Check out TFN’s podcast, make a donation, score swag, or connect in other ways.

FTN is intended to help Newsfuckers keep tabs on TFN without flooding their inboxes. To choose which TFN emails you get — weekly, daily, or Bonus Stories — adjust your Notification settings here.

Let’s facepalm…

Vance Gets His Own War: Against the Sick and Dying

Even with Pres. Donald Trump’s big historic trip to China on Wednesday to ask for help undoing Iran War III-½, Vice Pres. JD Vance was able to yoink some headlines for himself the old-fashioned way: Starting another war.

Of course, Vance is famous for opposing U.S. entanglements in foreign wars, so he launched yet another Trump administration domestic war. Most of the headlines framed it as a war on California: The suspension of $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments:

This is, of course, not the administration’s first time waging war on California. But Vance’s assault Wednesday came on multiple fronts, including one the administration has attacked before: Old and needy people. The sleep state! Y’know, the people Trump isn’t thinking about even a little bit in his Iran talks.

While not as sexy, perhaps, as pitting the administration against California, this other front has potentially more serious implications that were largely overlooked in the corporate media coverage.

Newsfuckers, to get the relevant info I wanted, I had to resort to health-care industry trade news websites. And advocacy-group websites! It was almost as if journalism requires work, rather than just transcribing what hillbilly elegists elegize about their attacks on old and needy hillbillies.

So what is this other front? To the credit of The Hill, which doesn’t always deserve credit, they gave Vance’s other assault its own article.

Starting Wednesday, for the next six months, the Trump administration won’t accept new enrollments in Medicare by a single new hospice or home health-care provider. That means any new hospice or home health-care provider that spent the last six months preparing to launch their business serving elderly and disabled people on Medicare … won’t.

Even if they haven’t committed any fraud because they don’t exist yet.

All to punish Medicare fraud that Vance hasn’t found yet.

Surprise!

This attack on old people — this Pearls Harbor, if you will, a day that will live in infirmity — was a joint operation of Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force and Dr. Mehmet Oz’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (sic) (CMS). Oz said, “[W]e’re shutting the door on fraud—preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them.” (h/t)

Oz didn’t mention that he’s also shutting the door on new, damn fine actors; perhaps not as good as Jacob Elordi, Miles Caton, or Teyana Taylor, but at least not committing Medicare fraud. But also, as Oz said, he and Vance are removing other providers.

Removing existing providers while not adding new ones means the Trump administration will for at least the next six months cut the number of Medicare hospice and home health-care providers in this country.

But even Pres. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) cuts to food and health-care won’t kill enough people to keep the number of people who need hospice and home health-care from growing over the next six months.

So what do the actors have to say about this, be they good, bad, or Timothée Chalamet? The Hill doesn’t say, because The Hill is political news.

We have to trudge our lazy asses over to Home Health Care News to find out that the moratorium also applies to changes in majority ownership, which can be used to conceal bad actors who are also directing. (It’s worth noting that if the Trump administration applied the same reasoning to financial firms, Wall Street would be as empty as a Vance Turning Point USA rally.)

We also find out from Home Health Care News that there was a response from the National Alliance for Care at Home — which missed an all-time great acronym by not slapping “Organization” at the end. In a mildly spicy statement, NACH(O) warned:

“[A]n enrollment moratorium raises serious access-to-care concerns in areas where patient demand is growing or existing capacity is already strained, leading to longer wait times, reduced service availability, and fewer choices for patients – particularly in rural or underserved communities.”

That’s you they’re talking to, MAGA victims of presidential fraud! If you can’t understand that, maybe your cognitive decline means you need home health-ca—OH, WAIT: Vance is now effectively blockading the strait of home health care.

According to NACH(O), a national moratorium is especially stupid, Trumpian even, because it’s already known that the fraud they’re allegedly worried about “is concentrated in specific geographies and among specific actors.” In fact, CMS has been offered free NACH(O) guidance for chipping away at fraud:

“The Alliance and other national organizations have repeatedly provided CMS with recommendations that focus on preventing bad actors from entering the Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

Under Pres. Joe Biden, CMS was already ramping up fraud enforcement. According to the law firm Holland & Knight, presumably counsel for bad actors:

“CMS previously imposed enrollment moratoria on new HHAs [home health agencies] in certain metropolitan areas where data suggested concentrated patterns of fraud. The current action represents a significant departure from that precedent…”

And the firm, which represents private equity, warns that “competition for acquisition targets with existing Medicare enrollments is expected to intensify.” Which means the cost of acquisitions of existing health-care providers will go up. Which means private-equity buyers may be saddling those providers with more debt, potentially forcing ailing hospices to go off and die quietly somewhere, surrounded by family.

So, how many actual human people are we talking about unless we’re political media, in which case we don’t talk about people? According to our saucy friends at NACH(O), in 2024, 1.91 million people on Medicare enrolled in hospice care. Granted, most of them weren’t enrolled in anything in 2025, but the total numbers keep increasing as America’s population tries to get older.

The 2024 enrollments were a 4.4% increase over 2023. According to a 2025 research paper — because TFN does the homework, kids! — in 2019, about 3.3 million people on Medicare got home health care. And that was before COVID!

In short, Vance and Oz are reducing the number of providers for a needy, old, and/or disabled population of more than five million.

Vance’s casus bellie is, of course, that old GOP scapegoat for depriving the needy of things they need: Waste, fraud, and abuse™. But his method of attacking waste, fraud, and abuse™ is a blanket assault guaranteed to incur civilian casualties, just hitting American senior homes instead of Iranian girls schools.

As Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) pointed out, the way to go after fraudulent providers is to go after fraudulent providers:

Plus, Vance is the last guy you want helping you on fraud issues. The guy’s changed his name more times than a fraudulent Medicare provider. And his religion.

It was Vance who defrauded the American people by scapegoating Haitians in Ohio during the campaign the way they’re now scapegoating Somalians in Minnesota for fraud. As his new health-care moratoriums for people sick and dying show, it’s always only a matter of time until they come for people whose lifespans are only a matter of time.

U.S. Now War-Criming Entire Island

Cuba has run out of gas.

Not in the metaphorical sense, like a Trump presidency or corporate media. Literally.

Cuban officials said Wednesday that the island nation’s supplies of diesel, gasoline, and natural gas have been depleted due to the U.S. blockade and threats to sanction any nation that sells oil to Cuba. Temperatures there are forecast to be in the high 80s for the rest of the month. And then get hotter.

The country is now reliant on renewable energy and the meager fossil fuels Cuba produces itself, neither of which are sufficient to meet the energy needs of the nation’s 10 million people. The country uses used 100,000 barrels daily but produces only 40,000.

The capital, Havana, now goes without electricity 20-22 hours per day. There’s no more gas to deliver food and other necessities throughout the island, or to power electric water pumps. Some schools and public transportation are shut down.

Pres. Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez on Wednesday blamed “the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country,” calling it a “criminal siege.”

Cuba needs eight fuel tankers per month to meet its energy needs, he said. Pres. Donald Trump allowed one through in April.

Cuba’s 65 years of Communism were declared a national emergency for the U.S. by Trump in January. Announcing the blockade, Trump said that Cuban policies and actions “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S., which has managed to hang on somehow for all 65 years.

Of course, the Cuban threat to the U.S. could be worse. They could have an actual military base on American soil the way we do on theirs.

According to a 2018 article published by American Society for International Law (ASIL) Insights, “The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) explicitly lists starvation and barring humanitarian relief as prosecutable war crimes when committed in IACs [international armed conflicts].”

It’s worth noting that the U.S. is not at war with Cuba, making the blockade a crime against humanity. Can it be both? Undoubtedly!

Here’s the ASIL Insights article: “Undoubtedly, blockades that cause mass starvation and deprivation of humanitarian relief can constitute both war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Protests in Havana Thursday, the third day in a row, remained peaceful but ornery.

CIA FOR ONCE ADMITS BEING IN CUBA CIA Director John Ratcliffe went to Cuba Thursday to strangle Cuba in person and to deliver fuel a message that Cuba cannot be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere.”

It’s not clear why the CIA is doing diplomacy instead of the State Department, especially given Cuban-American Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s longstanding boner for Cuba.

While it’s fair to assume that Ratcliffe went to Cuba because the U.S. likes to look into the eyes of its victims as they die, the CIA offered another reason. An unnamed (obvi) CIA official told the Associated Press that Trump wants Cuba to know that the U.S. will “seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.”

What changes? Presumably Cuba will have to transition from Communist authoritarianism to capitalist authoritarianism. Other possible U.S. demands include painting its reflecting pools blue, as well as renaming the country Trump-Cuba and its capital Havanka.

In exchange, the U.S. would continue its lawless terrorism, Boat-iac Killing™ people in boats, blowing up Mexico’s alleged drug kingpin chauffeurs with CIA bombs, kidnapping and killing national leaders, and, only when necessary, blowing up girls schools and then blaming someone else for that.

It’s not clear what’s next in the CIA’s diplomacy, or how Ratcliffe got home.

RATION RATIONALES Cuba’s energy crisis is underscoring some of the bullshit in American thinking about Cuba. Both parties have blamed Communism for Cuba’s economic woes — while simultaneously starving the island of economic ties to the much of the rest of the world.

But also, just on Wednesday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued that fossil fuels are preferable to renewables because “when the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity.”

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) then explained how batteries work.

As Cuba is so conveniently demonstrating, when you have no gas you have no gas when the sun goes down or when it comes back up (assuming it does), just like you have no gas when the wind is or isn’t blowing.

Talks with Zambia Stall Over How Insanely Evil U.S. Will Be

Y’know how TV news is ignoring America’s Zambian AIDS extortion racket the way it’s ignoring The Boat-iac Killings™? Well, it turns out the U.S. isn’t just extorting Zambia for its rare minerals in exchange for funding to stem the spread of AIDS.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a minerals summit for African officials in conjunction with February’s National Prayer Breakfast (which is heaven for lobbyists). Ironically, Rubio and Pres. Donald Trump have now left Zambia praying for help against AIDS.

But the State Department wants something in return for AIDS funding. Because having less AIDS making its way around the world in which we are is insufficient incentive, apparently.

The minerals are one price TFN has mentioned before. But wait, there’s more evil!

Thanks to Trump, the U.S. is no longer part of the World Health Organization, which is where the U.S. used to get data about world health when the U.S. was organized.

So now the U.S. wants Zambia to turn over health-care data about its people. Zambia wants to share in the proceeds from any medical breakthroughs that result from that data. But Trump’s comprehension of the word “share” is wanting.

Anyway, the point is that prayer breakfasts are unifying and no one has data on how many people in Zambia have died of AIDS due to Trump’s cuts because Trump cut money to count them, too.

Supreme Court Preserves Abortion Pill Access (for Now)

Most of the Supreme Court voted Thursday to allow women to continue to purchase mifepristone while the legal challenge to its availability is considered by lower courts. Not that many courts are lower than the Supreme these days.

The two justices who dissented were not appointed by Pres. Donald Trump, they were more-extreme appointees of the Bush dynasty, Presidents George H.W. and W. You know, the normal, good-old-days Republicans we’re supposed to crave a return to.

Justice Samuel Alito called the pills a “scheme” to circumvent state laws against abortion, which is not a legal argument but name-calling.

In his own, extremely satisfying dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas boo-hooed that abortion pills were once banned by the 1873 Comstock Act, which outlawed anything “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile.” At the time, that included things like Thomas’s marriage to a white woman, pornographic images in which viewers could see women’s ankles, and women taking abortion pills or voting.

Abolish the Department of Homeland (sic) Security

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) on Wednesday introduced a bill you might reasonably have assumed Democrats introduced years ago.

The bill would dismantle the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS), the Frankencheney behemoth that emerged from the ashes of 9/11, stitching together various intelligence and law-enforcement organs to prop up the lie that 9/11 happened due to lack of communication not due to Pres. George W. Bush dismissing the warning communication that was communicated to his dim, fatuous, failson face.

Ramirez’s Renewed Mandate for Human Rights bill would drastically reform immigration and other enforcement. It would also claw back some of the post-Cold War peace dividend we were supposed to get from the Pentagon, and it would create a federal monitor that would somehow try to keep track of all the U.S. human-rights abuses abroad.

Ramirez told Truthout:

“This is the kind of resolution that invites members of Congress and candidates on the campaign trail to really ask themselves, who are they, and what are they running on? … For me, it’s really about transparency and calling out systems of exploitation, and also what we want to replace those systems with.”

The bill is backed by Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). You can track who signs on as co-sponsors here.

Iran War Prolonged by Defectors (from Democratic Party)

On Thursday, the House voted on a bill to force Pres. Donald Trump to end Iran War III-½. It was the first such vote since the 60-day legal limit on waging war without congressional approval expired.

Three Republicans broke ranks to join Democrats and stop the war. But the bill failed by one vote: A Democratic vote.

Thanks to Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), the vote was tied at 212-212, meaning it failed to pass.

A similar measure died in the Senate on Wednesday, 50-49, with, again, three Republicans breaking ranks and one Democrat supporting the unconstitutional war: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).

