Plotzing From Outrage Fatigue! Tabs, Thurs., May 22, 2025

Things to read and watch!

tabs gifs by Martini Glambassador

Hi Wonklets! What’s going on today?

The House was expected to vote on the Big Beautiful Blowjobs For Billionaires Bill at about 6 a.m., did they officially take food out of poor kids’ mouths yet?

Sad news: Representative Gerry Connolly has died at 75. (Washington Post)

Trump is once again EMERGENCY asking the Supreme Court to step in and over mean lower-court judges who won’t let him break the law, this time to stop the release of records of whatever it is DOGE has been doing in the Office of Management and Budget. He’s already EMERGENCY appealed to them to let members of DOGE back into the records of the Social Security Administration (on top of all of his other emergency appeals), and the Court has not made up their mind about that yet. (New York Times archive link)

Doesn’t seem like the administration intends to respect SCOTUS anyway, though: a plane with eight migrants the administration is trying to disappear to war-torn South Sudan, showed up yesterday more than 800 miles away in Djibouti instead. A judge quickly found the government violated his order and asked for a list of names of everyone involved, so he can notify them that criminal contempt may be coming. (New York Times archive link)

Speaking of the wrong African country, how disgusting is Trump? This much: he showed South African Prime Minister Cyril Ramaphosa photos of burned bodies that he claimed were proof of the conspiracy theory that white farmers are being murdered in South Africa, but the photos were actually of murdered black female prisoners in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Agence France-Presse)

More SIGNALGATE! The app Mike Waltz was caught using to archive his Signal messages, TeleMessage, got hacked, and now here come caches of leaks! Nothing from the Trump cabinet (yet), but data from more than 60 unique government users: “Some chats did seem to bear on the travel plans of senior government officials. One Signal group, ‘POTUS | ROME-VATICAN | PRESS GC,’ appeared to pertain to the logistics of an event at the Vatican. Another appeared to discuss U.S. officials' trip to Jordan.” ALL CLEAR ON OPSEC! (Reuters)

Sure didn’t take long for a judge to call (acting) US Attorney Alina Habba an idiot! At a hearing to drop charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, the judge lectured the lawyer from her office: “The hasty arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, followed swiftly by the dismissal of these trespassing charges a mere 13 days later, suggests a worrying misstep by your office. An arrest, particularly of a public figure, is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action, carrying significant reputational and personal consequences, and it should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate evaluation of credible evidence. […] Your role is not to secure convictions at all costs, nor to satisfy public clamor, nor to advance political agendas.” Baraka, on a hot mic after the hearing’s conclusion: “Jesus, he tore these people a new asshole. Good grief.” (New Jersey Globe)

And in another, virtual, hearing for Rep. Monica McIver, she was “released on her own recognizance” for two felony assault charges, each with a maximum of eight years in prison. She is due back in court June 11. (Politico)

Because Sec. Def. Boozehound cannot think of a any bigger priority for the military than tormenting its own people who are trying to serve this country, military branches have now issued guidance to go into transgender soldiers’ records and change them to “reflect biological sex for all individuals.” (Reuters/ guidance)

Grift Department:

Holiday in Hanoi? The Trumps sure do love pressing foreign governments for deals that tuck a little sugar in the family g-string! Eric, the ugliest one, went to Hanoi yesterday to break ground on a $1.5 billion Trump-branded golf club in Vietnam, following President Daddy threatening Vietnam with 46 percent tariffs and then changing his mind about it. Eric is also pressuring the Vietnamese government to let them build a skyscraper. (NBC)

Former reality star/Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold stocks two days before Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs. Surely a coincidence! Remember when Martha Stewart went to prison for that shit, after James Comey relentlessly pursued her? (ProPublica)

Sec. Def. Hoochbreath also swanned in the Oval Office with Trump to fantasize about building a $175 Billion Big Beautiful Golden Defense Dome, which is surely will not be just a massive kickback to SpaceX, Palantir Technologies and Matt Gaetz’s brother-in-law Palmer Luckey’s company Anduril Industries. (Axios)

... did you catch that guy Luckey on 60 Minutes on Sunday? New billionaire Trump-supporting libertarian weirdo just dropped! This one’s got a mullet, wonky soul patch, and lots of Boogaloo-boy Hawaiian shirts.

Elon Musk’s motherboard overheated when a journalist pointed out that his own DOGE savings numbers don’t add up to the trillions he claims they do: “if you add that up, it’s not gonna get to $2 trillion over the lifetime of DOGE.” After an awkward pause, Elon snapped at her like a totally normal human being who has not spent his past few weeks in a k-hole, trying to train an AI bot to regurgitate white nationalist theories: “I mean, I feel you’re somewhat trapped in the NPC dialogue tree of a traditional journalist. So it’s difficult when I’m conversing with someone who’s trapped in the dialogue tree of a conventional journalist because it’s like talking to a computer.” (Daily Beast /TikTok)

Happier news!:

England is rolling out the world’s first gonorrhoea vaccine, which will hopefully work for gonorrhea too. (Guardian)

Albuquerque is funding a basic income project by taxing recreational cannabis. (Business Insider)

New Randy Rainbow!

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