It’s almost five years since my heart transplant, on May 26th, 2021. Yesterday and today, another round of visits and tests. Blood tests, echo-cardiogram, EKG, visit with cardiologist, cardiac right/left catheter angiogram (an actual surgery).
Here’s about last year’s visit
Everything’s still fine.
My partner’s and my anniversary (since first meeting) is also May 26th. As we did 10 years ago, we’re having dinner at Quince, in the city.
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Following up on the item noted in passing yesterday, which really is a big deal.
NY Times, Editorial Board, yesterday: There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This
Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order? Certainly not in modern times. President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.
The fund manages to combine three of Mr. Trump’s most alarming behaviors. One, it is an obvious form of corruption, coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family and his allies. Two, the fund continues his pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies. Three, the fund is his latest attempt to rewrite history about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.
To restate a repeated take here: Trump and his fans work to a primitive, tribal, might-makes-right, in-group vs out-group, morality, in which anything Fearless Leader does is fine. In defiance of the principles and ideals that were refined over centuries and established in the Enlightenment and adopted by the American founders and enshrined in the US Constitution. Which to Trump are merely tools to enrich and empower himself.
It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Mr. Trump’s political project: He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself. He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins. He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies. He purges his party of officials who defy him. He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies. He incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do. He directs his allies to change election rules to keep his party in power.
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MAGA is just fine with this.
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, today: Rep. Glenn Grothman Says Billion Dollar Slush Fund Will Vindicate Trump In The ‘Court Of History’
No it won’t.
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Another about this.
Paul Krugman, 19 May 2026: The Looting of America, subtitled “MAGA corruption reaches the point of no return”
So the Trump administration is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund — 1776, get it? — to pay off victims of “lawfare and weaponization.” Just to be clear, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer, this action means that almost $1.8 billion of your money will be handed out to whomever a panel appointed by Donald Trump decides to reward. The beneficiaries are likely to include January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump, his family, and his allies.
Few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to “settle” a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.
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Over and over.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte, yesterday: White House ballroom is turning into a symbol of Trump’s failures, subtitled “The president’s only legacy will be greed and corruption”
The surest sign that a MAGA leader knows they screwed up? When they try to pass off the stupid thing they said as a “joke.” But the right-wing podcaster Eric Metaxas was not joking at Sunday’s Rededicate 250 event on the National Mall when he said, “It’s hard to believe that it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom finally to stand where it needs to stand. It’s extraordinary.”
Seriously??? These people are dimwits. And while apparently something like 2/3 of the nation understands this, another third supports Trump whatever he does or says.
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And I see all sorts of videos, ‘reels,’ on Facebook, with Trump supports saying with a straight face the Trump was sent by God, that the earth is flat, and the Bible should be taught in schools as history. These things go together.