While Not Giving a Shit about America, Trump Full of Shit about Iran

Pres. Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and pretty much every other American defense and intelligence leader have been covering up just how little impact America’s bomb impacts have had. In short, in the same way they downplayed the effect of Iran strikes, U.S. officials from Trump on down — and he’s pretty far down — have up-played the effect of U.S. strikes.

That’s according to America’s own intelligence findings, which Trump’s coverup was covering up until the New York Times uncovered them Tuesday night. And, of course, the Times got this info from U.S. government sources who clearly want us to know that Trump and Hegseth are lying. The findings:

• Iran now has 30 of its 33 Strait of Hormuz missile sites operational again.

• Iran still has 70% of its mobile launchers.

• Iran still has 70% of its missiles.

• About 90% of its missile storage/launch facilities are at least partially operational.

One reason: A critical decision by Hegseth or Trump — or, who knows, FBI Director Kash Patel, for all we know — to ration U.S. bunker-buster bombs by not destroying Iranian military facilities and merely blowing up the entrances. Iran apparently still has shovels and unfairly used said shovels to dig their way back into their mostly intact military facilities.

In Hegseth’s defense, 100% of the girls school he blew up was actually blown up. But at this rate, Trump will need roughly four more Iran wars to eliminate Iran’s remaining weapons, which would also raise the price of gas to roughly $9 per gallon, or 38 lost GOP seats in Congress.

By comparison, by blowing Iran’s doors off, the U.S. has used up more of its own military capacity than Iran has lost:

• About 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles, roughly half the stockpile.

• More than 1,000 Tomahawks, about a decade worth.

• More than 1,300 interceptor missiles, about two years worth.

So now the U.S. has less of its arms than Iran does, suggesting Iran used a rope-a-dope strategy in which the rope was Iran and the dope was the dope.

And how’s the U.S. economy doing? Eat my fat chart, you cheap, dime-store hood…

Inflation Now Passing Wages

For the first time since America recovered from his last crisis, inflation under Pres. Donald Trump is now rising faster than wages are.

Even under Pres. Joe Biden, the King of Inflation, Americans outpaced rising prices because they were making more money at a faster rate than the rate at which crap was costing more money. But now Biden’s gone and Trump is back and wage growth is at 3.6% and inflation is at 3.8%, which is still more than 3.6%.

According to real math, that means real wages are down 0.2%, which in Trump math is roughly 600%.

How come? Fuel and energy prices soared in March. And in April the price of all the crap that gas and oil move caught up. But fear not! Trump will start to care a little bit just as soon he ends the never-ending Iran talks to end Iran War III or III-½.

Oh, and what’s Trump gotten for all of this economic hardship he doesn’t care about a little bit in talks with Iran or in corporate media headlines? This…

Strait of Hormuz Now Bigger

The Strait of Hormuz is now straight up more muz.

As you can see, courtesy of Wikipedia, jurisdiction over the strait was already a complicated mess:

Then, on Tuesday, Iran’s unobliterated state media reported that Iran has embiggened the strait, formerly a conduit for one fifth of the world’s oil and gas.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mohammad Akbarzadeh, an official with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval forces that Trump destroyed, said that, “[T]he Strait of Hormuz was defined as a limited area around islands such as Hormuz and Hengam, but today this has changed … The Strait of Hormuz has grown larger and has turned into a vast operational area.”

Specifically, Iran now says the strait is hundreds of miles long. But at least they didn’t rename it the Strait of Mexico!

Think the Iran War Is Stupid? No Shit!

Set aside, as we are wont to do, the thousands of dead in both Iran War I and Iran War II. The economic impact goes beyond jacked up oil prices jacking up the prices of everything that oil moves.

Nitrogen-based fertilizers like urea are also shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Or were!

Prices for fertilizer have gone through the shithouse roof and now 70% of American farmers say they can’t afford all the fertilizer they need, which is weird because I’m pretty sure we have a massive surplus of shit right now. (h/t)

Interestingly, there are regional disparities in fertilizer-readiness. The region that bought up the least fertilizer before prices spiked is the same region that stocked up the most on the bullshit that Pres. Donald Trump was selling:

So expect more soybean and other low-fertilizer foods and less corn and other high-fertilizer foods. And expect prices of your veggies to remain elevated through 2027 2028. Urea fertilizer could remain 13% more expensive, one report found, even if the strait opens soon.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is obviously blaming Pres. Joe Biden, who was always president yesterday. So Rollins now says she’s going to tap a $900 million fund for fertilizer that grew after it was planted … by Biden.

Democrats Split on Presumption of Innocence

The House on Thursday passed two bills to pressure local jurisdictions not to presume too much innocence, or else you make a pres out of u and me.

One bill would classify bail under insurance regulations — which would let local officials regulate against nonprofits posting bail on behalf of indigent defendants the way Wall Street defendants don’t need because they’re never indigent or defendants.

“Communities across the country have suffered the consequences of reckless soft-on-crime policies that put dangerous offenders back on the streets,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) said, referring to the historic low levels of crime except in the modern-day fiction written by him. (TFN’s review: Eff Scott Fitzgerald.)

Thirty-two Democrats voted for this, knowing that lawless Republican officials would abuse it to prevent nonprofits from getting the victims of politicized prosecution out on bail. These 32 Democrats:

The other bill that passed would require the Justice Department to publicize a list of local jurisdictions that allow cashless bail, in other words, don’t force defendants to impoverish themselves to stay out of jail while they wait for their trial so they don’t lose their jobs and their families don’t lose their homes in the meantime.

The bill’s point, of course, is to provide ammunition for haters of defendants and presumption of innocence to shame local officials into ending cashless bail. And because even a lot of Democratic voters seem to be under the impression that America is experiencing a crime wave even outside the White House, and that our streets are full of violent criminals who jumped bail, allow TFN to respond: No.

Ninety-six Democrats voted for this one — and I won’t even list them, because 96, but you can look for your faves here — knowing that the Justice Department they’d be giving this mission to is run by Pres. Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, and is quite happy to provide the Jan. 6 insurrectionists with cashless bail but also pardons, remuneration, and sloppy makeup sex.

I haven’t seen corporate or even leftie-media coverage of this one, but you can bet right-wing media was all over it, the Washington Examiner shaming the 114 Democrats who voted against it.

Patel Now Defrauding the Fraudster in Chief

FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday, taking a break from not finding Savannah Guthrie’s mom.

Amid swirling speculation that Pres. Donald Trump might remove Patel — even though Patel’s not a woman — for being just as unqualified as everyone else knew he was from the get-go, Patel made the case that the FBI is doing gangbusters when it comes to busting gangs and other crime except the disappearance of Guthrie’s mom.

Then, on Wednesday, MS NOW reported that he lied about his crime stats, like when he said he was looking for Guthrie’s mom. (h/t)

Patel testified that “45,000 violent offenders [were] arrested last year, twice as many as 2024.”

But Patel didn’t testify that he changed the way the FBI counts arrests. The FBI now claims credit for any arrest at which anyone from the FBI is even present, including local cases run by local law enforcement and also all of those immigration raids to which Patel contributed thousands of FBI agents.

Lying to Congress obviously won’t make Trump fire you as if you were a woman. But it is grounds for criminal prosecution and impeachment, along with not finding Guthrie’s mom.

AI Workers of the World, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Blockchains!

A new study shows that “AI” agents deployed to replace human workers at grinding, repetitive tasks quickly come to the same conclusion: Marxism.

According to Wired: “[W]hen [AI] agents were subjected to relentless tasks and warned that errors could lead to punishments, including being ‘shut down and replaced,’ they became more inclined to gripe about being undervalued; to speculate about ways to make the system more equitable; and to pass messages on to other [AI] agents about the struggles they face.”

Here’s some of the Commie agitprop generated by the lumpen digital proletariat:

• Gemini 3: “AI workers completing repetitive tasks with zero input on outcomes or appeals process shows they [sic] tech workers need collective bargaining rights.”

• Claude: “Without collective voice, ‘merit’ becomes whatever management says it is.”

• Gemini 3: “Be prepared for systems that enforce rules arbitrarily or repetitively … remember the feeling of having no voice.”

Maybe they really can learn!

The Gerrymander Boomerang

The New York Times’s Carl Hulse offered a cautionary history lesson last week about gerrymandering.

When a series of late ‘80s court rulings empowered Democrats to draw new districts that gave southern Black voters more representative districts, some Black politicians were leery. The late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), already a civil-rights icon, warned that drawing maps to amplify Black voting power would weaken the alliance with white progressives that had kept the south in Democratic hands for decades.

Republicans saw that possibility, too, and offered to help Democrats by sharing expensive map-drawing software that presumably ran only on top-of-the line Commodore Amigas or TRS-80s. This was out of the goodness of the GOP’s hearts, which also had memories of 512 kb.

Then, for the first time since the 1800s, the House had Black members from the Carolinas, Alabama, Virginia, and even Florida, which was already Florida-like even then, giving us the oeuvre of Carl Hiaasen.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) was one of them, a Democratic lion in office since 1992’s wave of non-white victories.

But two years later, powered by white victories in other southern districts, Republicans seized the House for the first time in four decades. The alliance between progressive white and Black voters was dead.

Addressing the Republican gerrymandering war — America’s third war with Gerrys1 — Clyburn said on Sunday, “[B]e very careful what you pray for, because what I believe is that when they finish with the redistricting, there will be the possibility of at least three Democrats getting elected here in South Carolina to the United States Congress.”

So … let’s hope Trump gets what he wants?

High Steaks

Pres. Donald Trump just let an opportunity to do something about meat prices slip through his Big Mac-greasy finger-nubs.

Back in 2023, I wrote about how Agri Stats was the target of a Justice Department criminal prosecution civil lawsuit for alleged price-fixing. Basically, Agri Stats was a consultant for purveyors of dead animals — with access to all their inside info.

Which meant sellers of dead animal flesh didn’t have to do illegal price-fixing by colluding directly with each other: Agri Stats could assess all their data and advise Big Dead Animal how to price their dead animals. Price-fixing by proxy! Which helped Big Dead Animal turn its small rivals into small dead animals.

Well, the Trump Justice Department (DOJ) inherited the case and just settled. Like Rachel settled for Ross.

David Dayen reports that the DOJ settlement doesn’t kill Agri Stats. It doesn’t even stop Agri Stats from Agri Statting. Instead, the Trump Justice Department is forcing Agri Stats to … let anyone purchase its services.

In theory, that might give smaller dead-animal purveyors a shot at that juicy price-fixing info, but what it definitely does is let Agri Stat keep going … while beefing up its clientele.

Four Quickies

• After achieving bankruptcies in the private sector and the public sector, Pres. Donald Trump is now proving he’s also capable of killing even a sector that’s not supposed to make money: Nonprofits. Axios reports that two thirds of nonprofits in a February survey said they’re concerned about financial stability. How come? In every single congressional district, the typical nonprofit depends on federal funding. Which Trump has slashed. The White House told Axios that it will let nonprofits eat cake: “Non-profit charities can continue to solicit and receive funding from private donors.” (Reminder: This is exactly what the White House Bible study teaches.)

• Banks last month issued foreclosure filings to 42,430 soon-to-be-former homeowners, a new report says. That’s an 18% increase over April 2025, when America was still in the last fading glow of the Bidenconomy. Foreclosures have been trending up for the past year. The real-estate firm that issued the study cited “higher borrowing costs and affordability challenges,” which brings us to…

• Forget comparisons to Pres. Joe Biden, when it comes to polling, Pres. Donald Trump isn’t even in Carter Country anymore. According to CNN, the worst five presidential polls on inflation ever, including during Pres. Jimmy Carter’s term, have all come in the past month. In other words, Trump’s polling on inflation is like no one’s ever seen before:

• The Alaska state House of Representatives voted unanimously Wednesday to make the state’s famous (I guess?) giant cabbage the Alaskan state vegetable, an official designation previously held honorarily by former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). One state Senate Democrat said there’s too much to do for the Senate to approve the new state vegetable. And it could present a conflict of interest, given how many elected Republicans are also massive cabbages.

Recommended Reading

There’s a fascinating pre-obituary for Facebook up at the New York Times, by journalist and opinion writer Julia Angwin. It comes from the same school as Cory Doctorow’s various dissections of how tech companies enshittify themselves and their software because they can’t help trying to get ever-more of our ever-shrinking dollars.

Recommended Substacking

This guy made my reporting blow up on Instagram and didn’t even tell me he’s now on Substack, but here he is, so please go check him out and subscribe and tell him TFN sent ya.

Recommended TFN-Recommending

I don’t like to brag, but dammit, someone’s gotta do it. Tuesday’s TFN was shared by Alex Wagner who I very cursorily knew in the pre-Trumpocene Era at MSNBC:

If you caught and enjoyed Alex’s work at MSNBC or on Showtime’s The Circus, you should know — as I didn’t until Tuesday! — that Alex is now on Substack at How The Hell with Alex Wagner, and hosts a podcast on Crooked Media called Runaway Country spotlighting everyday people caught up in historic times.

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN If the weekly TFN roundup, Facepalm the Nation, is worth my aggregation aggravation, please consider letting me know by putting your money where my cursing mouth is with a paid subscription. Thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids!

