“U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow advanced to a runoff in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary Saturday, capitalizing on the power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement in another attempt to purge his party of people he views as disloyal. State Treasurer John Fleming came in second to join her in the next round of voting. Trump supported Letlow over incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial over the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cassidy, a doctor, has also clashed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, though he provided crucial support to help Kennedy get confirmed.” (05/16/26)
“For American executives who spot fraud and financial misconduct among workers and then quickly report it, the U.S. Justice Department has a refreshing message: Your alertness to right-doing can bring a reward – in mercy. Federal prosecutors were recently handed expanded powers to be lenient toward companies that voluntarily report wrongdoing by individual employees in a ‘timely’ manner, make amends to those wronged, and shape up internal rules – hotlines, audits, etc. – to expose white-collar crime. The accused individuals are then prosecuted, not the company, preventing a hefty fine or forfeiture. Shareholders and employees also benefit from the avoidance of some kinds of negative fallout, such as bankruptcy. Yet the biggest result so far, according to Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York – which includes Wall Street – has been faster and greater detection of fraud.” (05/15/26)
“Caitlin and Tim discuss AI, Israel’s threat to sue the New York Times, militarized robots, and the ethics of watching porn. Caitlin paints Sam Altman.” (05/16/26)
“It’s great that the FBI is probing former CIA Director John Brennan’s role in the Russiagate conspiracy, but the country needs a lot more than criminal investigations and prosecutions to fully air the truth about the 2016 plot to smear Donald Trump as a pawn of Vladimir Putin. The probe turns on Brennan’s apparent perjury in congressional testimony about one part of his role, namely the fact that in 2016 he ensured that the ‘Steele dossier’ would be part of an Intelligence Community Assessment that claimed to find real Trump-Russia collusion. … The dossier, you’ll recall, was a farrago of fiction (including the ‘pee tape’ lie) about Trump’s alleged connections to Russia; the Clinton campaign paid British ex-spook Christopher Steele to fabricate it as a weapon against Trump during the 2016 campaign.” [editor’s note: The Clinton campaign was Steele’s second client for the “dossier” material. The first client was a Republican news site – TLK] (05/16/26)
“The US military has been carrying out extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Pacific over the past nine months with impunity. On May 8, the US military struck another boat in the eastern Pacific, killing two people and leaving one survivor. US Southern Command claimed ‘the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes’ and ‘was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.’ According to The Intercept, there have now been 58 such boat strikes since September that have killed at least 193 people. As with the May 8 attack, the names and nationalities of most of these victims remain unknown. The Trump administration has accused civilian boats of transporting narcotics to the US and says its killing ‘narco-terrorists.’ But the Pentagon has provided no evidence for these claims or any indication that the people killed posed an imminent threat” (05/16/26)
“A Hamas official has confirmed to the BBC that Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, commander of the group’s armed wing, was killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on Friday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a joint statement that Haddad had been ‘responsible for the murder, kidnapping and injury of thousands of Israeli civilians and IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers’. Israel described him as ‘one of the architects of the October 7 massacre.’ The strike is the latest launched by Israel on Gaza despite a ceasefire with Hamas. Three eyewitnesses told the BBC that a residential building known as Al-Mu’taz was struck by three missiles launched simultaneously from two separate directions, before a fleeing car was hit. The air strike, targeting the apartment block in the centre of Gaza City, sparked a large fire.” (05/16/26)
“As we celebrate America at 250, there is a part of our founding in the Constitution (Article II, Section 1, Clause 2), about which some on the left gnash their teeth — the Electoral College. For example, a few days ago, a former Biden administration official asked publicly, ‘What if we selected our President by letting the person who got the most votes take the office, instead of the Electoral College?’ … Meanwhile, many blue states, including just recently Virginia, have signed on to a compact to try and effectively nullify the Electoral College.” [editor’s note: To make the EC relevant to today, they only need to follow the lead of Maine and Nebraska, and DECENTRALIZE it – SAT] (05/16/26)
“Venezuela’s government said Saturday it deported a close ally of Nicolás Maduro facing several criminal investigations in the U.S. less than three years after the businessman was pardoned by President Joe Biden as part of a prisoner swap. The decision marks a stark reversal for Alex Saab, who Maduro fought tooth and nail to bring home after his previous international arrest in 2020. Now, the Colombian-born insider, long described by U.S. officials as Maduro’s ‘bag man,’ may be asked to testify against his former protector, who is awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan after being captured in a shock raid by the U.S. military in January.” (05/16/26)
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern Ituri province a public health emergency of international concern. The agency added that the outbreak, with around 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths reported, does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency. WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned there are currently ‘significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread’ of the outbreak. The current strain of Ebola is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, the health agency said, for which there are no approved drugs or vaccines. The WHO said there are now eight laboratory-confirmed cases of the virus, with other suspected cases and deaths across three health zones including Bunia the capital of Ituri province, and the gold-mining towns of Mongwalu and Rwampara.” (05/16/26)
“‘Gerrymandering’ is the historic term for politicians picking their voters by manipulating congressional and state electoral districts. Redistricting usually happens every 10 years. It is fair to say that most voters don’t want politicians rigging the system to help one party win elections. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have played this partisan gerrymandering game for years. Recently, the Republicans have become more ruthlessly partisan and have outpaced the Democrats. That is why, for example, in Pennsylvania, Democrats substantially outvote the Republicans but have fewer seats in the House of Representatives. In the past year, the gerrymandering race has run amok. It was ignited by Tyrant Trump, who told his buddy Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to break with the decennial tradition and get the GOP legislature this year to redistrict Texas to knock out four or five Democrats who are now in Congress.” (05/16/26)
