Author name: moderat ereport

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Florida GOP steals disaster relief tools for twisted ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Trump makes Coke great again—by making it Mexican

Republicans are trying to fully cement President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., after a Republican lawmaker introduced a bill to remove former President John F. Kennedy’s name from the building and replace it with Dear Leader’s.  The bill, introduced by Missouri GOP Rep. Bob Onder, is called the Make Entertainment Great Again Act. If passed, it would erase Kennedy’s name from the building—which was renamed after Kennedy in 1964 following his assassination and serves as “a living memorial” to the late president, and call it the Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts. A cartoon by Clay Jones. “You would be hard pressed to find a more significant cultural icon in the past 40 years than President Trump,” Onder said in a news release that heaped praise upon Dear Leader. “President Trump’s love and mastery of entertainment has stood the test of time and allowed him to capture Americans’ attention for decades. I cannot think of a more ubiquitous symbol of American exceptionalism in the arts, entertainment, and popular culture at large than President Trump.” Changing the name of the Kennedy Center would fully cement Trump’s takeover of the performing arts powerhouse. Already, Trump fired the entire Kennedy Center board of trustees and replaced them with his own MAGA bootlickers in order to change the kind of programming that is featured in the building. Trump then claimed the board unanimously made him chairman. Republicans are also trying to rename the Kennedy Center’s Opera House—one of a number of theaters inside the building—after first lady Melania Trump in yet another ridiculous and divisive move. Related | What the f-ck is the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House? But renaming the entire building after Trump would likely further damage the performing arts center. Already, artists have decided not to bring their shows or performances to the center in protest of Trump’s takeover. And ticket sales have slumped as much as 50%, as patrons also decide they do not want to financially support Trump’s hostile takeover and changes. But that doesn’t matter to congressional Republicans, who will do anything to prove their love and devotion to their MAGA God. Aside from wanting to rename the Kennedy Center after Trump, congressional Republicans have also introduced bills that would put Trump’s face on the $100 bill, add Trump’s face to Mount Rushmore, and rename Dulles International Airport in Virginia after him. Other Republicans have moved to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, the long-elusive honor that Trump is so mad he won’t ever get. The Republican ass kissing of Dear Leader is truly stomach churning.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina continues her transformation into an erratic and increasingly cruel presence in the GOP. Appearing Sunday on Fox News, Mace gushed over President Donald Trump’s inhumane and illegal deportation policies, which include arresting people who are complying with legal immigration processes by appearing in court. “[There’s a] new sheriff in town,” Mace said. “I have to tell you, one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube these days are the court hearings where illegals are in court and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] shows up to drag them out of court and deport them. I can think of nothing more American today than keeping our streets safer by getting those violent criminals out of the United States of America.” YouTube Video Mace’s apparent enjoyment at what best resembles a gestapo-like roundup of people—many of whom are law-abiding and were living in our country legally—serves as a stark reminder of the cruelty that the Republican Party revels in. The ICE project of detainment and deportation without due process has been ruled illegal by federal judges, and the Trump administration has also shown a willingness to violate the rights of innocent people to push a purely racist agenda. Mace’s turn from so-called moderate Republican to bloviating opponent of transgender rights and immigrant rights has been both grotesque and unsurprising. Over the past few years, she has increased her bigoted rhetoric against trans Americans, and her reckless and inflammatory accusations against a variety of people have prompted at least one former staffer to describe Mace as “full of shit.” It seems clear that Mace is also full of cruelty.

Last week saw two more high-profile officials from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency take their leave. Gosh, what will the government do without rich industrialists play-acting at being federal employees?  The biggest departure was Tyler Hassen, the oil executive whom President Donald Trump installed as shadow secretary of the interior. You might remember Hassen from the bloodless coup in April, where the nominal secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, essentially signed full control of the agency over to Hassen, the very epitome of an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat.  As of Aug. 1, the government won’t have Hassen to kick around any longer. He’s stepping away from pretending to be in government service, presumably to spend more time with his money. The New York Times piece on Hassen’s departure mentions none of Hassen’s accomplishments while at Interior, likely because there aren’t any.  No word on whether Burgum will get a new babysitter who currently works at a hedge fund or something, but for the moment, the former North Dakota governor put his big boy pants on to go tour Alcatraz with Attorney General Pam Bondi. Nothing says “managing America’s precious public lands and natural resources” like reopening a prison that is, at the moment, a tourist attraction. Also out at DOGE: Antonio Gracias. While on the team, Gracias was responsible for … well, it’s not clear. Gracias is a pal of former DOGE leader Elon Musk, and he was an investor in Tesla. While in government, he kept busy by attacking Social Security and yelling about supposed voter fraud, but beyond that, who knows what he did. Gracias had a pretty sweet deal, though, as he was able to keep his day job running a private equity firm where he managed $2 billion in assets for nine public pension funds.  Thousands of protesters gather for an anti-Trump rally around the Washington Monument on April 5. Earlier this week, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten sent letters to the pension managers for those nine funds, asking them if they were at all concerned that their pension-fund fiduciary was moonlighting as a voter-fraud crank at DOGE. When Weingarten’s office emailed Gracias’ company, Valor Equity Partners, to inquire about his current DOGE employment status, the company stated that he had stopped volunteering with the government on July 1, although neither the government nor Gracias had mentioned this until Weingarten followed up.  Hassen and Gracias are the latest DOGE employees to leave, but they are two of many who departed following the ugly Trump-Musk breakup, which started in late May. A string of DOGE officials followed Musk out the door over the next few months. At least eight of the core DOGE staffers are gone, including Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, who now apparently just works for Elon? And at least seven DOGE engineers, many of whom had unprecedented access to private government data, are also out the door, with more on the way, according to Politico. To be fair, the taxpayers are lucky enough to still be paying for Edward “Big Balls” Coristine and other DOGE kidlets who now have regular government jobs where they all make well over $100,000, despite still having no relevant experience.  These departures highlight how ridiculous it was for the administration to pretend that money managers and tech titans would somehow step in and run the government while also retaining their day jobs as masters of the universe, because how hard can running the government be?  Turns out, a lot harder than Musk and his ilk realized. Now they all get to go back to their incredibly lucrative positions, and we all suffer the consequences of their haphazard, ill-informed cuts to government services. Sweet deal for them, at least.

Well, looks like President Donald Trump is still beefing with windmills. During a press conference in Scotland on Monday, Trump told reporters that windmills are “a disaster” and “a shame.” “Look, wind is the most expensive form of energy, and it destroys the beauty of your fields and your planes and your, and your waterways, and look, look out there. There’s no windmills. But if you look in another direction and you see windmills,” he said. He went on to promote his idea of efficient energy: oil and gas. “You can take a thousand times more energy out of a hole in the ground. This big … this big. It’s called oil and gas. And you have it there, the North Sea, this big that nobody would even see. You can take a thousand times more power because the wind is intermittent,” he said before claiming that every windmill is made by China. YouTube Video Trump’s anger toward wind energy began more than a decade ago, before he ran for president. He started a legal battle in Scotland to block a wind farm near his Aberdeenshire golf course—a battle he ultimately lost. But he’s never relented in his baseless attacks, claiming that wind farms are “killing” everything from birds to Americans to Scotland’s tourism.  In reality, wind continues to be one of the cheapest sources of energy around the world. And despite Trump’s claim, China doesn’t manufacture all of the windmills, and Scotland is generating record-breaking amounts of renewable energy, much of it powered by wind. What’s more expensive than windmills? U.S. taxpayers funding Trump’s golf trips to places like Scotland. Datawrapper Content