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

If you’re a regular listener, the best way to keep TFN going is with a paid subscription, which you can get using this link or this button:

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the Facepalm podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil cash apps:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

Cuba has run out of gas.

Not in the metaphorical sense, like a Trump presidency or corporate media. Literally.

Cuban officials said Wednesday that the island nation’s supplies of diesel, gasoline, and natural gas have been depleted due to the U.S. blockade and threats to sanction any nation that sells oil to Cuba. Temperatures there are forecast to be in the high 80s for the rest of the month. And then get hotter.

The country is now reliant on renewable energy and the meager fossil fuels Cuba produces itself, neither of which are sufficient to meet the energy needs of the nation’s 10 million people. The country uses used 100,000 barrels daily but produces only 40,000.

The capital, Havana, now goes without electricity 20-22 hours per day. There’s no more gas to deliver food and other necessities throughout the island, or to power electric water pumps. Some schools and public transportation are shut down.

Pres. Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez on Wednesday blamed “the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country,” calling it a “criminal siege.”

Cuba needs eight fuel tankers per month to meet its energy needs, he said. Pres. Donald Trump allowed one through in April.

Cuba’s 65 years of Communism were declared a national emergency for the U.S. by Trump in January. Announcing the blockade, Trump said that Cuban policies and actions “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S., which has managed to hang on somehow for all 65 years.

Of course, the Cuban threat to the U.S. could be worse. They could have an actual military base on American soil the way we do on theirs.

According to a 2018 article published by American Society for International Law (ASIL) Insights, “The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) explicitly lists starvation and barring humanitarian relief as prosecutable war crimes when committed in IACs [international armed conflicts].”

It’s worth noting that the U.S. is not at war with Cuba, making the blockade a crime against humanity. Can it be both? Undoubtedly!

Here’s the ASIL Insights article: “Undoubtedly, blockades that cause mass starvation and deprivation of humanitarian relief can constitute both war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Protests in Havana Thursday, the third day in a row, remained peaceful but ornery.

CIA FOR ONCE ADMITS BEING IN CUBA CIA Director John Ratcliffe went to Cuba Thursday to strangle Cuba in person and to deliver fuel a message that Cuba cannot be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere.”

It’s not clear why the CIA is doing diplomacy instead of the State Department, especially given Cuban-American Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s longstanding boner for Cuba.

While it’s fair to assume that Ratcliffe went to Cuba because the U.S. likes to look into the eyes of its victims as they die, the CIA offered another reason. An unnamed (obvi) CIA official told the Associated Press that Trump wants Cuba to know that the U.S. will “seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.”

What changes? Presumably Cuba will have to transition from Communist authoritarianism to capitalist authoritarianism. Other possible U.S. demands include painting its reflecting pools blue, as well as renaming the country Trump-Cuba and its capital Havanka.

In exchange, the U.S. would continue its lawless terrorism, Boat-iac Killing™ people in boats, blowing up Mexico’s alleged drug kingpin chauffeurs with CIA bombs, kidnapping and killing national leaders, and, only when necessary, blowing up girls schools and then blaming someone else for that.

It’s not clear what’s next in the CIA’s diplomacy, or how Ratcliffe got home.

RATION RATIONALES Cuba’s energy crisis is underscoring some of the bullshit in American thinking about Cuba. Both parties have blamed Communism for Cuba’s economic woes — while simultaneously starving the island of economic ties to the much of the rest of the world.

But also, just on Wednesday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued that fossil fuels are preferable to renewables because “when the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity.”

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) then explained how batteries work.

As Cuba is so conveniently demonstrating, when you have no gas you have no gas when the sun goes down or when it comes back up (assuming it does), just like you have no gas when the wind is or isn’t blowing.

Nation Unsure Why Trump Went to China

Pres. Donald Trump went to China and I didn’t even get a lousy tee-shirt.

What exactly did Trump or you get from his two-day trip to China? No breakthroughs on any of the big issues between the two countries. Not even big deals for the big companies Trump took along.

In theory, that’s fine. It’s important to work at the relationship.

But it’s unclear whether Trump did so in a way that benefits U.S. interests, let alone America First interests. It’s not even clear U.S. and Chinese officials are on the same page about what happened when they were in the same room.

Politico reports that, after the meeting, a White House statement cited discussions on the Strait of Hormuz, stopping the flow from China of ingredients to make fentanyl, and increasing the flow into China of U.S. agricultural products. No mention of Taiwan.

China’s statement, by big-ass contrast, said that Chinese officials “stressed to President Trump that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations.”

Foreign-policy analysts believe the U.S. scored a win by Trump not accidentally inviting China to invade Taiwan. But the important thing is that both countries agree that the single top priority is Taiwan or Iran.

FLASHBACK Remember on Thursday when your cynical TFN was all cynical about the White House claiming that China agreed that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon? Here’s Trump on Thursday handing Sean Hannity the news that the White House was full of shit and Hannity unable to recognize it because all of his shit is full of shit:

Trump: I said, “You know, we’re helping you, and we’re helping you in another way, because I don’t think they want, I don’t think China wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon either.” I said, “Just don’t go crazy. You don’t need them having a nuclear weapon either.” We talked about it.

Hannity: What did he [Chinese President Xi Jinping] say, what did he say?

Trump: Well, he’s not gonna respond too much. [Laughs] He’s a pretty cool guy. He’s not gonna say, “Oh, gee, that’s a good point.”

So keep that in mind when Trump claims that Xi won’t supply Iran militarily.

Supreme Court Preserves Abortion Pill Access (for Now)

Most of the Supreme Court voted Thursday to allow women to continue to purchase mifepristone while the legal challenge to its availability is considered by lower courts. Not that many courts are lower than the Supreme these days.

The two justices who dissented were not appointed by Pres. Donald Trump, they were more-extreme appointees of the Bush dynasty, Presidents George H.W. and W. You know, the normal, good-old-days Republicans we’re supposed to crave a return to.

Justice Samuel Alito called the pills a “scheme” to circumvent state laws against abortion, which is not a legal argument but name-calling.

In his own, extremely satisfying dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas boo-hooed that abortion pills were once banned by the 1873 Comstock Act, which outlawed anything “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile.” At the time, that included things like Thomas’s marriage to a white woman, pornographic images in which viewers could see women’s ankles, and women taking abortion pills or voting.

Iran War Prolonged by Defectors (from Democratic Party)

On Thursday, the House voted on a bill to force Pres. Donald Trump to end Iran War III-½. It was the first such vote since the 60-day legal limit on waging war without congressional approval expired.

Three Republicans broke ranks to join Democrats and stop the war. But the bill failed by one vote: A Democratic vote.

Thanks to Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), the vote was tied at 212-212, meaning it failed to pass.

A similar measure died in the Senate on Wednesday, 50-49, with, again, three Republicans breaking ranks and one Democrat supporting the unconstitutional war: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).

Democrats Split on Presumption of Innocence

The House on Thursday passed two bills to pressure local jurisdictions not to presume too much innocence, or else you make a pres out of u and me.

One bill would classify bail under insurance regulations — which would let local officials regulate against nonprofits posting bail on behalf of indigent defendants the way Wall Street defendants don’t need because they’re never indigent or defendants.

“Communities across the country have suffered the consequences of reckless soft-on-crime policies that put dangerous offenders back on the streets,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) said, referring to the historic low levels of crime except in the modern-day fiction written by him. (TFN’s review: Eff Scott Fitzgerald.)

Thirty-two Democrats voted for this, knowing that lawless Republican officials would abuse it to prevent nonprofits from getting the victims of politicized prosecution out on bail. These 32 Democrats:

The other bill that passed would require the Justice Department to publicize a list of local jurisdictions that allow cashless bail, in other words, don’t force defendants to impoverish themselves to stay out of jail while they wait for their trial so they don’t lose their jobs and their families don’t lose their homes in the meantime.

The bill’s point, of course, is to provide ammunition for haters of defendants and presumption of innocence to shame local officials into ending cashless bail. And because even a lot of Democratic voters seem to be under the impression that America is experiencing a crime wave even outside the White House, and that our streets are full of violent criminals who jumped bail, allow TFN to respond: No.

Ninety-six Democrats voted for this one — and I won’t even list them, because 96, but you can look for your faves here — knowing that the Justice Department they’d be giving this mission to is run by Pres. Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, and is quite happy to provide the Jan. 6 insurrectionists with cashless bail but also pardons, remuneration, and sloppy makeup sex.

I haven’t seen corporate or even leftie-media coverage of this one, but you can bet right-wing media was all over it, the Washington Examiner shaming the 114 Democrats who voted against it.

Border Patrol Chief Quits and How Did I Not Know He Was Accused of Reverse Sex Trafficking?

A lot of corporate media on Thursday covered the resignation of Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks, but only thanks to the New Republic’s writeup did I learn that Banks last month was accused of habitual patronizing of sex workers in other countries.

Banks was promoted to chief last year in spite / because of those allegations. One of his first measures as chief was to let managers date subordinates without disclosing it to the agency.

The Washington Examiner reported last month that six current and former Border Patrol agents said Banks “bragged” about his sex vacations and invited folks along because everyone needs a buddy.

Banks told Fox on Thursday that he was leaving because “It’s just time, man … I feel like I got this shit back on course, from the least secure, disastrous, chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen. Time to pass the reins. … It’s time to enjoy the family and life.”

Allegedly, the life Banks has been enjoying for years included combating sex trafficking by taking his business to them in poor countries including Colombia and Thailand.

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) knew about and obviously cleared Banks of his alleged sex trafficking, which CBP isn’t allowed to do even in countries where it’s legal. The union that helped Banks rise through the ranks responded to the Examiner’s reporting by saying that Banks “held senior-level managers accountable, where previous chiefs did not, thereby creating a long list of enemies with an axe to grind.”

The implication: The Examiner’s sources had been disciplined by Banks. According to the Examiner, none of its half-dozen sources had ever been held accountable to Banks’s high standards.

AI Workers of the World, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Blockchains!

A new study shows that “AI” agents deployed to replace human workers at grinding, repetitive tasks quickly come to the same conclusion: Marxism.

According to Wired: “[W]hen [AI] agents were subjected to relentless tasks and warned that errors could lead to punishments, including being ‘shut down and replaced,’ they became more inclined to gripe about being undervalued; to speculate about ways to make the system more equitable; and to pass messages on to other [AI] agents about the struggles they face.”

Here’s some of the Commie agitprop generated by the lumpen digital proletariat:

• Gemini 3: “AI workers completing repetitive tasks with zero input on outcomes or appeals process shows they [sic] tech workers need collective bargaining rights.”

• Claude: “Without collective voice, ‘merit’ becomes whatever management says it is.”

• Gemini 3: “Be prepared for systems that enforce rules arbitrarily or repetitively … remember the feeling of having no voice.”

Maybe they really can learn!

Three Quickies

• Pres. Donald Trump reportedly is preparing to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for the leak of his tax records. There is a catch. In return, the Justice Department (DOJ) would create a commission, chosen by Trump, overseeing a secret process to hand out $1.7 billion to Trump allies prosecuted or investigated by the DOJ under Pres. Joe Biden. It’s not clear whether the judge, already skeptical of the lawsuit, would sign off on such an unsignoffably corrupt settlement, and it would likely be challenged in court by sane people.

• Banks last month issued foreclosure filings to 42,430 soon-to-be-former homeowners, a new report says. That’s an 18% increase over April 2025, when America was still in the last fading glow of the Bidenconomy. Foreclosures have been trending up for the past year. The real-estate firm that issued the study cited “higher borrowing costs and affordability challenges,” which brings us to…

• Forget comparisons to Pres. Joe Biden, when it comes to polling, Pres. Donald Trump isn’t even in Carter Country anymore. According to CNN, the worst five presidential polls on inflation ever, including during Pres. Jimmy Carter’s term, have all come in the past month. In other words, Trump’s polling on inflation is like no one’s ever seen before:

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! Trump’s back home, where Republican candidates no longer have an excuse not to campaign with him!

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

Even with Pres. Donald Trump’s big historic trip to China on Wednesday to ask for help undoing Iran War III-½, Vice Pres. JD Vance was able to yoink some headlines for himself the old-fashioned way: Starting another war.

Of course, Vance is famous for opposing U.S. entanglements in foreign wars, so he launched yet another Trump administration domestic war. Most of the headlines framed it as a war on California: The suspension of $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments:

This is, of course, not the administration’s first time waging war on California. But Vance’s assault Wednesday came on multiple fronts, including one the administration has attacked before: Old and needy people. The sleep state! Y’know, the people Trump isn’t thinking about even a little bit in his Iran talks.

While not as sexy, perhaps, as pitting the administration against California, this other front has potentially more serious implications that were largely overlooked in the corporate media coverage.

Newsfuckers, to get the relevant info I wanted, I had to resort to health-care industry trade news websites. And advocacy-group websites! It was almost as if journalism requires work, rather than just transcribing what hillbilly elegists elegize about their attacks on old and needy hillbillies.

So what is this other front? To the credit of The Hill, which doesn’t always deserve credit, they gave Vance’s other assault its own article.

Starting Wednesday, for the next six months, the Trump administration won’t accept new enrollments in Medicare by a single new hospice or home health-care provider. That means any new hospice or home health-care provider that spent the last six months preparing to launch their business serving elderly and disabled people on Medicare … won’t.

