GOP governor urges Trump to reconsider Haiti TPS after Supreme Court decision

Trump chief accused of petty 'grudge' driving major military firings

The Trump Pentagon has been rocked by controversy over a recent spate of firings and blocked promotions, and now, one lawmaker has accused President Donald Trump's defense chief of being motivated by a petty "grudge" as he causes significant damage to the military.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under significant fire over the course of his tenure for removing several respected and experienced officers and blocking others from receiving promotions. He most recently took flak for the latter after the already-approved promotions of several Naval officers, most of them being either women or people of color.Critics have put forward various theories for what could be driving this trend, including a desire to punish or remove officers who took part in past diversity initiatives, or a plot to remove non-loyalists who might stand in the way of a 2028 "auto-coup" to keep Trump in power.During a Sunday appearance on CBS News's Face the Nation, Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, put forward another theory of what is driving Hegseth: "personal" revenge for his own time in the armed services. Kaine specifically touched on the recent ouster of General Chris Donahue, a highly respected officer whose departure even caused alarm among conservatives.“Are you pushing out the truth tellers to surround yourself by yes-men? And in particular, it looks like the secretary is coming down hardest… on the Army,” Kaine told CBS host Margaret Brennan. “He served in the Army, he felt like he wasn’t treated well by the Army, that’s a grudge he’s carried that he’s described publicly."Kaine added: “And so, when you see Army officers forced out, you got to wonder, is this a personal thing, or is it really what’s best for the nation?”"Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, submitted his paperwork to retire earlier this week after a little over a year in his role, according to a Pentagon official," The Hill detailed in a report about Kaine's remarks. "Donahue's departure is the latest in a lengthy list of military leaders Hegseth has either removed or pushed out. That includes Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Navy’s chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Frachetti; the commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff; and Gen. James Mingus, the vice chief of staff of the Army."Donahue's ouster drew criticism from GOP lawmakers as well."Strong leaders are not threatened by accomplished commanders," Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina wrote in a social media post. "Weak ones are. [Hegseth's] paranoid micromanagement of senior military leaders and promotion lists is pure insecurity dressed up as reform."

Trump's latest botch exposes his 'comical' but 'ominous' threats

President Donald Trump's administration has become mired in embarrassment over his latest botched remodeling project, but according to a new analysis from MS NOW, the threats he has made in response to the affair reveal him as both "comical" and "ominous."As part of his ongoing campaign to remodel iconic fixtures of Washington, D.C., to his own liking, Trump made a big deal out of his plan to have the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool painted a color he called "American Flag Blue." Once the project — handed off to a GOP donor through a swift no-bid contract — was completed, it promptly blew up in his face, as the pool became overrun with green algae, which numerous experts have said was actively made worse by the change in color.Despite the administration's efforts, the algae have remained, threatening to stick around as a highly visible embarrassment for Trump during the country's 250th birthday celebrations. In response to this predicament, Trump has tried to save face by claiming that the algae bloom was caused by vandals, with a former Olympian getting arrested and charged by the U.S. Park Police after touching a piece of peeling paint in the Reflecting Pool. Multiple other people near the pool, whom Trump accused of being "vandals," have also been arrested, though there have been no charges leveled against them.Writing for MS NOW on Saturday, political strategist Symone Sanders-Townsend argued that "the ongoing debacle of the Reflecting Pool has been a helpful distillation of [Trump's] approach" to governance: "Make a big promise, use it to reward your allies, blame setbacks on your opponents, criminalize dissent and then attack the press.""The first three steps are fairly common in politics, especially among populists with little experience in government," she explained. "But it’s the last two that turn Trump into something more than just a run-of-the-mill incompetent politician. Authoritarianism often begins with the habit of treating ordinary problems as criminal conspiracies. A court strikes down his policy, and he calls the judge 'crooked' or 'corrupt.' A protest escalates, and he calls the protesters 'paid agitators.'”She added: "If an authoritarian government cannot accept criticism, then it has to label critics enemies. If it cannot admit a mistake, then it has to blame sabotage. And if it cannot accept failure, then it has to find someone to punish."Sanders-Townsend further argued that while it may be "comical" to see Trump deploy this predictable authoritarian playbook over something like the Reflecting Pool debacle, it is also "ominous" and must be taken seriously. This sort of impulse, she explained, is exactly why the nation's founders "built a system designed to restrain power rather than indulge it.""The Reflecting Pool is simply the latest reminder that, in Trump’s Washington, the line between politics and criminality is growing dangerously thin," she continued. "That’s because the common thread is not just inflammatory rhetoric. It is the growing weaponization of government against ordinary political activity and the ordinary people who engage in it. When a president begins treating ordinary politics as criminality, it does not stay rhetorical for long. Eventually, someone gets investigated. Someone gets detained. Someone gets arrested."

