TRUMP BUMP

Donald Trump’s revenge tour is facing stiff pushback from NPR, Harvard and judges around the country. Now, even some on the far-right think his team’s latest moves are lame.

• Who left a dime bag of cocaine in the White House two years ago? That’s the burning question ex-podcaster and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino suddenly wants his agency to use its investigative powers to answer right now. And why not? After all, that scandal has all the elements of a MAGA crowdpleaser: It’s ripe for conspiracy theories, likely to go nowhere fast, and points vaguely at the Biden administration.

• Bongino and his boss, President Donald Trump, could use a boost… because their revenge tour hasn’t been going so hot. Trump swept into office determined to smite his enemies, including universities, foreign students, migrants, foreign countries, law firms, the media, his former staffers and many more. But increasingly, his targets are fighting back in court — and they’re winning.

• Trump’s team lost a stunning 96 percent of its legal battles at the district court level in May — with judges handing out defeats in 26 out of 27 decisions. The slapdowns came from judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans. “Judges, even highly partisan ones, often harbor deep-seated loyalties beyond political alignment,” writes Adam Bonica, author of the On Data and Democracy newsletter. “Put simply: the legal arguments are too weak, the overreach too plain, the facts too damning.”

• Trump’s legal vulnerability is encouraging others to fight back. NPR and other public radio stations sued the Trump administration today over his executive order cutting federal funding to NPR and PBS. “The power of the purse is reserved to Congress,” the lawsuit says. Meanwhile, Harvard University remains steadfast against White House attempts to ban international student enrollment, cancel all of its federal contracts, and revoke its tax exempt status. “We need to be firm in our commitments to what we stand for,” Harvard President Alan Garber told NPR today.

Did MAGAworld react well to Bongino’s attempt at crowdpleasing? No! They demanded (wait for it…) more info on the death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

• In a flurry of responses to Bongino’s post about the cocaine and other probes, MAGA folks demanded the FBI find out whether child predator Epstein actually killed himself in prison. “They are reopening the investigation into a dime bag of coke nobody cares about, but not Epstein. Neat,” tweeted TheQuartering, a popular far-right YouTuber.

• The irony here is that Bongino himself whipped up those conspiracy theories into a frenzy as a podcaster. Now, he’s facing blowback from his former listeners after recently changing his tune and insisting that foul play is out of the question. “He killed himself. I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself,” Bongino told Fox News two weeks ago.

• “If you’ve been jacking your audience up on this conspiracy theory for years, what do you expect will happen?” Jane Coaston, who has covered right-wing disinfo for years and hosts our sister podcast, told me earlier today.

Will Bongino find the former White House staffer with the taste for nose candy? Will MAGA actually care? Tune in next time to find out.

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Brainworm survivor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Department of Health and Human Services will no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy pregnant women and healthy children. It’s an extremely rare move, in which the brainworm… er, I mean HHS secretary… bypassed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered embassies around the world to stop scheduling new student visa application interviews. It’s the latest effort by the Trump administration to restrict foreign students’ entry to U.S. schools while it claims to be concerned about antisemitism on campus. Well, Secretary Rubio, you get an “F” for basic empathy.

Border czar Tom Homan earned an undisclosed amount of money from consulting for a division of GEO Group, which runs many of the U.S. immigration detention centers, before joining the administration. That’s notable, because GEO Group is expected to profit massively from Trump’s immigration crackdown, which Homan is spearheading. The White House said that Homan abides by “the highest ethical standards.” I’ve seen higher ethical standards from a hungry coyote.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio compared Donald Trump to fascist dictators of the past, and said the parallels should be obvious: “When I say that the policies President Trump is using to ‘make America great again’ are remarkably like the policies that those of the hard-right countries in the 1930s used, that should not be controversial,” he wrote in a new book. Were you thinking Benito Mussolini, Mr. Dalio, or did you have another 1930s dictator in mind?

Trump pardoned Scott Howard Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff convicted of accepting more than $75,000 in bribes last year. In return, Jenkins appointed businessmen as auxiliary deputy sheriffs in his department. “No MAGA left behind,” tweeted Ed Martin, Trump’s deranged pardon attorney. No felons either!

Trump’s cuts to the CDC include a unit focused on drowning prevention, worrying experts that key patterns will go unnoticed, because there are fewer people analyzing data as summer approaches. “The way that this was done means that there was a lot of taxpayer dollars that were wasted here because there was work already in process,” a CDC official told Politico.

Israeli forces fatally shot Amer Rabee, a 14-year-old Palestinian American boy who they accused of throwing rocks and endangering civilians, 11 times last month, the boy’s father told the New York Times. But Rabee and his friends were only picking almonds in an orchard when soldiers opened fire, his family and one of the friends said. Israel described the boys as “terrorists.”

A former assistant to Sean “Diddy” Combs said that the music mogul kidnapped her at gunpoint before plotting to murder rapper Kid Cudi, who was dating Combs’s ex-girlfriend. “We’re going to kill Cudi,” Combs told the assistant, according to her testimony today. Combs then drove to Cudi’s house and broke in, but the rapper and his bodyguard escaped.

Tesla sold 49 percent fewer cars in Europe in April compared to last year, which is likely partially attributable to consumers still really hating Elon Musk and his far-right politics. The funniest part? Electric car sales in Europe increased 34 percent at the same time.

Southwest Airlines will begin charging $35 for passengers’ first check bag and $45 for the second starting Wednesday. People with Southwest credit cards or elite status will still receive free checked bags. Okay, now I “Wanna Get Away” from these bag fees

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