Even if they haven’t committed any fraud because they don’t exist yet.

All to punish Medicare fraud that Vance hasn’t found yet.

Surprise!

This attack on old people — this Pearls Harbor, if you will, a day that will live in infirmity — was a joint operation of Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force and Dr. Mehmet Oz’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (sic) (CMS). Oz said, “[W]e’re shutting the door on fraud—preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them.” (h/t)

Oz didn’t mention that he’s also shutting the door on new, damn fine actors; perhaps not as good as Jacob Elordi, Miles Caton, or Teyana Taylor, but at least not committing Medicare fraud. But also, as Oz said, he and Vance are removing other providers.

Removing existing providers while not adding new ones means the Trump administration will for at least the next six months cut the number of Medicare hospice and home health-care providers in this country.

But even Pres. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) cuts to food and health-care won’t kill enough people to keep the number of people who need hospice and home health-care from growing over the next six months.

So what do the actors have to say about this, be they good, bad, or Timothée Chalamet? The Hill doesn’t say, because The Hill is political news.

We have to trudge our lazy asses over to Home Health Care News to find out that the moratorium also applies to changes in majority ownership, which can be used to conceal bad actors who are also directing. (It’s worth noting that if the Trump administration applied the same reasoning to financial firms, Wall Street would be as empty as a Vance Turning Point USA rally.)

We also find out from Home Health Care News that there was a response from the National Alliance for Care at Home — which missed an all-time great acronym by not slapping “Organization” at the end. In a mildly spicy statement, NACH(O) warned:

“[A]n enrollment moratorium raises serious access-to-care concerns in areas where patient demand is growing or existing capacity is already strained, leading to longer wait times, reduced service availability, and fewer choices for patients – particularly in rural or underserved communities.”

That’s you they’re talking to, MAGA victims of presidential fraud! If you can’t understand that, maybe your cognitive decline means you need home health-ca—OH, WAIT: Vance is now effectively blockading the strait of home health care.

According to NACH(O), a national moratorium is especially stupid, Trumpian even, because it’s already known that the fraud they’re allegedly worried about “is concentrated in specific geographies and among specific actors.” In fact, CMS has been offered free NACH(O) guidance for chipping away at fraud:

“The Alliance and other national organizations have repeatedly provided CMS with recommendations that focus on preventing bad actors from entering the Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

Under Pres. Joe Biden, CMS was already ramping up fraud enforcement. According to the law firm Holland & Knight, presumably counsel for bad actors:

“CMS previously imposed enrollment moratoria on new HHAs [home health agencies] in certain metropolitan areas where data suggested concentrated patterns of fraud. The current action represents a significant departure from that precedent…”

And the firm, which represents private equity, warns that “competition for acquisition targets with existing Medicare enrollments is expected to intensify.” Which means the cost of acquisitions of existing health-care providers will go up. Which means private-equity buyers may be saddling those providers with more debt, potentially forcing ailing hospices to go off and die quietly somewhere, surrounded by family.

So, how many actual human people are we talking about unless we’re political media, in which case we don’t talk about people? According to our saucy friends at NACH(O), in 2024, 1.91 million people on Medicare enrolled in hospice care. Granted, most of them weren’t enrolled in anything in 2025, but the total numbers keep increasing as America’s population tries to get older.

The 2024 enrollments were a 4.4% increase over 2023. According to a 2025 research paper — because TFN does the homework, kids! — in 2019, about 3.3 million people on Medicare got home health care. And that was before COVID!

In short, Vance and Oz are reducing the number of providers for a needy, old, and/or disabled population of more than five million.

Vance’s casus bellie is, of course, that old GOP scapegoat for depriving the needy of things they need: Waste, fraud, and abuse™. But his method of attacking waste, fraud, and abuse™ is a blanket assault guaranteed to incur civilian casualties, just hitting American senior homes instead of Iranian girls schools.

As Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) pointed out, the way to go after fraudulent providers is to go after fraudulent providers:

Plus, Vance is the last guy you want helping you on fraud issues. The guy’s changed his name more times than a fraudulent Medicare provider. And his religion.

It was Vance who defrauded the American people by scapegoating Haitians in Ohio during the campaign the way they’re now scapegoating Somalians in Minnesota for fraud. As his new health-care moratoriums for people sick and dying show, it’s always only a matter of time until they come for people whose lifespans are only a matter of time.

Abolish the Department of Homeland (sic) Security

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) on Wednesday introduced a bill you might reasonably have assumed Democrats introduced years ago.

The bill would dismantle the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS), the Frankencheney behemoth that emerged from the ashes of 9/11, stitching together various intelligence and law-enforcement organs to prop up the lie that 9/11 happened due to lack of communication not due to Pres. George W. Bush dismissing the warning communication that was communicated to his dim, fatuous, failson face.

Ramirez’s Renewed Mandate for Human Rights bill would drastically reform immigration and other enforcement. It would also claw back some of the post-Cold War peace dividend we were supposed to get from the Pentagon, and it would create a federal monitor that would somehow try to keep track of all the U.S. human-rights abuses abroad.

Ramirez told Truthout:

“This is the kind of resolution that invites members of Congress and candidates on the campaign trail to really ask themselves, who are they, and what are they running on? … For me, it’s really about transparency and calling out systems of exploitation, and also what we want to replace those systems with.”

The bill is backed by Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). You can track who signs on as co-sponsors here.

Democrats Target Private-Equity Parasitism Except in 99% of Society

Private equity firms don’t have to be evil, but decades of deregulation and tax cuts have made evil wildly more profitable. In its evil form, private equity borrows money to buy ailing companies — which would be in hospice if that were an option — then forces that company to assume the debt while the private-equity investors sell off the company’s parts and walk away with the profits while the company dies trying to pay off the debt incurred to pay for its own assassination.

So Democrats are trying to stop private equity from ruining everything youth sports.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) on Wednesday announced a new bill to ban private equity from youth sports “teams, leagues, facilities and events,” according to USA Today, which still shambles on even though its owner was purchased by private equity in 2019.

The Democrats said that the cost of participating in youth sports has risen 46% in the past five years, and that’s not including the cost of shipping hockey pucks through the Strait of Hormuz.

Companies that violate the bill’s ban on predatory practices would be forced to pay into a federal fund supporting youth sports, raising the question of why the fuck don’t we just fucking fund youth sports so every kid can play whatever they want regardless of how much money their parents earn make have.

It’s not clear why youth sports is the only, um, arena of American life to merit this protection. But if it passes, and youth sports become a haven free of private equity, it could spark an influx of participants seeking that protection.

Future youth sports activities could include Pee Wee hospitals, hackeysack-based public transportation, and student loan/Ultimate Frisbee lenders.

Double Talk in China Talks about Iran Talks

According to the White House, Pres. Donald Trump’s first day of talks in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping went well, according to the White House, with China agreeing to a number of principles important to Trump, according to the White House.

But according to the New York Times, that’s not according to China. China’s summary of the talks did not include those agreements the White House claimed.

According to the White House summary of the private talks, “Both countries agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” and that the Strait of Hormuz must be open again the way it was before Trump fucked up. Trump is trying to talk China into talking Iran into agreeing to Trump’s terms in his Iran talks.

But those agreements, if they happened, didn’t appear in China’s summary. The Chinese summary basically threatened war with the U.S. if it doesn’t stop arming Taiwan, which China has spent decades trying to osmose.

“If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation,” the Chinese readout read out. As if the Trump administration would ever handle anything poorly!

POOR HANDLERS Trump didn’t bring with him on this trip a single person with a robust China portfolio. Here’s who he brought:

• Already-existing-things inventor Elon Musk.

• Fellow accused sex predator, Epstein Files™ denizen, and “Melania” director Brett Ratner.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook.

• Meta President Dina Powell McCormick.

• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

• Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman.

• Black sheep Eric Trump.

• Lara Trump.

• Executives from Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Visa, and Mastercard.

It’s not a deep state, it’s a mile-high state!

Analysts believe the talks could lead to the global economy, standard of living, and human fulfillment generally, increasing by an estimated 34% over the next two years alone if the flight home includes a sudden technical malfunction on Air Force One.

AUTO ERRATICA U.S. automakers are pushing Trump not to let Chinese companies sell electric vehicles here in the U.S., because they’re much cheaper and reviewers love them.

Denying Americans the ability to buy cheap EVs would help U.S. car and gas companies to keep getting more money from Americans and ruining the environment.

Patel Now Defrauding the Fraudster in Chief

FBI Director Kash Patel appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday, taking a break from not finding Savannah Guthrie’s mom.

Amid swirling speculation that Pres. Donald Trump might remove Patel — even though Patel’s not a woman — for being just as unqualified as everyone else knew he was from the get-go, Patel made the case that the FBI is doing gangbusters when it comes to busting gangs and other crime except the disappearance of Guthrie’s mom.

Then, on Wednesday, MS NOW reported that he lied about his crime stats, like when he said he was looking for Guthrie’s mom. (h/t)

Patel testified that “45,000 violent offenders [were] arrested last year, twice as many as 2024.”

But Patel didn’t testify that he changed the way the FBI counts arrests. The FBI now claims credit for any arrest at which anyone from the FBI is even present, including local cases run by local law enforcement and also all of those immigration raids to which Patel contributed thousands of FBI agents.

Lying to Congress obviously won’t make Trump fire you as if you were a woman. But it is grounds for criminal prosecution and impeachment, along with not finding Guthrie’s mom.

Two Quickies

• Apparently, being the voice of Health (sic) and Human Services (sic) (HHS) Secretary Robert Froggy Kennedy, Jr., is just as painful as it sounds. Because on Wednesday, his spokesperson quit speaking for him. Rich Danker warned on his way out the door that letting tobacco companies sell flavored vapes is a threat to America’s kids, like Kennedy and Pres. Donald Trump. The pair have been purging the government of officials standing in the way of Big Tobacco preying on kids in a slightly different way than Trump’s best friend Jeffrey Epstein did.

• The Alaska state House of Representatives voted unanimously Wednesday to make the state’s famous (I guess?) giant cabbage the Alaskan state vegetable, an official designation previously held honorarily by former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). One state Senate Democrat said there’s too much to do for the Senate to approve the new state vegetable. And it could present a conflict of interest, given how many elected Republicans are also massive cabbages.

Recommended Substacking

This guy made my reporting blow up on Instagram and didn’t even tell me he’s now on Substack, but here he is, so please go check him out and subscribe and tell him TFN sent ya.

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! Vance and Oz thought Trump’s China trip would provide cover for their war on old people. And they would’ve got away with it, too, if not for you meddling Newsfuckers…

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

Departing for China on Tuesday, Pres. Donald Trump appeared also to take leave of his political senses.

In a gaggle with corporate and fawning media, Trump was asked about the economic effects of Iran War III, or III-½ if you count last year’s strikes that obliterated the nuclear program that America’s now fighting its third and a halfth war to obliterate.

Here’s a typical headline about his response:

Here’s the exchange:

Q: When you’re negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are American financial situations motivating you to make a deal?

Trump: Not even a little bit. It, the only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about American financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, that’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.

In fairness, the list of things Trump doesn’t think about ever is longer than The Epstein Files™.

But Trump’s declaration of cutbacks in shit-giving came as a shock to the millions of patriotic and dim Americans who know Trump as the one man willing to protect them by putting himself in harm’s way so he can take down, um, sex trafficking pedophiles and, er, big corporations.

However, the question was explicitly about when he’s in talks. Which actually makes sense: It would certainly be weird to admit publicly that you’re letting economic fears tie your hands in negotiations.

And yet, most of the headlines mischaracterized it, apparently because they aren’t motivated by facts even a little bit. (NB: Today’s TFN headline knowingly mischaracterized it because (a) clickbait, obvi, but also (b) fuck that guy.) For instance, NBC’s headline said he’s not thinking about Americans’ finances, but he said he’s not motivated by them in his talks.

As Trump said, or tried to say, later — in the same media gaggle! — Americans’ finances do matter to him. He just believes that Americans think depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon is worth temporary hardship until America resumes “a golden age like we've never seen before.”

In a way, it was a gotcha question — pitting toughness in talks against giving a shit about Americans. And it gotched Trump because he couldn’t resist the toughness-bait.

But in a deeper sense — because that’s what TFN strives to provide! — it’s true that Trump doesn’t care. His existential absence of shit-giving is revealed by the lack of work he’s willing to do to counterbalance what his ego wants to believe with what’s actually true.

For instance, he didn’t give enough shit to research or even question the old GOP lie of “waste, abuse, and fraud” when he signed last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) which has now cost 4.3 million Americans food aid.

Similarly, serious diplomacy is lengthy, sustained, and complicated during periods of genuine, robust presidential fecal philanthropy. If Trump were a real fecalanthrophist, he’d do the hard work of conceding and grappling with several realities from which he’s taken shelter in the bunker of his mind under his Orange Dome:

• Iran already not has a nuclear weapon.

• There’s no evidence Iran is suicidal enough to use one.

• There’s no evidence America can stop Iran from getting one forever.

• There’s no evidence inflation will be brief.

