Pensito Illustration His appointees are usually good at one thing: Trump pleasin’.
But agencies like FEMA require capable leaders, it stands to reason.
We don’t need some bloke
Who covers his ignorance with a joke,
Like FEMA head David Richardson, who doesn’t know it’s hurricane season.
“What I have said very publicly is that Democrats need to play possum. This whole thing is collapsing. …. I believe that this administration, in less than 30 days is in the midst of a massive collapse and particularly a collapse in public opinion. …. It’s going to be easy pickings here in six weeks. Just lay back.”
— James Carville told Mediaite that the Trump administration would “collapse” within 30 days and advised Democrats to sit back and let it happen.
A new Economist/YouGov Poll finds President Trump’s approval rating and personal popularity falling over the past two weeks. This week’s poll finds Americans are less likely to approve of Trump (46%) than to disapprove (48%), and less likely to view him favorably (46%) than unfavorably (52%).
Trump and Musk think federal employees are shirking,
But we think their approach is disconcerting.
Don’t you think it’s funny
That they think we’re saving money
By paying 40,000 people for eight months of not working?
“President-elect Donald Trump is preparing nearly 100 executive orders for when he returns to the White House on Jan. 20,” the Washington Post reports. “Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), appearing on Fox News, said Trump relayed plans to take action on immigration and energy, among other issues, during a meeting with Republican senators in Washington on Wednesday night.”
Pensito Illustration
By resigning as FBI director prior to the end of his 10-year tenure, Christopher Wray has thwarted Donald Trump’s plans to install the odious Kash Patel as FBI chief.
New York Times: “By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a ‘legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.’”
“Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.”
“Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1.”
“Within the party Ronald Reagan once led so capably, it is increasingly fashionable to suggest that the sort of global leadership he modeled is no longer America’s place. … But let’s be absolutely clear: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline.”
L’il Marco Rubio secretary of state? That’s adorable. Stephen Miller because — not despite — he’s horrible.
As Trump fills his cabinet,
We ain’t seen nothing yet,
But rest assured — it will be another Basket of Deplorables.
A new Morning Consult poll finds 53% of Americans don’t know why the American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence to separate from Britain on July 4, 1776.
President Trump’s pardons and commutations have cost more than $100 million in fines owed to the federal government and another $1.5 billion in restitution to victims, Forbes reports.
Gallup: “A record-low 58% of U.S. adults say they are ‘extremely’ (41%) or ‘very’ (17%) proud to be an American, down nine percentage points from last year and five points below the prior low from 2020. … Democrats are mostly responsible for the drop in U.S. pride this year, with 36% saying they are extremely or very proud, down from 62% a year ago. This is only the second time Democrats’ pride has fallen below the majority level, along with a 42% reading in 2020, the last year of the first Trump administration.”
The CBO estimates that the Republican reconciliation bill that the Senate is considering will increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion between 2025 to 2034, Bloomberg reports.Punchbowl News says Senate Republicans and the White House reject the CBO estimate as inaccurate. The White House estimates it will cut the deficit by $4.9 trillion over the next decade.
Cato Institute: As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.