The Borowitz Report: Trump Honors Those Who Helped Others Avoid Service at Tomb of the Unknown Podiatrist

In what has become a Memorial Day tradition for him, on Monday Donald J. Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Podiatrist.  



Trump made his annual pilgrimage to pay homage to the heroic doctors who issued bogus diagnoses to ensure that their privileged patients never answered the call of duty.



In an emotional tribute, Trump thanked the fallen foot specialists who bravely risked their medical licenses so that others facing military service could be free.



Choking back tears, he said, “They gave everything so people like me could give nothing.” https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-honors-those-who-helped-others

Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office

Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.

Other proposed planks of the 50-page platform included proclamations that “abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide”; that gender-transition treatment for children is “child abuse”; calls to reverse recent name changes to military bases and “publicly honor the southern heroes”; support for declaring gold and silver as legal tender; and demands that the U.S. government disclose “all pertinent information and knowledge” of UFOs.

Perhaps the most consequential plank calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college.

Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/

Florida educators trained to teach students Christian nationalism

Training materials produced by the Florida Department of Education direct middle and high school teachers to indoctrinate students in the tenets of Christian nationalism, a right-wing effort to merge Christian and American identities. Thousands of Florida teachers, lured by cash stipends, have attended trainings featuring these materials. https://popular.info/p/exclusive-florida-educators-trained

Trump told donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests, deport demonstrators

Former president Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, according to participants in the roundtable event with him in New York.

“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event.

“Well, if you get me elected, and you should really be doing this, if you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he said, according to the donors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail a private event. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/27/trump-israel-gaza-policy-donors/

Alito Refuses Calls for Recusal Over Display of Provocative Flags

Justice Samuel Alito Jr. said on Wednesday that he would not recuse himself from two cases arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after reports that flags flown over houses he owned appeared to support the “Stop the Steal” movement, the New York Times reports.

Said Alito, in letters to members of Congress who had demanded his recusal: “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. She was solely responsible for having flagpoles put up at our residence and our vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/us/alito-supreme-court-recusal-flag.html

Inside Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Growing Alliance

Donald Trump and Elon Musk have discussed a possible advisory role for the Tesla leader should the presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House, the latest sign that the once-frosty relationship between the two men has thawed.

The role hasn’t been fully hammered out and might not happen, people familiar with the talks said, but the two men discussed ways to give Musk formal input and influence over policies related to border security and the economy, both issues on which Musk has grown more vocal.

Musk, along with the billionaire investor Nelson Peltz, has also briefed Trump on a plan they’ve developed to invest in a data-driven project to prevent voter fraud… Peltz and Musk also told Trump of an influence campaign in elite circles that is already under way, in which Musk and his political allies host gatherings of powerful business leaders across the country and try to convince them not to support President Biden’s re-election campaign.” https://www.wsj.com/politics/donald-trump-elon-musk-alliance-d1fe43e3

Trump Boasted About Sex With Stormy in Tahoe, Athlete Says

Donald Trump boasted about having sex with adult film star Stormy Daniels at the 2006 golf tournament where the two met, a celebrity athlete who played the tournament has said.

The athlete also told The Daily Beast that a decade later, in the run-up to the 2016 election, he received anonymous calls from strangers asking what he remembered of the weekend.  https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-boasted-about-sex-with-stormy-in-tahoe-athlete-says

Russia Steps Up a Covert Sabotage Campaign Aimed at Europe

U.S. and allied intelligence officials are tracking an increase in low-level sabotage operations in Europe that they say are part of a Russian campaign to undermine support for Ukraine’s war effort
.
The covert operations have mostly been arsons or attempted arsons targeting a wide range of sites, including a warehouse in England, a paint factory in Poland, homes in Latvia and, most oddly, an Ikea store in Lithuania.

But people accused of being Russian operatives have also been arrested on charges of plotting attacks on U.S. military bases. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/russia-sabotage-campaign-ukraine.html

Debunking misinformation failed. Welcome to ‘pre-bunking’

Election officials and researchers from Arizona to Taiwan are adopting a radical playbook to stop falsehoods about voting before they spread online, amid fears that traditional strategies to battle misinformation are insufficient in a perilous year for democracies around the world.