Trump Now to Receive Housing Bill, SAVE America Still Mired in Senate

NYT bombshell: Trump sons cash in on $1.6 billion federal mining deal

President Donald Trump’s sons are profiting off of their father’s connections, including in a previously-undisclosed deal over a lucrative metal.“Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history,” wrote The New York Times’ Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton on Sunday. The report covered how Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump availed themselves of a meeting between Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in September to grant a little-known American company called Kaz Resources access to their tungsten mines.Prior to that meeting, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for up to $1.6 billion in federal financing for Kaz Resources to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan. Dominari Securities, which is partly owned by the Trump sons, agreed to take a 20 percent stake in the tungsten projects.“Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity,” Sonne and Lipton wrote. “Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.”They added, “The Kazakh deal was ultimately signed on Nov. 6, six days after the investment involving the Trump sons and their partners, which was not publicly disclosed at the time. The arrangement is hardly an outlier. One or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal filings examined by The New York Times.”This is not the only occasion when the Trump family has come under scrutiny for profiting from the White House, as has Trump himself. Earlier this month the American Economic Liberties Project and Groundwork Collaborative released a joint report called “The Price of Corruption: How Trump’s Pay-to-Play Administration is Driving Up Costs for Working Families,” which described how the Trumps’ alleged corruption has literally cost ordinary Americans a lot of money.“When Trump rolled out TrumpRX earlier this year, the administration claimed it was a way for Americans to access more affordable prescription drugs,” the report pointed out. “Instead, the platform fails to disclose information about less expensive generic alternatives and, in some instances, charges consumers more for products that are available for less elsewhere.”It added that TrumpRx “serves as free advertisement for Big Pharma and may be lining the pockets of the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is on the board of prescription drug platform BlinkRX, which stands to benefit from the administration’s promotion of direct-to-patient medicine sales.”It also observed that Trump’s tariffs have raised the cost of imported goods for consumers while also enriching Trump himself, citing as one example when he reduced Swiss tariffs “just a few days after Swiss business leaders presented him with a personalized gold bar worth more than $130,000 and a Rolex desk clock.” Conversely, when Trump’s fellow right-winger, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, faced legal consequences for plotting a coup to illegally stay in power after losing an election to current President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, Trump used tariffs to retaliate.“Americans paid the price for Trump’s international allies breaking the law,” the report pointed out, “as coffee imported from Brazil surged to a 40% increase in price.”

Mullin defends Haiti TPS decision

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people who have been legally living in the U.S. from Haiti under the program. The Supreme Court last week ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s decision. “Temporary Protected Status was never intended to be permanent.…

As Nerves Fray at Supreme Court, Some Pine for an Old Colleague With a Soft Touch

For nearly three decades, during the Supreme Court’s most difficult and divisive moments, Justice Stephen Breyer could be counted on to help keep the peace.

Supreme Court quietly doubling its police force — and 'loathes' acknowledging it: report

With “little fanfare,” the Supreme Court is quietly working to double its own police force, Politico’s Josh Gerstein reported on Sunday, a push that justices and court officials apparently “loathe” discussing.“The push for a rapid security buildout stems from the substantial threats to the justices at a moment of growing political violence in the U.S. and the sense that the system has just not been up to the task of keeping them safe,” Gerstein wrote. “That’s a belief that appears to be shared by at least some of the justices themselves.”While a Supreme Court spokesperson declined to respond to Gerstein’s request for comment, an “in-depth review” of budget documents and interviews with “court insiders” revealed that the Supreme Court Police Department, which for years had less than 200 officers, may soon double its ranks amid the court’s plummeting favorability among Americans.“It’s often said that the Supreme Court has no army,” Gerstein wrote. “Yet, with little fanfare, the size of the Supreme Court’s police force has begun mushrooming.”The growing taxpayer expense from the Supreme Court’s ballooning security budget has even roiled some lawmakers, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the leading Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.“We provide money for the Supreme Court,” DeLauro said back in April. “I’ve been here a long time – they’ve never come up and tell us what they’re doing with the money that we appropriate. I want to give them all the security they need, but the court has to come up here [and] tell us what [they’re] doing.”

Ohio Governor with Deep Personal Ties to “Shithole Country”, Says It’s More Important to Protect Haitians Than Americans

There’s a lot of interesting mask-dropping in this interview.  Jake Tapper outlines his view on illegal alien migrants from Haiti by admitting he put his Mom in a nursing home and pays Haitian migrants to care for her. On a 1998 trip to Cite Soleil, a slum of Port-au-Prince, Mike and Fran DeWine met Tom Hagan, […] The post Ohio Governor with Deep Personal Ties to “Shithole Country”, Says It’s More Important to Protect Haitians Than Americans appeared first on The Last Refuge.