Tuesday, June 2, 2026. Chump and Hegseth appear to be fudging the facts on the Iran War, Chump's slush fund may be dead, Hegseth and Chump's attacks on transgender service members takes a beating in the court system, and much more.
Pete Hegseth regularly gets called out by senators on
both sides of the aisle these days when he appears before them. The
reason being? He gives them a rosy and unrealistic fantasy about the
Iran War. There are some who accuse him of doing the same with Chump.
He may lie to Chump but, if he does, Chump wants to be lied to about the
war and about himself -- especially about himself. Will Neal (DAILY BEAST) reports of the war:
Iranian
strikes have caused greater damage to U.S. military assets in the
Middle East than the Trump administration is willing to admit.
Analysis by the BBC, published Monday,
reveals that attacks by the Islamic Republic have cost millions of
dollars in damage to at least 20, and possibly as many as 28, American
military sites across eight countries in the region since Donald Trump
launched his war on Iran at the end of February.
Trump
has repeatedly claimed that U.S. forces have “destroyed,” “obliterated,”
and “shattered” the regime’s military capabilities. The Pentagon has
meanwhile tried to limit assessments of the impact on U.S. assets by
pressuring Planet, a major satellite-imaging provider, to restrict
public access to new images of the region.
[. . .]
The
BBC notes that the Pentagon has, at latest count, put the cost of
Operation Epic Fury, as Trump has dubbed his war with Iran, at $29
billion. Democratic lawmakers have slammed those figures as an
underestimate.
Chump and company lie. They've been a little hopeful in their progress reports. A little optimistic. Not really accurate. Sarah K. Burris adds, "The
report also found that 'at least 42 aircraft - including F-15 and F-35
fighter jets, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and an A-10 attack plane - have been
destroyed or damaged since February'." It gets more and more difficult
to believe the lies from Chump's mouth. Jack Buckby (NATIONAL SECURITY JOURNAL) notes:
Last
week, the Trump administration was publicly signaling that a deal with
Iran was coming soon - but the prospect of a permanent peace between the
two sides now appears far more remote after Iran announced that it had
suspended all indirect negotiations with Washington through mediators.
On Monday, Iran accused the United States of failing to restrain Israeli
attacks and claimed that continued military operations in Lebanon constitute a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
The news is perhaps the most serious challenge to the ceasefire yet, which came into effect on April 8, and it suggests that a lasting deal may not be as close as the White House hopes.
Fresh
satellite imagery from Iran has contradicted President Donald Trump's
assertions that Iran no longer possesses nuclear capabilities.
The
latest images reveal that four out of five entrances to the missile
facility in Dezful, Iran, have been reopened since last month, with just
one remaining blocked. CNN reported that Iran had cleared 50 of 69
tunnel entrances that were struck by U.S. and Israeli forces across 18 underground missile installations.
President
Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low with Big Data
Poll, a survey that has historically given him some of his strongest
numbers, as voters express growing dissatisfaction with the economy, the
cost of living and the administration’s handling of foreign policy.
In
its most recent survey, conducted between May 24 and 27 among 3,121
registered voters, 39.4 percent of respondents said they approved of the
job Trump was doing as president—including 19.9 percent who said they
strongly approved. Big Data Poll called this a “new low for the
president during his second term and the first time he has dipped into
the critical 30s.”
While
polls have been known to underestimate Trump’s popularity, with the
president outperforming preelection expectations in three presidential
campaigns, Big Data Poll has previously showed some of Trump’s highest
approval ratings—so the record low approval raises questions about
whether dissatisfaction with the administration is beginning to extend
beyond traditional critics.
Yes, the dissatisfaction with the administration has extended beyond traditional critics.
Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday said his party "will
launch a coordinated effort to kill" President Donald Trump's
"Anti-Weaponization Fund," adding that Democrats will force Republicans
to vote on the fund.
"Trump’s nearly $2 billion
MAGA slush fund is his most brazen act of self-dealing yet and one of
the most corrupt schemes ever launched by a president. Senate Democrats
will not let it stand," Schumer wrote in a Dear Colleague letter. "This
week, Senate Democrats will launch a coordinated effort to kill the
slush fund before one cent goes out the door. And no matter what
Republicans do, we will force them to vote."
Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) explains, "Democrats
are unlikely to have the votes to kill the fund outright, but the
campaign is widely seen as a political maneuver designed to put
Republicans on the record ahead of the 2026 midterms, when control of
both chambers could hinge on a small number of competitive seats." Nikole Killion (CBS NEWS) points out, "Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Justice Department from moving forward with work on the new fund." And Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) provides this context, "Trump’s
nearly $1.8 billion fund has proven wildly unpopular even among GOP
lawmakers, triggering a revolt of sorts within the Republican Party. The
fund is even less popular with voters, with recent internal GOP polling
sparking alarm among party insiders."
President Trump is backing off his plan
to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they
were victims of unfair prosecution by the government, two people
familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The
people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s
thinking, said he had been leaning for days toward scrapping the fund,
which critics have characterized as a scheme to reward Mr. Trump’s
political allies with public benefits.
The
administration signaled a retreat on Monday, when the Justice
Department said in a statement that it would abide by a federal judge’s
temporary order not to proceed with any steps to activate the fund until
at least June 12, when a hearing on the fund is scheduled. The
department said the administration disagreed with the decision but did
not make clear whether it intended to fight the issue further in court.
It
was unclear whether getting rid of the fund would affect another part
of the legal settlement in the case, which provides Mr. Trump, his
family and his businesses with significant immunity from audits.
"Dead for now," Lawrence O'Donnell pronounced the slush fund last night on MS NOW.
The
Trump administration has been dealt another legal blow, with a federal
court ruling that the president illegally banned transgender troops from
military service.
A divided panel of appeals
court judges ruled on Monday that Donald Trump’s executive order to
exclude transgender troops from military service likely violated their
constitutional rights, and was driven by a “non-legitimate state
interest” to harm transgender people.
“The
government’s stated reason for issuing the Hegseth Policy as based
solely upon gender dysphoria was pretextual, and that instead, the
Hegseth Policy was premised, at least in part, on a non-legitimate state
interest to harm the politically unpopular group of transgender
persons,” Wilkins wrote in an opinion, adding that Trump “declared
transgender people as categorically unfit for military service
explicitly because of their gender identity.”
The move is the latest humiliating setback Trump has faced in the courts within days.
Remember,
the Supreme Court did not rule on the issue. The Crooked Court just
permitted Chump to do it and to allow it to work its way through the
courts instead. Well the appeals court has ruled.
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., said Monday that the Trump administration’stransgendermilitary
policy appears motivated by "the bare desire to harm a politically
unpopular group," delivering some of the strongest appellate criticism
yet of a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s campaign against transgender rights.
Writing
for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,
Judge Robert Wilkins concluded that key portions of Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth's policy likely violate the Constitution's guarantee of
equal protection because they appear rooted in hostility toward
transgender people rather than legitimate military concerns.
"The sharp contrast to the Mattis Policy ... appears to be driven by the
bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group: persons who identify
as transgender," wrote Wilkins, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
"As such, at this preliminary stage, I conclude that the Hegseth Policy is both arbitrary and based upon animus."
The remarks came in a fractured ruling that partially upheld and
partially narrowed an injunction against the policy. The court preserved
protections for the named transgender plaintiffs currently serving in
the military while allowing enforcement of portions of the policy
affecting prospective recruits.
But the most striking aspect of the 107-page opinion
was Wilkins' repeated focus on what he described as evidence that the
administration's policy targets transgender identity itself.
The case, Talbott v. United States,
now heads back to the district court. A class action motion that would
extend protections to all affected servicemembers is scheduled for
hearing on June 30.
In related news, Hegseth continues embracing discrimination and hate as he refuses to allow promotions to take place. Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) reports:
Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy
officers hand-picked by a board of senior admirals, removing all women
and most minority candidates from the list of nominees for promotions.
The
intervention left a slate of 22 one-star admiral nominees that includes
no women, despite females making up roughly 21 percent of the
active-duty Navy, and only two nonwhite officers, despite racial
minorities accounting for approximately 38 percent of the force, reported the New York Times.
At least two of the removed officers are women, two are Black men, and three are white men.
Four
current and former defense officials, speaking anonymously to discuss
sensitive personnel matters, said Hegseth's actions are highly unusual
and appear to breach Pentagon rules, which permit the defense secretary
to remove officers from promotion lists only when new information raises
specific questions about their fitness to serve — not on ideological
grounds.