Modeled after vaccines, these campaigns — dubbed “prebunking” — expose people to weakened doses of misinformation paired with explanations and are aimed at helping the public develop “mental antibodies” to recognize and fend off hoaxes in a heated election year.

In the run-up to next month’s European Union election, for example, Google and partner organizations are blanketing millions of voters with colorful cartoon ads on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram that teach common tactics used to propagate lies and rumors on social media or in email.

One 50-second animation features a fake news campaign in which “visiting tourists” are blamed for a “litter crisis.” The example is meant to educate voters about “scapegoating,” a disinformation technique that places unwarranted blame for a problem on a single person or group.

Google has no plans to launch such a campaign in the United States, where former president Donald Trump and his allies are spreading falsehoods about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, laying the groundwork to cast doubt on the results of Trump’s rematch with President Biden in November.

Google Jigsaw has launched a “prebunking” campaign in Europe, which uses animated ads to teach voters how to spot and stop disinformation. This 55-second spot about “decontextualization” shows how video could be manipulated to make it seem like a lion is on the loose in town. (Google Jigsaw)

Instead, humbler campaigns are springing up in locations across the nation, including Arizona’s Maricopa County, where election officials are enlisting local celebrities such as the Phoenix Suns basketball team to promote voting and explain the procedures.

Federal agencies are encouraging state and local officials to invest in prebunking initiatives, advising officials in an April memo to “build a team of trusted voices to amplify accurate information proactively.”

The moves come after nearly a decade of floundering initiatives to stem voting misinformation, leading researchers to a sobering conclusion: It is nearly impossible to counter election misinformation once it has taken root online.

Twitter is a prime example of what has befallen efforts to control election disinformation in the United States. Before Elon Musk’s takeover, prebunking was one of several strategies the company deployed to fight misinformation, along with fact-checking conspiracy theories and labeling debunked claims. In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Twitter placed advisories in U.S. Twitter users’ feeds saying that voting by mail is safe and that there could be a delay in announcing the election results — an effort to inoculate voters against some of the most common false claims made during the race.

But Twitter, now called X, might be less willing to take similar action this election cycle, according Edward Perez, Twitter’s former product director for civic integrity, whose job included overseeing its election policies.

Twitter has eliminated or cut drastically its Curation team, a group of policy and communications experts tasked with monitoring emerging narratives in digital and traditional media that might need to be addressed by the company. In recent years, Meta also has changed its approach to labeling and debunking misinformation.

“The things that in the past made these early efforts even a possibility — they are no longer there,” Perez said. “There is a philosophical resistance to the importance of this stuff.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/26/us-election-misinformation-prebunking/

Special counsel seeks court order limiting Trump’s false claims about FBI

Special counsel Jack Smith filed court papers Friday asking a judge to order Donald Trump not to make any further incendiary claims suggesting that FBI agents were “complicit in a plot to assassinate him.”

In the filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, Smith argues Trump’s statements earlier this week exposed FBI agents involved in the case “to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment.”

The request caps a tumultuous week in the former president’s far-reaching legal battles. He is preparing for closing arguments Tuesday in his trial in New York, and has made incendiary claims about the origins of the case against him in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.

The new filing underscores the intensity of the fear inside federal law enforcement agencies that someone may take inspiration from Trump’s invective and attack FBI or Justice Department personnel. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/24/special-counsel-trump-fbi-order/
 

Trump just made more promises to oil industry campaign donors

In a rambling fundraising pitch to oil executives in Houston on Wednesday, Donald Trump promised them that he would immediately approve their projects and expand drilling in a second term — just as he worked to expedite the controversial Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines soon after taking office in 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/05/23/trump-oil-industry-pipelines-campaign-money/

The Shaky Foundation of Trump’s Lead: Disengaged Voters

Nate Cohn: The polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s one big flashing warning sign suggesting that his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks.

That warning sign: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.

To an extent that hasn’t been true in New York Times/Siena College polling in the last eight years, disengaged voters are driving the overall polling results and the story line about the election. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/upshot/trump-biden-polls-voters.html

The GOP Has Its Best Senate Map in Ages. So Why Do Democrats Sound a Bit Cocky?

