“Secretary of State Marco Rubio [faced] a litany of questions Tuesday about the Trump administration’s fragile or stalling diplomatic efforts around the world when he appears for back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill for the first time since the Iran war began. Senate Republicans are meeting Tuesday to discuss next steps after the Justice Department said it would comply with a court order pausing the implementation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate President Donald Trump’s political allies. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is also set to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee. The hearing was scheduled for discussion of the Justice Department’s budget, but lawmakers will almost certainly focus their questioning on the settlement fund.” (06/02/26)
“The Trump administration has bent over backward to negotiate an end to Iran’s grand plans to develop nuclear weapons—before the June 2025 bombing, afterward, and again during the follow-up diplomacy of spring 2026. Yet Iran is unlikely ever to abandon its pursuit of the bomb voluntarily. With nuclear weapons, Tehran hopes to become the de facto hegemon of the Middle East. Only then could it effectively coerce or deter both Israel and the wealthy Arab Gulf states. And that is the charitable view, one that excludes the possibility of a messianic Shiite theocracy believing that eliminating the “one-bomb” state of Israel would forever ensure the Shiite minority permanent preeminence in the pantheon of Islamic jihadists. After three months of intermittent war, we are now better acquainted with Iran’s intentions and the realities of the conflict. The Iranian regime has never viewed ‘negotiations’ as a path leading to an ultimate ‘deal’.” (06/02/26)
“Jill Biden’s book is not even out yet — and she’s already trying to get it displayed on both the fiction and the non-fiction shelves. From her husband’s mental decline to the pardoning of her son, the former first lady has moved from the historical to the fanciful. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that ‘honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom’ — but if her promotional interviews are any measure, that chapter appears to be entirely missing from View from the East Wing: A Memoir. Last week Biden faced a torrent of criticism, including from Democrats like her former spokesperson, over her claim to CBS News that she thought her husband’s debate meltdown meant he might have been suffering a stroke. The interviewer didn’t mention the fact that Biden famously declared at the time that her husband was brilliant in the debate, and denied he was showing signs of mental decline.” (06/01/26)
“Ghana’s new bill criminalising LGBTQ+ activities will undergo scrutiny before it is officially approved, the president has said. Speaking during a visit to the UK, John Mahama said his legal council and attorney general would ‘sit on it because it was a private members’ motion … [and] not a government bill’. The bill – passed by parliament on Friday – proposes up to three years imprisonment for identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, and a ‘duty to report’ prohibited acts to police. ‘We will look at it and make sure that everything is in order,’ Mahama said, adding that the bill would be referred to the Council of State – his advisors – if there were any problems. Since coming into power last year, Mahama has been pressured by religious leaders to strengthen anti-gay measures, which ban same-sex relationships under laws dating from the British colonial era.” (06/02/26)
“Businesses big and small have started receiving tariff refunds after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump lacked the constitutional authority to impose higher import taxes on goods from nearly every other country. The process could grind to a halt, however, after the Trump administration said Friday that it intended to appeal a federal judge’s order to allow all companies that paid the invalidated duties to seek refunds, not just the ones that filed lawsuits. Until the Department of Justice informed the judge of its planned appeal, the refund system overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection had worked fairly smoothly. Refunds reached the bank accounts of the first successful applicants on May 12, about three weeks after importers and their customs brokers could start submitting claims, according to CBP.” (06/02/26)
“In mid-April, a week before Virginia voters narrowly passed new congressional maps in response to Republican gerrymandering, groups of landowners and land preservationists in Northern Virginia quietly won a state appeals court battle against a deep-pocketed consortium of developers. They had sued the county over failing to follow state regulations about posting public notices involving a data center project. Between the redistricting vote, Virginia’s legislative budget impasse over data center taxation, and state and federal lawmakers caterwauling from Washington to Richmond and back again, it’s not surprising that a suburban county court case didn’t really penetrate the dystopian news cycle. But a screwup that derails what would have been the world’s largest data center is worth unpacking. Zoning applications and hearings are some of the most combative, tedious, yet vital happenings in cities and towns.” (06/02/26)
“Republicans are on the verge of collapse, and it’s mostly President Donald Trump dragging them down. This may surprise the observer who just watched Trump knock off a handful of dissidents in Indiana’s Republican primaries and Sen. John Cornyn in Texas. But Trump is less popular with voters than he has ever been. Why? Part of the problem is standard mid-term woes, especially for a second-term president. Part of the problem is Trump’s ill-considered war in Iran and the subsequent increase in gas prices. Trump family self-enrichment probably pays a role, too. What does it mean for the GOP? It likely means a tsunami election in the 2026 midterm elections, with Democrats taking the U.S. House and gaining seats in the U.S. Senate while also winning state-level elections. … Republicans should also be worried about today’s bad vibes carrying over to 2028.” (06/01/26)
“The world learned this week that Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat all but set to win his party’s Senate primary next month, has been sexting up to 12 women in the past few years while married. For Platner, this just added to his Cadillac Mountain of scandals. You are likely familiar with the fact that the so-called oyster farmer has a Nazi tattoo that he covered up only after lying about knowing its meaning. He also has a long history off-color Reddit posts, including remarks blaming women for being raped. What was most telling about these sordid new sexting revelations wasn’t that it exposed Platner as a creep. We already knew that. It was that the leak came from a fellow Democrat. The party may be starting to realize they have created a Marxist monster they can’t control.” (05/31/26)
“The rollout of the DOJ’s ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ may have been botched, but the fund remains a good idea, and the hysteria from Democrats like the hypocritical Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and allied media is absurd. It’s not unprecedented or corrupt or President Trump’s personal ‘slush fund,’ no matter how loudly they shriek. It’s just a rebranding of an existing legal settlement fund Congress authorized decades ago, as Washington lawyer and veteran Senate oversight investigator Jason Foster points out. Administrations of both parties have repeatedly used the DOJ’s Judgment Fund to settle legal claims against the federal government, and Democratic administrations have used it for far more questionable payouts than the Trump administration’s proposal to compensate genuine victims of lawfare.” (05/31/26)
“This is my last article for TomDispatch. For over a decade, Tom Engelhardt has given me a platform to write about pretty much anything that grabs my — I’ll admit it, easily attracted — attention. It’s been a wonderful partnership for me, offering not just a place to publish, but a chance to think, talk, and often argue with the best editor I’ve ever worked with. A rarity in the age of Internet insta-publishing, TomDispatch subjects every article to the scrutiny of three separate proofreaders. Not for Tom the misplaced apostrophe or the confusion between ‘their’ and ‘they’re.’ Unlike the New York Times in a May 12, 2026 headline, no article appearing in TomDispatch would ever go rogue and ask the question, ‘Did the Fifth Circuit Go Rouge With Its Abortion Pills Ruling?'” (05/31/26)