Friday, Chump got told to take his damn, dirty name off The Kennedy Center. Liz Dye (ABOVE THE LAW) covers that and notes:
On Friday, a federal judge in DC ordered Donald Trump to take John F. Kennedy’s name out of his filthy mouth. More or less.
In a meticulous, 94-page order,
Judge Christopher Cooper found that the toadies Trump installed on the
Kennedy Center Board might have the legal right to rubber stamp a plan
to shut down the storied arts center for two years and convert into a
Vegas-style emporium, but they didn’t have the smarts to do it properly.
And they certainly never had the power to rename the place after Trump
himself.
Along the way, the court ruled that the president lied about the proposed renovation, as did his cronies.
Naturally
Trump has responded with his normal gravitas, dramatically washing his
hands of the entire project and personally attacking Judge Cooper and
his wife — all of which will be Exhibit A should the government make
good on its threat to appeal.
In
1958, President Eisenhower signed the National Cultural Center Act to
create a center for the arts in the nation’s capital. At first,
fundraising was sluggish. But after President Kennedy’s assassination,
Congress re-designated the project in 1964 as the John F. Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts. The “living memorial” to the slain president
drew private donations and public funds, and in 1971 it opened with a
performance of the Mass by Leonard Bernstein, the quintessentially
American composer.
Trump, who prefers “Cats” to
Callas, has a testy relationship with the performing arts. And vice
versa! During his campaigns, popular musicians routinely sued to block
him playing their songs at his MAGA rallies. But during his first term,
Trump largely left the nation’s important cultural institutions alone.
This time around, the culture warriors at Project 2025 and the America
First Policy Institute were ready to wreak havoc on these “liberal”
bastions on day one.
Echoing
Nazi claims about degenerate art, Trump announced that he was firing
the board of the Kennedy Center and appointing “an amazing Chairman,
DONALD J. TRUMP!”
The
new board included Pam Bondi, Florida lobbyist Bryan Ballard, Lee
Greenwood, Laura Ingraham, and Dan Scavino, the guy who writes Trump’s
tweets. Ric Grenell, a figure from the first Trump administration who
was too toxic to be let back into the White House(!), was installed as
executive director.
The fallout from this MAGA-fication was immediate.
Everyone from Renée Fleming to Issa Rae canceled scheduled performances.
“You
just made it political and caved to the woke mob who wants you to
perform for only Lefties,” Grenell sneered at banjo player Béla Fleck.
This
charm offensive failed to staunch the bleeding, although Grenell put on
a game face. In September of 2025, he bragged about sellout crowds and
high demand for Kennedy Center Honors tickets, promising that
America250, the nation’s 250th birthday celebration, would be a show
like none other. (Wait for it …)
Then in
December, the board voted to rename the institution the “Trump Kennedy
Center.” Signage went up the very next day, suggesting that the outcome
was essentially a foregone conclusion.
After
which the bottom fell out. Ticket sales collapsed, immediately dropping
70 percent as compared to the prior three years, according to the Wall
Street Journal. The Washington National Opera, the Center’s resident
company since 1971, announced it was severing the relationship. In fact,
so many artists canceled that there was functionally no 2026 season
left.
I could excerpt
the entire piece, it's so well written and it captures all the cheap
tactics Chump pulled to try to get his way. But he lost. Yes, he did.
And he's losing so much these days as the American people catch on to him. Svante Myrick (THE HILL) reflects on his avarice, greed and corruption:
“Welcome to the Golden Age!” says a banner on the White House website.
Maybe
it’s golden for Trump and his family, who’ve made billions by cashing
in on the presidency, and for their ultrarich friends whose political
influence rises along with their wealth.
But it’s not so golden for Americans paying higher prices for food and gas prices due to economic uncertainty caused by Trump’s chaotic tariff policies. They’re also paying high energy prices and facing fertilizer shortages
resulting from his war against Iran, amid massive cuts to social safety
net programs and threats of unregulated artificial intelligence.
At a time when millions of families cannot meet their basic needs,
and millions more live with anxiety and economic insecurity, Trump is
focused on self-aggrandizement. His ridiculous gold-plated Louis XIV ballroom. A massive arch we don’t need and nobody else wants.
And,
untethered to the actual lived experiences of the American people, he
waves away questions about American families experiencing hardship due
to his policies, saying he doesn’t give them a thought.
