUSE,” which
roughly translates to “I accuse” in English. The phrase, the Times
notes, is a likely reference to the 1898 open letter of the same name
accusing the French government of antisemitism for the persecution of
Alfred Dreyfus, a military officer who was falsely accused of espionage
and imprisoned on a brutal prison island.
“‘Jewish
– Rich – Politics,’ he wrote, seemingly comparing himself to Dreyfus,”
the Times’ report reads. “‘Believe the victim = Believe the Accuser’ he
wrote, adding, ‘CRAZY!’”
It would also be just
hours later after the note was written that Epstein would be discovered
in his cell semi-conscious with a noose around his neck in what was
reported to be a suicide attempt, though Epstein initially claimed his cellmate had attacked him before walking the allegation back.
Of
course, many people attempted to help him make and form that argument
over the years. Intellectual Noem Chomsky was one. Kathy Ruemmler was
another.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Murray slams the Inter-Agency
Agreements inked today by the Education Department to offload the
responsibilities of the Office for Civil Rights to Todd Blanche’s DOJ
and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS)
to RFK Jr.’s HHS
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray
(D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the
following statement on Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s announcement
today that the Department of Education is illegally transferring the
responsibilities of the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to
the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of Special Education and
Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) through Inter-Agency Agreements (IAA).
“The Trump administration is abandoning kids with
disabilities and its most basic legal responsibility to protect the
rights of every student in the classroom.
“After spending the last year smashing the Office for Civil
Rights to pieces, President Trump and Secretary McMahon are now turning
to Todd Blanche to deliver the final blow. And after spending months
vowing she would protect students with disabilities, Secretary McMahon
is ignoring the families of students with disabilities who pleaded with
her not to entrust RFK Jr. with the responsibility of ensuring their
kids get the education they deserve. It makes zero sense to scatter
federal education programs all over the government—with different
agencies managing different educational programs and each of them
lacking the expertise to do it.
“Instead of helping kids get a great education, this
administration is spending its time, energy, and taxpayer resources
fixated on where employees sit and illegally trying to shutter the
Department of Education. It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades
of hard-won progress for students. More kids with disabilities will be
denied the education they are entitled to by law, and more college
students who were harassed or assaulted will go without the justice they
are owed.
“Democrats tried hard to block these illegal arrangements in
our most recent funding bill, but Republicans refused. It’s past time
Republicans join us to say enough is enough. I’m going to keep fighting
to force this administration to help students get the education they are
entitled to under law.”
OCR is charged with enforcing federal civil rights laws to protect
students’ rights in the classroom, and the Department of Education
Organization Act of 1979 mandates the existence of the Office for Civil
Rights at the Education Department to carry out these responsibilities.
Last year, the Trump administration thoughtlessly eliminated more
than half of the staff in the Office for Civil Rights and closed half of
the regional field offices, and in the time since, there has been a precipitous drop-off in the resolution of students’ cases. In 2025, the Department reached
the lowest number of resolutions in 12 years and reached zero
resolutions for students facing serious incidents including sexual
harassment, sexual violence, seclusion, restraint, racial harassment,
and discriminatory school discipline. Senator Murray has mobilized against the administration’s efforts to hollow out OCR, called out how it’s hurt students and families, and she’s repeatedlypressed Secretary McMahon on the issue.
OSERS is charged with implementing and enforcing the Rehabilitation
Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which
mandate that students with disabilities get the free appropriate public
education and independence they deserve. In April, Senator Murray pressed
Secretary McMahon on her plans to potentially offload OSERS’
responsibilities and told McMahon: “That is exactly why these parents
and advocates are spitting mad because what they want to make sure is
that their child with a disability has an education.”
Senator Murray hasaggressivelypushedbackagainst
Secretary McMahon’s efforts to dismantle the Department, including
through the illegal use of IAAs, and she fought to insert ironclad
language in the fiscal year 2026 funding bill for the Department that
would bar Secretary McMahon from using IAAs to dismantle the
Department—but Republicans refused to include new, binding language that
would block arrangements like the ones announced today.