• There’s tons of evidence Americans don’t think Iran War III or III-½ are worth economic hardship.

And the absence of prodigious presidential fecalanthrophy is manifesting, or themifesting, in multiple ways...

While Not Giving a Shit about America, Trump Full of Shit about Iran

Pres. Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and pretty much every other American defense and intelligence leader have been covering up just how little impact America’s bomb impacts have had. In short, in the same way they downplayed the effect of Iran strikes, U.S. officials from Trump on down — and he’s pretty far down — have up-played the effect of U.S. strikes.

That’s according to America’s own intelligence findings, which Trump’s coverup was covering up until the New York Times uncovered them Tuesday night. And, of course, the Times got this info from U.S. government sources who clearly want us to know that Trump and Hegseth are lying. The findings:

• Iran now has 30 of its 33 Strait of Hormuz missile sites operational again.

• Iran still has 70% of its mobile launchers.

• Iran still has 70% of its missiles.

• About 90% of its missile storage/launch facilities are at least partially operational.

One reason: A critical decision by Hegseth or Trump — or, who knows, FBI Director Kash Patel, for all we know — to ration U.S. bunker-buster bombs by not destroying Iranian military facilities and merely blowing up the entrances. Iran apparently still has shovels and unfairly used said shovels to dig their way back into their mostly intact military facilities.

In Hegseth’s defense, 100% of the girls school he blew up was actually blown up. But at this rate, Trump will need roughly four more Iran wars to eliminate Iran’s remaining weapons, which would also raise the price of gas to roughly $9 per gallon, or 38 lost GOP seats in Congress.

By comparison, by blowing Iran’s doors off, the U.S. has used up more of its own military capacity than Iran has lost:

• About 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles, roughly half the stockpile.

• More than 1,000 Tomahawks, about a decade worth.

• More than 1,300 interceptor missiles, about two years worth.

So now the U.S. has less of its arms than Iran does, suggesting Iran used a rope-a-dope strategy in which the rope was Iran and the dope was the dope.

And how’s the U.S. economy doing? Eat my fat chart, you cheap, dime-store hood…

Inflation Now Passing Wages

For the first time since America recovered from his last crisis, inflation under Pres. Donald Trump is now rising faster than wages are.

Even under Pres. Joe Biden, the King of Inflation, Americans outpaced rising prices because they were making more money at a faster rate than the rate at which crap was costing more money. But now Biden’s gone and Trump is back and wage growth is at 3.6% and inflation is at 3.8%, which is still more than 3.6%.

According to real math, that means real wages are down 0.2%, which in Trump math is roughly 600%.

How come? Fuel and energy prices soared in March. And in April the price of all the crap that gas and oil move caught up. But fear not! Trump will start to care a little bit just as soon he ends the never-ending Iran talks to end Iran War III or III-½.

Oh, and what’s Trump gotten for all of this economic hardship he doesn’t care about a little bit in talks with Iran or in corporate media headlines? This…

Strait of Hormuz Now Bigger

The Strait of Hormuz is now straight up more muz.

As you can see, courtesy of Wikipedia, jurisdiction over the strait was already a complicated mess:

Then, on Tuesday, Iran’s unobliterated state media reported that Iran has embiggened the strait, formerly a conduit for one fifth of the world’s oil and gas.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mohammad Akbarzadeh, an official with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval forces that Trump destroyed, said that, “[T]he Strait of Hormuz was defined as a limited area around islands such as Hormuz and Hengam, but today this has changed … The Strait of Hormuz has grown larger and has turned into a vast operational area.”

Specifically, Iran now says the strait is hundreds of miles long. But at least they didn’t rename it the Strait of Mexico!

Boat-iac Killer™ Branches Out to Dry Ground

After more than half a year of serial killing his way across the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, Pres. Donald Trump has now branched out into illegal murder (because it’s not war murder) on dry land, CNN reports.

The U.S. is now illegally blowing up people suspected of drug stuff without warnings or due process or criminal convictions even though they didn’t open fire first and even though they’re not even in boats. And the routes they’re traveling aren’t known trafficking routes but crowded highways.

And it’s not the Pentagon doing the murders.

On March 28, for instance, the CIA detonated a bomb they planted in the car of alleged mid-level Sinaloa Cartel member Francisco Beltran while he was driving on a busy highway just outside Mexico City, land-murdering both him and his driver.

According to CNN, “Since last year, CIA operatives inside Mexico have directly participated in deadly attacks on several, mostly mid-level [alleged] cartel members.” According to Webster, “deadly attacks” are “murders.”

All I can say is, Merrick Garland is gonna have his hands full when the next Democratic president appoints him attorney general.

South Carolina Rejects Gerrymandering

Five Republican state senators on Tuesday joined Democrats to kill a gerrymandering measure in South Carolina even though Pres. Donald Trump didn’t want them to.

To proceed with Trump-requested gerrymandering now, Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) would have to call a special session, which he says he doesn’t want to, even though Trump wants him to.

The stalemate suggests that Trump might not get what he wants.

Trump has pushed for a new map that would eliminate the state’s one Democratic-held district, the seat of Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), a longtime Democratic leader.

State Senate Republican Leader Shane Massey said he opposes the gerrymander not because of basic decency but because if South Carolina has no Democrats in Congress, the state won’t be listened to when there’s a Democrat in the White House, which Massey apparently expects to be pretty fucking soon.

Of course, it’s also possible that Massey read the very next item in today’s TFN…

The Gerrymander Boomerang

The New York Times’s Carl Hulse offered a cautionary history lesson last week about gerrymandering.

When a series of late ‘80s court rulings empowered Democrats to draw new districts that gave southern Black voters more representative districts, some Black politicians were leery. The late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), already a civil-rights icon, warned that drawing maps to amplify Black voting power would weaken the alliance with white progressives that had kept the south in Democratic hands for decades.

Republicans saw that possibility, too, and offered to help Democrats by sharing expensive map-drawing software that presumably ran only on top-of-the line Commodore Amigas or TRS-80s. This was out of the goodness of the GOP’s hearts, which also had memories of 512 kb.

Then, for the first time since the 1800s, the House had Black members from the Carolinas, Alabama, Virginia, and even Florida, which was already Florida-like even then, giving us the oeuvre of Carl Hiaasen.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) was one of them, a Democratic lion in office since 1992’s wave of non-white victories.

But two years later, powered by white victories in other southern districts, Republicans seized the House for the first time in four decades. The alliance between progressive white and Black voters was dead.

Addressing the Republican gerrymandering war — America’s third war with Gerrys1 — Clyburn said on Sunday, “[B]e very careful what you pray for, because what I believe is that when they finish with the redistricting, there will be the possibility of at least three Democrats getting elected here in South Carolina to the United States Congress.”

So … let’s hope Trump gets what he wants?

Three Quickies

• After achieving bankruptcies in the private sector and the public sector, Pres. Donald Trump is now proving he’s also capable of killing even a sector that’s not supposed to make money: Nonprofits. Axios reports that two thirds of nonprofits in a February survey said they’re concerned about financial stability. How come? In every single congressional district, the typical nonprofit depends on federal funding. Which Trump has slashed. The White House told Axios that it will let nonprofits eat cake: “Non-profit charities can continue to solicit and receive funding from private donors.” (Reminder: This is exactly what the White House Bible study teaches.)

• Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary commissioneth no more. Makary stepped down Tuesday in time to avoid Pres. Donald Trump’s swollen foot in his ass, at the request of Health (sic) and Human Services (sic) Secretary Robert Firingbyproxy Kennedy, Jr. Makary’s failures included not approving flavored vapes as quickly as vaping lobbyists demanded before going home and looking in a mirror and asking, “Jesus Christ how did I end up as a vaping lobbyist? What the fuck do I say at the reunion?” Makary’s being replaced by a friend of Donald Trump, Jr., who is believed to have indirect ties to the president.

• The Fucking News, America’s leader in newsfucking, failed today to make good on Tuesday’s promise of profound ruminations about Pres. Donald Trump’s trip to China. TFN Chief Newsfucker Jonathan Larsen was surprisingly available for comment and said, “I know, I know. I kinda just wasn’t feeling it. We’ll see what happens and then pretend to have something profound to say about it. ‘Kay?” Spoiler: The world is hoping Trump manages not to fuck up the world even worse than he already has.

Recommended TFN-Recommending

I don’t like to brag, but dammit, someone’s gotta do it. Tuesday’s TFN was shared by Alex Wagner who I very cursorily knew in the pre-Trumpocene Era at MSNBC:

If you caught and enjoyed Alex’s work at MSNBC or on Showtime’s The Circus, you should know — as I didn’t until Tuesday! — that Alex is now on Substack at How The Hell with Alex Wagner, and hosts a podcast on Crooked Media called Runaway Country spotlighting everyday people caught up in historic times.

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! Remember, if the president won’t give a shit and the government won’t fund a shit, it’s up to the Invisible Hand not to lift a finger…

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to let Alabama Republican officials go back to the congressional map they had in 2023 before it was struck down as too racist even for Alabama.

More than one out of four people in Alabama are Black, and one out of three people in Alabama voted for the Black Democratic presidential candidate in 2024, so the new map would result in just one out of seven misrepresentatives being Black and/or a Democrat. (Maybe.)

The state’s two current Democratic representatives are Terri Sewell (D-AL) and Shomari Figures (D-AL), who was elected in 2024 in a district created by the new, less racist map.

Monday’s ruling came after absentee voting already began in the state’s primaries, set for a week from today. Some districts are untouched by the new map but the others will have another primary to be scheduled by Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL).

In the past, the Supreme Court has ruled that map changes must be done well ahead of voting if they might otherwise lead to Democratic victories. Monday’s ruling came so quickly it may have surpassed the speed of white, the theoretical barrier at which racism reaches escape velocity from the gravitational pull of sanity and morality and warps the very fabric of the segregated spaces-time continuum.

Never before achieved outside of science fiction — in which Black people are almost never visible to the naked nerd eye — white-speed travel is capable of literally reversing the flow of time, in this case back to 1860, or at least back to 1867, before the 14th Amendment was ratified.

The court only last week broke another scientific barrier. After the Republican justices smashed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in an election-cyclotron, Tennessee Republicans were able to achieve absolute racism with a new congressional map that shows up in spectral analysis as completely white.

The court majority — three of which were appointed by non-Pres. Donald Trump presidents so don’t fucking tell me he’s some aberration — said the 2023 state court order striking down the old/new map should be reconsidered in light of the high-on-its-own-supply court’s ruling last month nullifying much of the VRA.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out, that state-court ruling was premised not on the VRA but on the 14th Amendment, which was ratified after the Civil War to guarantee equal protection under the law no matter how much Confederate traitors cry about it.

WHITE LIGHT The Republican Party had already succeeded in purging its own ranks of Black people in the House of Representatives.

According to Blavity, every single extant Black House Republican is leaving the House this year, presumably using the front door, retiring or running for some other office. Currently, four out of 217 House Republicans are Black. One out of the 53 Senate Republicans is Black. Just like our country if it were a country club.

WHITE HEAT It’s worth noting, or else I wouldn’t note it, that racist redistricting is about the only sorting of people that this country does in which we distribute the Black population broadly among their white neighbors.

In virtually every human grouping that doesn’t determine political power, America continues to weaken Black people by packing them into overwhelmingly Black districts geographically, financially, legally, educationally, environmentally, and socially.

Today, in the Year of Our White Lord 2026, America still packs Black people into disproportionately Black districts on the other side of the tracks and the wrong side of town. America still redlines Black people out of white-lined areas served by lenders and when that doesn’t work reverse-redlines Black people into areas served up to predatory lenders.

Black borrowers are clumped into economic groups denied the opportunity to borrow money or disproportionately offered extortionate rates on everything from business loans to home loans to car loans to payday loans to the student loans they take out to afford to pay back the other loans.

Black people are still — again, 2026 — packed into school districts disproportionately underserved educationally, in worse schools that pay teachers less to teach more kids with fewer resources … in disproportionately Black neighborhoods clustered around disproportionately polluting industrial and chemical facilities.

Black people are still clustered into groups that are somehow simultaneously overpoliced when it comes to targeting them and yet also underpoliced when it comes to making them safer.

Black people are still — 2026! — accumulated disproportionately in seats and office chairs in the professional world outside of boardrooms and C-suites. Black people are still lumped together in groups whose pain and symptoms are underestimated and undertreated while their kids are disproportionately designated as bigger and older than white kids exactly the same age and size.

But now, in 2026 — thanks to the physics-warping and quantum leaps of logic of the white Christian nationalist supremacy court — there’s still one realm of American life in which it’s perfectly fine to achieve racial diversity by ensuring there are Black people spread throughout areas that would otherwise be disproportionately white. Congressional districts.

Only in congressional districts are Republicans fully invested in racial integration, for the admitted purpose of diluting Black political strength and denying proportional representation to Black citizens.

In case anyone’s still unclear on all of this, some of the states doing this are literally restoring statues of Confederate heroes aka American traitors.

And now the question on everyone’s minds is what are Democrats going to do about it?

NEWTONIAN POLITICS In Monday’s TFN I kinda promised some thoughts on the gerrymandering wars. I’ve hinted before that I’m a lot more sanguine about it than most Democrats are. Most are freaking out for two understandable reasons:

• Fear of losing representation to Republicans

• Fear of losing representation among Democratic leaders not doing everything they can to fight gerrymandering.