Political
authoritarianism and economic corruption go hand in hand. They’re bad
for democracy, the economy, freedom and families. When political leaders
don’t think they have to follow the laws that apply to other people,
they have an incentive to abuse their power and manipulate the system to
enrich themselves and their friends.
To
achieve their ends, they undermine the rule of law, disadvantage honest
economic players and corrupt both public and private institutions.
Meanwhile, in New Mexico yesterday. the state's Truth Commission set up to investigate the actions of the late Jeffrey Epstein held their first meeting.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
ICYMI: In Letter, Murray, Klobuchar Raise Concerns about Food and Nutrition Service Reorganization
ICYMI: Murray, Klobuchar Raise Concerns about the USDA Research, Education, and Economics Mission Area Reorganization
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA),
Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Senator Amy
Klobuchar (D-MN) Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture,
Nutrition, and Forestry, and 18 of their colleagues in sending a letter
to Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Valden raising strong
concerns about the plan to reorganize the Food Safety and Inspection
Service (FSIS) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“We write with serious concern regarding the announced reorganization of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS),” wrote the Senators. “Rather
than strengthening the agency’s effectiveness, this reorganization
poses a risk to FSIS’s core mission of protecting public health and
ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply.”
“Losses in staff and institutional expertise as a result of
this relocation could delay the identification and containment of
outbreaks involving pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, or Listeria,
allowing contaminated products to remain in commerce longer and
increasing illnesses nationwide,” the Senators continued.
“Reduced coordination amongst FSIS and other food safety and public
health agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, and state
partners could also slow traceback investigations and public
communication during multistate outbreaks, when rapid response is
critical to prevent additional illnesses. Instead of moving its
employees across the country, FSIS should be focused on maintaining food
safety. Overall, this reorganization threatens to undermine FSIS’s
effectiveness and weakens an agency that American consumers rely on
every day.”
Along with Murray and Klobuchar, the letter was signed by Senators
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ),
Dick Durbin (D-IL), John Fetterman (D-PA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY),
Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Alex
Padilla (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen
(D-NH), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Van Hollen
(D-MD), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
We write with serious concern regarding the announced reorganization
of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). Rather than
strengthening the agency’s effectiveness, this reorganization poses a
risk to FSIS’s core mission of protecting public health and ensuring the
safety of our nation’s food supply.
FSIS plays a key role in safeguarding American consumers. Not only
does FSIS provide critical frontline inspection of meat, poultry, egg,
and some fish products, but the agency also plays an important role in
informing the public through outreach and education and coordinating
with the many international, federal, state, and local agencies that
play a part in food safety. When outbreaks inevitably happen, FSIS
provides a rapid response to contain illness before it spreads widely.
The Deferred Resignation Program implemented last year has already
resulted in a loss of more than 500 FSIS employees, straining a key
agency that operates under significant pressure. Now the Administration
is asking two-thirds of the FSIS staff in the Washington, D.C. area to
relocate to Iowa, Georgia, or Colorado within months, which could weaken
interagency coordination and rapid response efforts during foodborne
illness outbreaks, creating a greater risk to consumers and our food
supply. Since FSIS was not explicitly included in the July 2025
Secretarial Memorandum on USDA’s proposed reorganization, FSIS
stakeholders, employees, consumer advocates, and industry partners have
not been able to provide meaningful comments on changes that could have
significant implications for the nation’s food safety system.
Losses in staff and institutional expertise as a result of this
relocation could delay the identification and containment of outbreaks
involving pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, or Listeria, allowing
contaminated products to remain in commerce longer and increasing
illnesses nationwide. Reduced coordination amongst FSIS and other food
safety and public health agencies like the Food and Drug Administration,
and state partners could also slow traceback investigations and public
communication during multistate outbreaks, when rapid response is
critical to prevent additional illnesses. Instead of moving its
employees across the country, FSIS should be focused on maintaining food
safety. Overall, this reorganization threatens to undermine FSIS’s
effectiveness and weakens an agency that American consumers rely on
every day.
We ask that you provide a detailed description of how you will ensure
that FSIS will maintain full operational capacity during and after this
transition. Specifically, we ask that you provide further details on
what communication USDA has had with impacted FSIS employees, how the
USDA will mitigate anticipated workforce losses, preserve critical
expertise, and ensure that outbreak response, interagency coordination,
and rulemaking activities are not compromised.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter, and we look forward to receiving your response within 30 days.
