“Whoever designed President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department must be a fan of the Ocean’s Eleven movie franchise. The multi-act plot lines are strikingly similar: Put together a motley crew of risk takers; pick a seemingly invincible target rich in treasure; infiltrate the target; exploit its weaknesses; and get away with an improbable heist while the guards are asleep, distracted, or otherwise occupied. Act One of Trump’s story arc began on January 29, when he and his eldest sons and the Trump Organization filed the lawsuit in federal district court in Miami. If only briefly, it seemed like the plan just might work.” (06/11/26)
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Elena Gutiérrez
“Since January 2026, when the intensification of US policies aimed at suffocating the Cuban people began, I have had the opportunity to travel to the island three times. Each time I return with my heart a little more broken, but also with a stronger conviction that we need to defend Cuba. As a Mexican, I have received, on behalf of my compatriots, thousands of expressions of gratitude and hugs that the Cuban people send to the Mexican people. Every time I am there, I speak about the empathy and understanding we have toward Cuba, about the great efforts ordinary Mexicans make to bring a few kilos of rice to collection centers. And when I listen to Cubans, I learn a little more about the deep history that unites us.” (06/11/26)
“It’s June, which means the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to issue some of its most significant opinions of the term and, predictably, radicals on the political left are renewing their hysterical calls for sweeping changes to the court whenever decisions fail to align with their preferred policy outcomes. In recent years, virtually every Supreme Court ruling that has diverged from progressive policy preferences has been met with demands for so-called ‘court reform.’ This year, however, many prominent voices have abandoned any pretense of moderation, with demands for packing the court becoming the norm. U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, one of the most influential members of the Democratic Party, recently stated, ‘The Supreme Court is a disgrace. In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court and let me be very clear: Everything is on the table — everything — to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.'” (06/11/26)
“The Pentagon is on lockdown Thursday as emergency workers respond to the Department of War’s headquarters for ‘a hazardous materials incident,’ Arlington County Fire and EMS said in a post to X. ‘ACFD units, including our Hazardous Materials Team, are currently operating at the Pentagon in support of PFPA’s Hazmat Team during a hazardous materials incident,’ it said. Building systems detected an ‘air quality issue,’ which prompted a shelter-in-place order, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. ‘The Pentagon has sophisticated systems to ensure the safety of the building and its occupants,’ Parnell said. ‘Those systems have detected an air quality issue necessitating precautionary measures until we determine its significance. The Department is executing standard protection protocols, including a shelter-in-place order for the affected area. Response teams are in place and ready to support building occupants.'” (06/11/26)
“A top Trump agency is cutting off funding to the Los Angeles agency responsible for coordinating billions in homelessness spending after accusing it of ‘obvious fraud,’ ‘wanton mismanagement’ and repeated failures to safeguard taxpayer dollars, Fox News Digital has learned. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is a member of the White House fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance, is immediately suspending the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) federal funding while HUD’s inspector general investigates potential offenses by the agency and its leadership, according to a letter sent to LAHSA’s board chair Wendy Greuel and its CEO Gita O’Neill, which was obtained and reviewed by Fox News Digital. The letter detailed conflicts of interest, financial mismanagement, fraud, lack of oversight, and more from the homelessness agency, which has faced efforts by the city and county to take it over.” (06/11/26)
“SpaceX goes public Friday at around $1.7 trillion. Elon Musk owns enough SpaceX stock that, on top of everything else he holds, Musk becomes the first person in human history to cross the trillion-dollar line. The coverage will be all hype. Unprecedented. A genius. Where’s he going next? What does the future hold? It wasn’t like Elon Musk invented some amazing capacity. He didn’t do something transformational for the world. He didn’t harness electricity. He didn’t invent the transistor. He didn’t invent rocket flight. He didn’t invent satellite technology. He didn’t even make them much better. What he did was learn how to game the system. He took what America built through generations of investment and generations of hard work and turned it into a profit center for himself. He took American loans, American intellectual property, American space, American airwaves, and turned them into a wealth engine for one man.” (06/11/26)
“Karmelo Anthony will serve his sentence while it appears the fundraising campaign for his family organized by his mother, Kala Hayes, has been taken down. Anthony was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years behind bars on Tuesday. He has since filed a notice of appeal to challenge the conviction. He said in his appeal that he cannot afford a new lawyer, WFAA reported. Those documents say, Anthony is a ‘penniless, destitute, and indigent person, too poor to employ counsel to represent me on the appeal,’ according to the outlet. The fundraiser was posted on GiveSendGo, an international crowdfunding platform, on April 15, 2025. It was less than two weeks after Anthony fatally stabbed 17-year-old Austin Metcalf during a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas. All the while, the fundraiser for Anthony and his family, titled, ‘Help Karmelo Official Fund,’ initially had a goal of generating nearly $1.4 million, and raised just shy of $634,000.” (06/11/26)
“War Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a great speech on D-Day in Normandy. He told the Europeans they were committing civilizational suicide by allowing themselves to be ‘invaded’ by unassimilable migrants. It was the kind of warning you give to a friend who you see is making a terrible mistake. ‘Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,’ he said in northwestern France during commemorations for the 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944, landings of American and other Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe from Hitler’s dangerous ideology. … Naturally, he was pilloried by out-of-touch elitists on both sides of the Atlantic.” [editor’s note: When Devine refers to “out-of-touch elitists,” she means anyone who’s not batshit insane – TLK] (06/10/26)
“The Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a landmark community institution built deliberately across the Canada–US border in 1904 so neighbours could share books and performances, has opened a new Canada-only entrance. This comes after the Trump administration limited access for individuals entering from Canada, barring them from using the library’s original main entrance, situated in Vermont on the US side of the border. For more than a century, visitors from both countries moved freely through the building, crossing the international border marked by a strip of black tape on the floor. But tighter US security rules effectively closed the historic shared entrance to Canadian visitors in October 2025. The new entrance, created from a former emergency exit on the Canadian side, was a costly project funded in part through community fundraising.” (06/11/26)
“Alabama is waging a last-minute legal fight to [kill] a man with nitrogen gas on Thursday night, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to set aside a judge’s finding that the method violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Jeffery Lee, 49, is scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Thursday. However, a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that nitrogen executions are unconstitutional and blocked the state from using the method to put Lee to death. The state filed an appeal Thursday asking the Supreme Court to set aside the ruling and allow the execution. ‘If that ruling stands, it would be unprecedented in American history. Not only does it portend the first-ever permanent ban on a legislatively enacted method, but it would expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment,’ lawyers with the Alabama attorney general’s office wrote.” (06/11/26)