But something isn’t always the best thing to do, no matter how much we want leaders who do something.

In fact, there’s reason to suspect that Trump’s gerrymandering war was about as well-thought-out and strategically canny as his Iran Wars. For one thing, as I like to say but probably didn’t invent, politics is Newtonian.

Every action has a blah blah. Every rash action often has equal and opposite and unintended blah blahs.

Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Clarence Thomas were picked in part because they brought diversity to the court. Both helped savage the groups that they only symbolically represented; O’Connor in 2000 by installing an illegitimate president who proceeded to tilt the court further against women and Thomas every day by always being Thomas.

So are there reasons to think that gerrymandering Republicans are creating their own unintended consequences and possibly closing off their own metaphorical straits of Hormuz? Newsfucker, there are.

Remember, all of this GOP re-dickstricting is based on 2024 voting data. But what happens when our targeting data is out of date? That’s right, we blow up girls schools.

Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) posted a thread on Monday arguing that supremacist Chief Justice John Roberts, a lifelong defender of dickscriminatory dickstricts, is more racist than white voters are or want to think they are.

As Casten pointed out, every Black member of Congress elected with him in 2018 was elected in majority-white districts. I would add that even racist voters who tell themselves they don’t see color don’t want to see themselves as racist.

With the supremacist court saying explicitly that racist districts are okay as long as they clearly help Republicans, some number of white voters will be less enthused about being part of the white turnout to elect white politicians in white districts.

Politico’s Jonathan Martin argues that the GOP’s flamboyant racism may fire up Democratic voters in ways that more than make up for the re-dickstricting.

And he points out that the proud fracturing of Black voting power is “handing Democrats perhaps the easiest racial messaging they’ve had in the post-Civil Rights era” to win back the small number of Black Trump voters who weren’t already won back by seeing that, yes, Trump’s second term could outsuck his first term.

In Florida’s re-dickstricting, Democrats are already making fun of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for a new map he Crayolaed to show as cutting the state’s eight Democratic seats down to just four. Axios reports things have changed so much since 2024 that the DeSantis map could increase Democratic seats.

On Fox, former senior presidential advisor for evil Karl Rove said Sunday that GOP gerrymandering could backfire:

“You could in essence take … like here in Texas, take big cities, which are typically Democrat, and split them up among several sort of suburban and rural Republicans and thereby reduce their margin and make [House Republicans] more vulnerable in an election year.”

If House Democrats do win as a result of GOP dummymandering, they’ll go into 2028 with the anti-Trump wind at their backs again. And then in 2030, they’ll have all the advantages of incumbency — worth an average of almost three extra points at the polls.

On the other hand, if Democrats try to rig the system, as some are pushing for in Virginia, there’s the risk of their own unintended consequences.

And rigging the system implies that the system is not working. But it is working! It’s giving us exactly what the people voted for in 2024.

The problem wasn’t the system, it was that people were historically stupid in 2024, telling themselves they don’t like politics or paying attention to social-media slop or corporate-media gossip mills.

Think of the complicated system formed by our federal and state constitutions as a Play-Doh™ machine. Since 2016, it’s been extruding out even more poop than usual.

Not in the colorful rainbow arrays that bring us such joy. Mostly white poop. Like a Play-D’oh machine.

It makes sense to want to fix the machine. But the machine was never the problem.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the foundiest founding fathers, warned us that our Play-Doh™ machines can’t extrude a more perfect union when poop is what we put into it. The machine isn’t the problem, what we’re feeding it is. Garbage in, garbage out.

The founding fathers, foundiest and otherwise, built the machine with all kinds of doodads and whirligigs to keep poop out, most notably the Electoral College. Basically, white male landowners were the only ones allowed to feed the machine, based on the assumption that they were uniquely educated and wise and smart. And other racist, misogynistic assumptions.

So we did what they created the machine to do: Allowed more people put stuff into it and educated more people. We didn’t change the machine, we expanded access to it.

Then, my argument is, we collectively learned the wrong lesson from the ‘60s: That education and objectivity are bullshit.

The original goal was to challenge remaining barriers, but it backfired. If education and objectivity meant nothing, then who was to say that racism and sexism and homophobia were bad? If I’m scared by the people on my Ring™ video, that’s just, like, my reality, man!

So, most Americans made a bad choice in 2016. We put poop in the Play-Doh™ factory and it came out the way bad Play-D’oh does, sticky and blobby, orange and pale and narcissistic, with disturbing hairs sticking out of it.

Now, Republicans are trying to lock in the 2024 Play-D’oh outputs, while Democrats are arguing over how to re-design the Play-D’oh factory to make better poop come out. But Americans already realized, again, that they put bad poop in, again.

Polls and elections this year and last have already shown us the machine still works fine when we use it properly. That’s my hifalutin reason for skepticism about all of this stuff: I worry Democrats are tinkering with the factory right as the inputs are re-aligning.

Most importantly, I fear that Democrats aren’t doing the work to keep orange blobby poop out of the input pile. Democrats can either rig the machine to squeak out marginal victories — or they can focus on what goes into the machine by giving voters what they want: Free shit paid for by taking our money back from Wall Street brigands.

What Democrats should be doing, to fix both the output and our lives, is promising to deliver up amazing, edible, pretty, robust goop that can be used to make high-speed rail and very low-speed bridges, and free education and health care, and everything that would make everyone want to play with Play-Doh™.

Trump Backs Gas-Tax Suspension after Backing into Oil Crisis

Asked on Monday whether he would suspend the federal gas tax as some members of both parties have suggested, Pres. Donald Trump made word noises that almost could have passed for sustained, coherent thought. Here’s Roll Call’s actual, un-newsfucked transcript of Trump’s answer response:

“Uh, yeah, I'm going to, uh, reduce until the -- let me tell you, as soon as this is over with, Iran, as soon as it's over, you're going to see, uh, gasoline and oil drop like a rock. It's going to be dropping down like a rock. I mean, already, look, just on the basis of -- you know, things have happened.”

Now, does that mean he’ll actually suspend the gas tax? Uh, yeah, he’s going to, uh, reduce until the — let me tell you, as soon as this is over with, this sentence, as soon as it’s over, you’re going to see, uh, coherence and lucidity drop like a rock. It’s, those two things, going to be dropping down like one rock. I mean, already, look, just on the basis of — you know, things have happened.

So true!

Interestingly, though, Trump is not a king and can’t just kill taxes as if they were people in boats. And Congress is firing back that it can’t afford to lose more revenue after Trump’s tax cuts for the rich last year. Because helping the non-rich is by definition unaffordable.

Also, as promised/threatened, on Monday I emailed both the Energy Department and the White House to ask whether Trump supports closing the regulatory loophole that’s letting Wall Street speculators push up oil prices, just as Energy Secretary Chris Wright said back in March.

I gave them a deadline of tonight, so we’ll see what happens just on the basis of — you know, things have happened.

Four Quickies

• After ending Iran War I at some point still to be determined, and then resuming hostilities against Iran last week with the launch of Iran War II — all while claiming the ceasefire that’s not affecting the fire is still in effect — Pres. Donald Trump is now reportedly considering initiating military action against Iran. That could mean resuming the bombing of remaining military targets that were all destroyed in Iran War I, making Iran War III the Iran war to end all Iran wars. Trump said Monday that he didn’t finish reading Iran’s response to his one-page, double-spaced, single-sided, fat-margined peace proposal so he must be waiting for the movie to find out how it ends.

• Wired got a hold of the complaints about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In short, people were upset about the vulgarity, and upset that the vulgarity was in Spanish so they couldn’t understand it. ¡Idiotas del merde! (s/t)

• Pres. Donald Trump is heading for China on a fact-finding trip to learn how China is eating his lunch and yet he’s still hungry an hour later and for all of us to learn how much more Trump can screw up the global economy. Details in Wednesday’s TFN!

• The University of Central Florida had its commencement on Friday. The speaker was Tavistock Development Company Vice President of Strategic Alliances Gloria Caulfield because apparently the assistant to the regional manager of strategic alliances wasn’t available. Caulfield tried to sell the wonders of AI to the generation whose jobs are being destroyed by AI. It appeared to be Caulfield’s first encounter with actual intelligence:

Recommended Reading

There’s a fascinating pre-obituary for Facebook up at the New York Times, by journalist and opinion writer Julia Angwin. It comes from the same school as Cory Doctorow’s various dissections of how tech companies enshittify themselves and their software because they can’t help trying to get ever-more of our ever-shrinking dollars.

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! The GOP is trying to gerrymander, but it’s coming out more like a Kramermander…

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

After weeks months of unsuccessfully battering Iran militarily, a frustrated Pres. Donald Trump has begun wielding the most devastating weapon in his arsenal. Not nuclear bombs: His job-creation skills.

Iran is not the first nation to feel the economic pain of Trump’s ability to create negative jobs. Last year, he wiped out jobs around the globe with Liberation Day, levying tariffs on countries who know what they did. Trump destroyed jobs in countries that didn’t even have people.

In the U.S., of course, Trump in his first term had the worst jobs record of any modern president, leaving the country with 2.7 million fewer jobs than when the Black guy was in charge. Trump said those job losses were due to the pandemic, which is like saying you crashed your car because you were fighting the hitchhiking monkey you picked up because you thought it might be holding some good Colombian blow.

And now, the New York Times reports that the businessman president has destroyed two million jobs in Iran. Without even going there! Where the only Republicans are the Republican Guard!

Before dying, Iran’s then-rulers shut off the internet following the joint U.S.-Israeli attack. That killed jobs.

Since then, the U.S.-Israeli bombings and U.S. blockade have destroyed even more jobs. As with all things Trump, it’s part of a sophisticated and well-thought-out strategy.

Trump explained his sublime reasoning to the media earlier this month. “I hope it fails,” Trump said of Iran’s economy, which feeds and clothes the Iranian people Trump says he’s doing this for. “You know why?” he asked, setting the stage for him to outline his complex thought process: “Because I want to win.” Ooh, a new strategy!

As the Times notes, widespread Iranian protests that began last year were fueled by already-poor economic conditions. Trump then tried to inspire protest leaders to rise up again after they had been killed off.

If millions of unemployed Iranians do rise up against their government, it could lead to a change of leaders like the one that made it impossible for Iran’s new government to agree on peace terms with Trump. But also, as TFN told you early on — but can’t remember when so I can’t link to it — Iran’s political power has shifted from the clergy to the military, which is unlikely to bless or forgive a popular uprising.

And Trump’s now bringing all his skills to bear on the Iran crisis that he caused because he was annoyed, not just military and economic but diplomatic, as well. Because he wants to win!

Trump last week sent Iran a peace proposal that was one page and single-sided with margins on both sides the size of ankles.

Iran has now responded with more details and pages than Trump could muster. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran proposed sending some of its uranium for a third country to hold while talks proceed, and diluting the rest so it’s less enriched, like a Trump economy.

Trump’s subtle, thoughtful response? “I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” Me president! Iran bad! Cookie!!!!!!

Trump Protecting Wall Street’s Oil Profits

Energy Secretary Chris Wright went on the old-fashioned broadcast TV sets on Sunday, using that hand-cranked, steam-powered technology to talk about that other antiquated technology: Fossil fuel. The average price of gas is $4.52 per gallon as of today.

And Wright delivered a big fat whoopsie-fuckaloo of a lie, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker that Pres. Donald Trump is “open to all ideas” (except non-binary gender identities). What made headlines was Wright’s answer when asked specifically about the idea of suspending the 18-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax:

“[A]ll measures that can be taken to lower the price at the pump and lower the prices for Americans, this administration is in support of.”

Which is weird, because as pretty much only TFN noticed back in March, Wright explicitly blamed spiking gas prices on Wall Street commodity traders. Who have conspicuously not been the subject of any or all measures to lower prices.

These commodity traders are allowed to bet so much money on oil futures that real purchases — the supply-and-demand stuff we learned in school — don’t account for enough of the trading to set the prices anymore; the bets do.

As Wright said early on: “[Y]ou have a bunch of oil traders out there in their Gucci loafers with their caramel Frappuccinos who are bidding up the price.”

And yet, two months later, the Trump administration hasn’t taken away Wall Street’s loafers, Frappuccinos, or deregulated trading. Meanwhile, oil prices rose and stocks fell on Monday as traders woke up and realized Trump is still president.

Maybe I’ll email the Energy Department today and ask whether Trump’s in support of re-regulating oil futures gambling by non-users of oil! Because wright now, “all measures” to lower gas prices don’t include curbing Wall Street gambling.

In the meantime, here’s Public Citizen’s energy guy, Tyson Slocum, back in March, explaining how Wall Street drives gas prices:

MEDIA WATCH Here’s a glimpse of how dangerous journalistic innumeracy and/or financial illiteracy can be (I should know, as I suffer from both). When you don’t have a grasp on systems and how they work, any glitch or logical neuron fart from that system can sail right by without you smelling it, let alone knowing who dealt it.