This is the point in the election cycle where both sides insist they are best positioned to end up with control of the Senate. Democrats have exactly zero margin for error this cycle if they want to hold onto the Senate, and four incumbents in particular—Senators Jon Tester in Montana, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Jacky Rosen of Nevada—are the biggest targets. Each is a talent in the party, but sometimes that doesn’t matter.

But much like 2022, it’s not hard to find GOP donors groaning that their team’s strategy of embracing wealthy outsiders (read: amateurs) is setting themselves up for another November looking for a red wave that never shows.

Candidates with big checkbooks didn’t save Republicans in 2022. Still, the well-funded are back as likely nominees in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. And the leaders in Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are facing varying degrees of real criticism for how long they’ve actually lived in the state they are running to represent. https://time.com/6982060/congress-senate-candidates/

Google criticized as AI Overview makes obvious errors, such as saying former President Obama is Muslim

It’s been less than two weeks since Google debuted ‘AI Overview’ in Google Search, and public criticism has mounted after queries have returned nonsensical or inaccurate results within the AI feature — without any way to opt out.

An example: “When asked how many Muslim presidents the U.S. has had," AI Overview responded, "‘The United States has had one Muslim president, Barack Hussein Obama.’” https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/24/google-criticized-as-ai-overview-makes-errors-like-saying-president-obama-is-muslim.html

Majority of Americans wrongly believe U.S. is in recession – and most blame Biden

Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy.

55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing. 49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year. 49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.

Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with 58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.

The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.

In April, the inflation rate went down from 3.5% to 3.4% – far from inflation’s 40-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 – triggering a stock market rally that pushed the Dow Jones index to a record high. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll-economy-recession-biden

 

Ohio Governor Calls Special Session to Get Biden on Ballot

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) announced Thursday that he was calling a special legislative session to ensure President Biden will be on the November election ballot in his state.

Said DeWine: “This is simply unacceptable. Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States, on the ballot this fall. Failing to do so is simply not acceptable. This is a ridiculous — this is an absurd — situation.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/23/ohio-biden-ballot/

Migrant Crossings Plunge 54%

Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in May are down by more than 50% compared to the record highs reported in December, giving the Biden administration an unexpected reprieve during a time when migration has historically surged. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-us-mexico-border-crossings-mayorkas-may-2024/

Garland calls Trump's false claim of Biden DOJ plan to potentially assassinate him during FBI's Mar-a-Lago search 'extremely dangerous'

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday slammed former President Donald Trump for insinuating President Joe Biden authorized his potential assassination during the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022 for confidential government material, pointing out that a similar Justice Department memo on the use of deadly force was also used in the FBI search of Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home in January 2023.

Garland called Trump's accusation, which came after documents were unsealed Tuesday by the special counsel investigating the ongoing federal probe into those missing documents, "false and extremely dangerous." https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/garland-calls-trumps-false-claim-biden-doj-plan/story
 

Some GOP senators plan to skip Trump convention

Senate Republicans not known for being ardent backers of former President Trump are weighing whether to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer or sidestep it fully, as he moves closer to a White House return next year.

Four Senate GOP members in that mold — Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Todd Young (Ind.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) — told The Hill they do not plan on traveling to the convention in July to celebrate what will be a coronation of the ex-president. Five others — Sens. Mike Rounds (S.D.), Susan Collins (Maine), Bill Cassidy (La.), Jerry Moran (Kan.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) — indicated they have not decided whether to go at this point.

Of the group, all except for Tillis have not backed Trump’s third bid for the White House, with the North Carolina senator only lightly supporting him after holding out throughout the primary fight. While none specifically cited Trump as the reason for not attending, their feelings — or lack thereof — for the former president are largely well-known. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4680354-senate-republicans-rnc-convention-milwaukee/

Democrat ruled 'out of order' after listing off Trump's legal woes on the House floor

The House floor was at a standstill for more than an hour after Republicans objected to Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern's describing Trump's various legal cases.

 Action on the floor of the House of Representatives paused for more than an hour Wednesday after Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., listed off the criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.

“We have a presumptive nominee for president facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it,” McGovern said during debate on the House floor, suggesting that House Republicans had prohibited any honest discussion of Trump's trials. “A candidate for president of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law.”