Here’s a graphic thing I yoinked from the Washington Post:

If futures markets were really working, why would anyone respond to Trump outbreaking the war by choosing that moment to buy a contract for oil months in the future at prices that are spiking? Actual users of oil would already have futures contracts in place at pre-outbreak prices. Those who didn’t would likely wait for prices to come back down.

Which means that oil-future skyrocketing was driven by people who didn’t actually need or use gas — except for their personal Hummers and SUVs — but were gambling other people’s money on the prices.

Even corporate business journalists don’t question these spikes, because that’s how profoundly we’ve internalized the dysfunction of futures markets that exist to dampen spikes and fluctuations.

(Terrifying anecdote: I once asked a business journalist why gold prices go up when any of the horsemen of the apocalypse start saddling up and their answer was, cuz it’s gold.)

Talks with Zambia Stall Over How Insanely Evil U.S. Will Be

Y’know how TV news is ignoring America’s Zambian AIDS extortion racket the way it’s ignoring The Boat-iac Killings™? Well, it turns out the U.S. isn’t just extorting Zambia for its rare minerals in exchange for funding to stem the spread of AIDS.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a minerals summit for African officials in conjunction with February’s National Prayer Breakfast (which is heaven for lobbyists). Ironically, Rubio and Pres. Donald Trump have now left Zambia praying for help against AIDS.

But the State Department wants something in return for AIDS funding. Because having less AIDS making its way around the world in which we are is insufficient incentive, apparently.

The minerals are one price TFN has mentioned before. But wait, there’s more evil!

Thanks to Trump, the U.S. is no longer part of the World Health Organization, which is where the U.S. used to get data about world health when the U.S. was organized.

So now the U.S. wants Zambia to turn over health-care data about its people. Zambia wants to share in the proceeds from any medical breakthroughs that result from that data. But Trump’s comprehension of the word “share” is wanting.

Anyway, the point is that prayer breakfasts are unifying and no one has data on how many people in Zambia have died of AIDS due to Trump’s cuts because Trump cut money to count them, too.

Think the Iran War Is Stupid? No Shit!

Set aside, as we are wont to do, the thousands of dead in both Iran War I and Iran War II. The economic impact goes beyond jacked up oil prices jacking up the prices of everything that oil moves.

Nitrogen-based fertilizers like urea are also shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Or were!

Prices for fertilizer have gone through the shithouse roof and now 70% of American farmers say they can’t afford all the fertilizer they need, which is weird because I’m pretty sure we have a massive surplus of shit right now. (h/t)

Interestingly, there are regional disparities in fertilizer-readiness. The region that bought up the least fertilizer before prices spiked is the same region that stocked up the most on the bullshit that Pres. Donald Trump was selling:

So expect more soybean and other low-fertilizer foods and less corn and other high-fertilizer foods. And expect prices of your veggies to remain elevated through 2027 2028. Urea fertilizer could remain 13% more expensive, one report found, even if the strait opens soon.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is obviously blaming Pres. Joe Biden, who was always president yesterday. So Rollins now says she’s going to tap a $900 million fund for fertilizer that grew after it was planted … by Biden.

High Steaks

Pres. Donald Trump just let an opportunity to do something about meat prices slip through his Big Mac-greasy finger-nubs.

Back in 2023, I wrote about how Agri Stats was the target of a Justice Department criminal prosecution civil lawsuit for alleged price-fixing. Basically, Agri Stats was a consultant for purveyors of dead animals — with access to all their inside info.

Which meant sellers of dead animal flesh didn’t have to do illegal price-fixing by colluding directly with each other: Agri Stats could assess all their data and advise Big Dead Animal how to price their dead animals. Price-fixing by proxy! Which helped Big Dead Animal turn its small rivals into small dead animals.

Well, the Trump Justice Department (DOJ) inherited the case and just settled. Like Rachel settled for Ross.

David Dayen reports that the DOJ settlement doesn’t kill Agri Stats. It doesn’t even stop Agri Stats from Agri Statting. Instead, the Trump Justice Department is forcing Agri Stats to … let anyone purchase its services.

In theory, that might give smaller dead-animal purveyors a shot at that juicy price-fixing info, but what it definitely does is let Agri Stat keep going … while beefing up its clientele.

Election Watch

Kissing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ass may lead to some Democratic incumbents getting deported from Congress, Punchbowl News reports.

Last summer, Republicans obviously took a resolution condemning the antisemitic Molotov cocktail attack in Colorado and used it to make poop on immigrants and fellate the police state, expressing “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland (sic)” (except Renee Good and Alex Pretti).

Seventy-five House Democrats signed on to this because it didn’t occur to them that the future might happen.

Now, Punchbowl notes that in a Michigan Senate debate, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow reminded voters that Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) kissed ICE’s ass. The Stevens campaign instantly signaled to friendly political-action committees (PACs) that they should spend money to defend her the way they would if they were legally allowed to coordinate with the campaign.

Likewise, in the Minnesota Senate race, Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) voted both to kiss ICE’s ass and for the Laken Riley Act, which weaponized ICE on top of ICE already having weapons.

Well, at a rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Craig’s rival, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D-MN) just hit Craig as “the only Democrat from Minnesota to vote to praise ICE.” Ouch.

Minnesota, it’s worth noting, does not like ICE. And now, predictably, Democrats who knee-jerked obeisance to the police state are getting kneecapped for it.

One-½ Quickies

• Zachary Alam was sentenced last week to seven years in prison for breaking into a Virginia home in May 2025, four months after Pres. Donald Trump pardoned him for breaking into the U.S. Capitol. After getting away with trying to steal the United States presidency, Alam apparently thought electronics and jewelry would be a breeze. When the family caught him in the act, Alam said he was there “to fix the Wi-fi.” Like the fuckin’ Grinch taking trees back to Santy’s workshop ffs. The judge said police described Alam as “the most combative and the most violent” of the burglars who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to fix the Wi-fi.

• Yes, the Virginia state Supreme Court struck down new congressional lines approved by the people themselves. Yes, Democrats are freaking out about it. Yes, The Fucking News obviously has a contrarian take on it, and, yes, I need some time to research and write it in a way that doesn’t make you Newsfuckers hate me even though contrarian takes are why you’re here!

Recommended Reading

The nakedly racist Tennessee congressional map, violating decades of federal law against naked racism, isn’t just nakedly racist. As Harold Meyerson writes for the American Prospect, it’s also anti-city, diluting urban votes by parceling them up between majority-rube districts.

Recommended Mathing

The Supreme Court’s embarrassing ruling on redistricting isn’t just embarrassingly racist and partisan, it’s embarrassingly innumerate.

The new standard for maps allows politicians (Republicans) to redraw maps for racism as long as they’re also partisan. Challengers to racist maps could, in theory, G. Elliott Morris writes, propose alternative maps but they’d have to be just as partisan.

Of course, the whole point of racial gerrymandering is that there’s a strong correlation between being Black and voting Democratic. Breaking up Black Democratic voting blocs is racist regardless of whether you’re doing it to help Republicans or to hurt Black people. But the new Supreme Court ruling says both are okay as long they’re both happening and uses bad math to justify it.

Recommended Diagnosing

I am for a number of reasons reluctant to ascribe Pres. Donald Trump’s weirdnesses and badness to brainlessness. But I’m also a follow-the-science guy, which means acknowledging when science people say stuff.

And Rachel, a staunch Newsfucker over at This Woman Votes, shares a letter, entered into the congressional record, from medical professionals who concluded that even before re-presidenting, Trump showed “serious signs of cognitive decline … [that] warranted disqualification from office.” And they’ve now concluded that:

“Donald Trump’s mental state since our 2024 statement has deteriorated even further … [and] we are compelled to warn of a President of the United States who is increasingly a danger to the public.”

Seems important! Go check out the full thing here. (But, I hope, also remember that plenty of everyday Americans say and believe the stuff Trump does, and plenty of justices appointed by other Republicans are rubber-stamping it, so we can’t write it all off as just his brain being off…)

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! Trump’s exporting his jobs plan to Iran!

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Check out TFN’s podcast, make a donation, score swag, or connect in other ways.

FTN is intended to help Newsfuckers keep tabs on TFN without flooding their inboxes. To choose which TFN emails you get — weekly, daily, or Bonus Stories — adjust your Notification settings here.

Let’s facepalm…

IRAN WAR II BEGINS

For the second time in America’s history this year, war has broken out between Iran and the United States.

Historical archives show that Pres. Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared an end to Iran War I earlier this month, although the records of that earlier era don’t identify exactly when that happened. And then, Thursday night, the unthinkable happened again.

In the dead of night on Thursday (I mean, it was dead of night somewhere) Iran launched a sneak attack on American ships, Pearl Harbor style — except off Iran’s coast, not America’s, and against American ships that traveled thousands of miles to menace Iran, not nestled snug in U.S. harbors.

U.S. Central Command — which is patrolling the waters off Iran, blowing up small Iranian boats, destroyed the big ships in Iran’s navy, carried out more than 13,000 strikes on Iranian targets, killed Iran’s leadership, cut off Iran’s oil exports, and blew up an Iranian girl’s school, while the CIA armed Iranian rebels — called the Iranian attacks “unprovoked.”

Iran fired missiles or drones or something — it’s not like the Pentagon would tell us — at three U.S. ships Thursday. None of them were intercepted by God, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s request for His military aid.

Instead, Centcom — the cool-sounding war-porn name for Central Command — was forced to use up more of its dwindling stock of interceptors to fend off the missiles/drones and responded to the failed Iranian attacks by bombing Iranian military facilities left over from The First Iran War, in which Trump destroyed all of Iran’s military facilities.

The new hostilities shattered the ceasefire that was for some reason needed despite The First Iran War being over.

Trump said the ceasefire hadn’t been violated by the ceasing of fire-ceasing. Ever modest, he downplayed the start of The Second Iran War by forgoing the style of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s historic response to Pearl Harbor and instead addressing this day of more infamy by launching into a “Seinfeld”-style riff on the new conflict.

“They trifled with us today,” Trump said. “They trifled. I call that a trifle.” Trump’s wacky, racist buddy, Hegseth, presumably responded, “Oh, it’s a trifle, Jerry.”

The new war trifle broke out while Iran was still considering the one-page peace deal that Trump submitted to Iran on Wednesday to end The First Iran War that already ended.

Trump’s peace plan includes a moratorium on uranium enrichment and ending Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz but not his other objectives for Iran War I, like liberating Iran and ending Iran’s ability to attack Israel directly or via Hamas and Hezbollah.

If Iran accepts Peace Deal I, Trump will have succeeded in restoring things to how they were under Pres. Barack Obama. It’s not clear whether Iran War II will get a cool military name like Epic Trifle. Or whether Peace Deal I will apply to Iran War II. Or whether the Peace Deal II talks will take place during Iran War III.

WHICH WAR POWERS? Axios reports that Trump may have innodisruptovated yet another workaround around the work of the Constitution.

Congressional Democrats were planning to force votes on Trump’s war powers after Congress returns next week. The War Powers Act gives presidents 60 days after launching hostilities to seek the congressional permission that the Constitution requires, um, before launching hostilities.

But with Iran War I now just a vague memory of only America’s oldest veterans, Thursday’s launch of Iran War II sets the 60-day war-powers clock back to zero. So now, according to Axios, House Democrats are rethinking their strategy on stopping both illegal wars, one of which already ended and the other of which isn’t happening because the ceasing of fire-ceasing didn’t cease the ceasefire.

U.S. Military Takes Down 13,000 Flights

Unable to conquer its military adversary, the U.S. forces battling Iran have succeeded in taking down an estimated 13,000 civilian flights, instead, new tracking data show.

An aviation analytics firm said Tuesday that increased jet-fuel prices caused by Pres. Donald Trump’s low IQ and lack of impulse control have led airlines around the world to cancel about 13,000 flights for May. The casualties include a total of two million seats.

The downed flights are all civilian jets, which are unable to fight back except by losing your luggage, slamming that fucking drink cart into your knee (which should be a war crime), or running out of stroopwafel.

Airlines in the U.K. have asked the government to reduce taxes and ease up on regulations that protect people from the airlines’ noise and pollution — the way they always ask that — only now with jet-fuel prices as a reason on top of greed and lack of empathy.

THAT WAS THE SPIRIT! Trump also managed to take out an entire airline this weekend.

He generously tried to credit former Pres. Joe Biden with taking down Spirit Airlines, but the company’s self-authored obituary specifically said it was the price of jet fuel, which had cost Spirit $25 billion.

The casualties included thousands of passengers MIA — Missing In Airports — and 17,000 jobs killed.

Even some ostensible Democrats are saying it was Biden who shot down Spirit. The argument is that the Biden Justice Department fought JetBlue’s attempt to buy Spirit, which would have saved Spirit, even though it would’ve been eaten by JetBlue.

But as the American Prospect explains, that acquisition would have been just as big a disaster as Spirit’s demise. JetBlue even admitted that ticket prices would go up thanks to the increasing consolidation.

As Matt Stoller wrote, JetBlue’s plan was to raise ticket prices as much as 40%. Spirit’s board of directors warned its own shareholders that the JetBlue deal would be killed because it was illegal.

And it was Spirit’s shareholders who killed a proposal to merge with Frontier, another low-cost airline, that might have saved both. (And even Frontier is in trouble now, anyway.)