House Republicans quickly pushed back against McGovern’s words, with the back-and-forth leading to a lengthy delay as House staff members figured out how to proceed. His remarks were eventually ruled out of order. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/democrat-ruled-order-listing-trumps-legal-woes-house-floor-rcna153624

As Trump campaigns, he's spreading QAnon posts anew. Some call that 'playing with fire'

As Donald Trump heads toward a November rematch election against President Joe Biden, his online posts are reinvigorating a key element of his support from years past: the conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

While QAnon largely faded from the spotlight after Trump left office, he has newly amplified the ideas on his social media platform, Truth Social. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/05/23/trump-qanon-2024-election/73794116007/
 

Supreme Court’s South Carolina ruling boosts GOP, with national implications

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the use of a South Carolina congressional map that a lower court said “exiled” thousands of Black voters to carve out a district safer for a White Republican incumbent.

At issue for the court was whether South Carolina’s new map, which was created by the GOP-led state legislature and moved Black voters from one district to another, was permitted to bolster the Republican majority or was an unconstitutional effort to divvy up voters by race. The 6-3 conservative majority reversed the lower court finding that the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander but gave Black voters a chance to continue the case using a different argument. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/23/supreme-court-ruling-south-carolina-voting-map-gerrymander/

Anti-Trump Group of Republicans Lays Out $50 Million Plan of Attack

A Republican group dedicated to opposing former President Donald J. Trump is planning to spend $50 million to stop him through a series of homemade testimonial videos of voters who backed him in past elections but say they can no longer support him in 2024.

The group, Republican Voters Against Trump, first emerged in the 2020 campaign and made a return appearance for the 2022 midterm elections. It is run by Sarah Longwell, a leading figure in Never-Trump politics whose focus groups and polling are a staple of center-right podcasts and have made her a go-to figure for political reporters aiming to decipher the motivations behind Trump supporters.

Ms. Longwell said she had $20 million already committed to her 2024 effort and aimed to raise the rest of the money for her advertising campaign between now and the fall. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/us/politics/republican-voters-against-trump.html

Russia Denies Trump’s Claim He Could Free U.S. Journalist

Donald Trump boasted on Thursday he would quickly free the jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich from Russia if he wins the presidential election, but Moscow denied discussing the case with the Republican candidate. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/23/russia-denies-trump-claim-us-journalist

THE DAILY GRILL …

“WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!” — https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112481173729711738

VERSUS

A recently unsealed document outlining the FBI’s procedure for searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 for classified documents included standard language about the “use of force” in searches. The document, called a law enforcement operations order, explains what agents were permitted to bring with them when they searched Trump’s estate and how they were allowed to operate as part of the search. It also includes boilerplate language from the Justice Department manual about use of force, including the limited circumstances in which agents are authorized to use deadly force. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/politics/donald-trump-fundraising-email-what-matters/index.html

 

Great meeting with Glenwood Springs City Councilor and former Mayor Jonathan Godes. We have secured over $51.4 million for the South Bridge.
Was thrilled to hear about nearly $30 million in costs savings in addition and that my support has helped make this project a reality. — Rep. Lauren Boebert https://twitter.com/RepBoebert/status/1793316841042878576

VERSUS

Congresswoman, in what way do you believe that your support helped this project? We chose it because it's a good project, and funded it using President Biden's infrastructure package, which you voted against. — Secretary Pete Buttigieg.  https://twitter.com/SecretaryPete/status/1793407915442803046

 

Former UN Ambassador and GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she'll vote for Trump in November. https://www.axios.com/2024/05/22/nikki-haley-trump-endorse-vote-2024-election

VERSUS

“Many of the same politicians who publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he’s been and will continue to be. They are just too afraid to say it out loud. I’m not afraid to say the hard truth out loud. I feel no need to kiss the ring.” --  Haley in a February 20 campaign speech in Greenville, S.C. https://19thnews.org/2024/05/nikki-haley-voting-trump-election-2024/

“If you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being president of the United States,” she said in February 10 remarks on the campaign trail.—  Haley also hit back at mocking comments Trump made questioning the whereabouts of her husband, Michael Haley, who was deployed with the United States Africa Command.  https://19thnews.org/2024/05/nikki-haley-voting-trump-election-2024/