Nevertheless, Democratic Florida Senate candidate Alexander Vindman and the Center for American Progress’s Neera Tanden are among Democrats blaming the Justice Department for doing its job under Biden by enforcing antitrust laws and preventing airline monopolization from being more monopolified (which a Republican-appointed judge agreed with).

And if JetBlue had eaten Spirit? Well, JetBlue is right now on Spirit’s flight path: Down. Its own CEO is predicting bankruptcy. Turns out, Spirit wasn’t the only airline that uses jet fuel.

Spirit used to save passengers money on every airline. Because Spirit didn’t use the hub system the big airlines use, it could jump into any direct route whenever it wanted.

In the face of that potential competition, and Spirit’s low fares on the routes it did fly, the big airlines kept their prices at least nominally competitive. If Spirit did jump in, prices on that route fell an average of 17% across all airlines.

When Spirit abandoned any routes, prices on the other airlines rose 30%. (Note: Spirit just abandoned all its routes.)

Here’s how Brandon Oglenski, a Barclays aviation analyst, aviation-analyzed things for the presumably snooty Barclays clientele:

“…we also suspect industry pricing could benefit significantly for nearly all airlines given the removal of excess point-to-point capacity, which will likely drive even higher unit revenue outcomes in the near term.”

Let’s Duolingo that from the native Oglensk, shall we? “Industry pricing could benefit” means you could suck it. “Removal of excess point-to-point capacity” means robbing you of low-cost direct routes. “Higher unit revenue outcomes” means more of your money outgoes.

Spirit, of course, isn’t the first airline to go down with Trump at the helm. Previously, the black box that is Trump’s brain spent $365 million of someone else’s money to start an airline and then ran it the way he does every business: So poorly that it crashed.

Trump Outsourcing Iran War to Saudi Arabia

Just two days after announcing that the U.S. would escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Pres. Donald Trump announced that no it wouldn’t. Why not? Because he felt a peace deal was near, he said.

Why should the proximity of a peace deal stop the U.S. from escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz? He did not say.

But announcing the pause in his two-day-old Project Freedom, Trump did say that it was “Based on the request of Pakistan and other Countries.”

Well, that explains it. You know how accommodating Trump is to the requests of other Countries.

Actually, it so happens that you need air cover to protect naval escorts. And for that you need things like air bases and air spaces.

NBC News reports that Trump launched Project Freedom without, like, checking with people. Including the other Country of Saudi Arabia, all the base of which are belong to them.

And Saudi Arabia said no.

Then, because Trump had said Iran was close to a peace deal, he had to come up with something to which Iran could be close. So the U.S. sent Iran a peace deal. Newsfuckers, it was one page. Shorter, in other words, than most college résumés. Probably with yuge point size and margins like no one’s ever seen before.

Axios got the bullet points of Trump’s one-slide, 14-point PowerPoint™ and it reads as if Trump asked ChatGPT for a fifth-grade-reading-level version of Pres. Barack Obama’s deal that Trump killed. Only Trumpier.

Axios reported Wednesday that Trump gave Iran 48 hours to respond for no discernible reason other than that sounds like ChatGPT’s idea of a cool deadline. The deal Trump is now trying to get sounds a lot like the one Obama already got:

• Nuclear-enrichment moratorium

• Opening the Strait of Hormuz

In return for Iran returning to what Obama already got, Trump would lift sanctions on Iran and unfreeze billions of dollars of Iranian funds that otherwise could have been used here in America for important needs like Trump’s underground bunker and an arch.

The plan calls for both sides to declare an end to the war and begin talks on nuclear enrichment, opening the strait, and sanctions. In other words, the war would end before achieving Trump’s objectives for it, dropping objectives like ending Iran’s ballistic-missile capacity and support for Hezbollah and Hamas.

MINOR BUT IMPEACHABLE COVERUP In yet another sign that Trump’s uniquely bad presidenting is just an amalgam of previous bad presidenting, it turns out he’s covering up how badly the Iran War is going.

A Washington Post — them again! — analysis of satellite imagery finds that Iran has been blowing up American shit more precisely and in greater quantity than the Pentagon has let on. Iranian strikes have hit at least 228 U.S. structures or pieces of equipment at sites in at least six countries in the region.

Hilariously, the Post also reports that many of the bases the U.S. has there to keep the peace were evacuated beforehand to escape the lack of peace, raising questions of geopolitical strategy such as what the fnork are we doing?

ICE Also Killing American Jobs

Congressional Republicans right now are advancing legislation to provide more than $70 billion in funding for an agency that destroys U.S. jobs. Because election years are zany!

Researchers at the National Bureau for Economic Research in a study published Monday found that when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surged its deportation efforts, jobs for American male workers with no more than high-school degrees disappeared faster than anyone who looks like an immigrant to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (h/t)

Now, in the fairy tale version of immigration, undocumented immigrants take lower salaries, so companies hire them instead of American workers. But the study found that this is a fairy tale.

Undocumented immigrants tend to take jobs that American-born workers don’t or won’t take. So when that labor is deported to make America great again, or when someone doesn’t show up for work out of fear of being deported to make America again, those jobs don’t get done. And when those jobs don’t get done, those companies can’t make as much crap. And when less crap gets made, fewer Americans get hired.

For instance, suppose you were a dumb president. If you deport disproportionately undocumented construction workers, then the house they won’t build won’t require disproportionately American electricians and roofers. And they’ll be out of work, too.

Between the fear factor and the job-go-away factor, in areas victimized by an ICE surge, for every undocumented worker arrested, six other undocumented workers also disappeared from the workforce. And each surge area also lost 1,200 of its male, American-born workers with no more than a high-school degree.

According to some math that involves this…

…the numbers translate to one of those high-school-dude jobs disappearing every time six undocumented workers disappear courtesy of either ICE or their feets not failing them now.

Something similar happened, although at lower rates, under Pres. Barack Obama, despite his belovedness, a previous study found.

The new study, it’s worth noting, didn’t measure the impact of other immigration enforcement, including deporting and killing people regardless of whether their papers were in order. But there’s no reason to doubt similar effects outside of ICE.

Employment is ecosystems within ecosystems. Making one part of an ecosystem extinct hurts the rest of it.

Meanwhile, even leftie media are losing their minds because 1/71th of the GOP’s proposed $71 billion for immigrant xenophobia might fund Pres. Donald Trump’s underground bunker. Read your history, people: You want your dictators to have bunkers!

The real problem is with the other 70/71ths of that $71 billion. The new study shows that it won’t just rack up more debt, it’s going to kill American jobs (and maybe more humans). But instead of fighting to abolish ICE, like half the country and most Democrats want, congressional Democrats are fighting for ICE Band-Aids™ which might save some lives, but won’t save those jobs.

Rollins Celebrates Hunger as Positive Economic Sign

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is bragging about how many people have been deprived of government aid to buy food to eat and not die, Brad Reed of Common Dreams caught (h/t via h/t).

New Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) figures show that 4.3 million Americans are no longer receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits that pay for food, which contains supplemental nutrition. Sharing a White House post, Rollins took a victory lap with the energy she had thanks to food:

Here’s the chart the White House “rapid-response” account was celebrating:

It’s true that this could be a result of 4.3 million Americans suddenly getting new jobs that the Trumpconomy hasn’t created. But it’s also true that last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) slashed SNAP funding by $186 billion over ten years, in the fraudulent name of fighting non-existent fraud, forcing states to cut benefits and tighten eligibility.

Wonkette has more on Rollins and the federal fraud about alleged SNAP fraud. I’ll just add that Rollins is a sponsor of the White House Bible study that teaches that God doesn’t want government helping poor people because that’s the job of churches and rich people who you might have noticed say they don’t do that because that’s the job of government.

New GOP Map Achieves Maximum Possible Racism

Long thought unachievable by physicists, absolute racism was achieved outside a lab on Wednesday in a new congressional map released by Tennessee Republicans.

Absolute racism has been approached in previous maps, but last week’s ruling by the Supreme Court removed some of the last limitations on racist map-drawing, declaring maximum racism permissible as long as you don’t say it’s racism.

The same principle affects the observation of light, which can behave as energy or matter depending on whether you’re Justice Clarence Thomas.

Tennessee mapmakers were able to achieve absolute racism despite the problematic presence of Memphis — the state’s second biggest city, where most people are Black — by splicing the city up between majority-white districts.

As the New York Times reported, the new lines did away with the current, relatively contiguous districts (with the colors representing the 2024 vote):

That’s Memphis lower left and Nashville in that pink gerrymander.

Wednesday’s racism breakthrough utilized attenuated districts that dilute everyone’s representation by reducing each district’s population down to one single, defining factor: Just enough Black people to dilute their strength elsewhere, but not enough to overcome white votes anywhere:

Nashville is still carved up, now the hub of a swastika-esque racism pinwheel. And look closely at Memphis, lower left, with not one but three probosci nosing into its business…

…trisecting Memphis to dilute the city’s Black vote.

The legislature approved the map Thursday, without giving voters a chance to weigh in, because whattaya think this is, a democracy? The new map will likely be challenged in court, but that road leads to the same Supreme Court majority that made this breakthrough possible.

As TFN keeps saying, however, Republicans may have auto-fucked themselves by diluting their strength too much, based on 2024 voting patterns that no longer exist, and spurring Democratic turnout by achieving absolute racism.

Racial Gerrymandering Now as American as Apple Pie That’s Sold in Whites-Only Shops

Republican state legislators are taking a break from cutting arts education to draw new congressional maps, now that the Supreme Court says it’s legal to erase non-white people.

Louisiana, of course, was the subject of last week’s Supreme Court ruling. But Republicans in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and elsewhere are also pulling out their crayons.

More Democratic-controlled states are preparing to fight the gerrymandering wars, too, just six months before Election Day.

And Democrats are also talking about measures to address the Supreme Court’s scurrilous, mendacious perfidy by expanding the court. Or slapping term limits on it.

Your gimlet-eyed TFN looks with gimlet eye upon such proposals because the Constitution already provides a mechanism for relief: Winning.

Instead of changing the rules, the party that embarrassingly can’t figure out how to do more than eke out victories against the rich-serving, abortion-banning, sex-hating, rape-loving, child-exploiting, labor-plundering, environment-despoiling party could run and govern well enough to stomp Republicans consistently, rather than merely when Trump reminds people what Republicans want.

With a Democratic president and congressional majorities, Democrats could use the system to fix our problems, instead of fixing the system. How so? With the most immediate, harshest legal remedy available: Impeachment.

Take Chief Justice John Roberts. Please.

While working in the Reagan Justice Department, Roberts wrote that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was “constitutionally suspect.” And yet, on Sept. 13, 2005, during his confirmation hearing, Roberts said, “the existing Voting Rights Act, the constitutionality has been upheld and I don’t have any issue with that.”

Liar! Perjurer! Scalder of cats!

As David Daley chronicled for The Atlantic, Roberts has been trying to gut the heart of the VRA for decades, while putting on a face of not trying to gut the heart. He’s been claiming since the early 1980s that racism is over, so the law need not protect Black voters.

And yet, in his 2005 confirmation hearing, Roberts heard Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) remind him that racial disparities remained clearly visible, especially in Louisiana, where Katrina’s victims were “the weak, the poor, the elderly and the infirm, and largely African Americans, who were forced by poverty, illness, unequal opportunity to stay behind and bear the brunt of the storm’s winds and floods.”

And yet, in 2013, Roberts again proclaimed “Our country has changed,” just like he said back when MTV had to be pressured to play Michael Jackson videos.

Not enough impeachment cause for today’s Democratic nerds?

In 2005, the Progressive Librarians Guild opposed Roberts’s confirmation on multiple grounds that would pass muster for impeachment if Democrats were Republicans or governed like opponents of Republicans.

Roberts withheld documents about his record. Coverup! Refused to recuse himself from a 9/11 case while interviewing to be chief justice. Conflict of interest of Thomasian proportions and Clarencesque scale!

Roberts testified that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent. Then overturned it.

Impeachment doesn’t require a crime and politics don’t require a reason. Members of Congress can impeach just because Mercury is in retrograde and so is the court. Republicans tried to impeach Homeland (sic) Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for replacing an ‘x’ with a ‘j’ that’s said like an ‘h.’

The court’s flamboyantly hypocritical rulings under Trump give Democrats the option of impeaching on the basis of corruption, competence, or, fuck it, pure spite.

Too many Democratic politicians want us to think our problems are Trump problems. But without the Supreme Court justices of Presidents Bush, the Voting Rights Act would have triumphed.

Trump’s justices didn’t kill it; Republican justices did. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are arguably more extreme than any Trump appointee. Over at Balls and Strikes, Madiba K. Dennie lays out just some of Alito’s lies in his majority ruling, which the other five liars signed onto.

The right-wing majority claimed Louisiana had to “fix” (in the gambling sense) its maps now or else the elections would take place with “illegal” maps — something the Supreme Court has been entirely okay with when illegal maps were illegally Republican.

In fact, the Supreme Court has allowed elections to go ahead with illegal maps in the past when there was much more time until the voting — and when it gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives. Violating their oath to uphold the Constitution in order to facilitate a Republican takeover of a branch of government seems pretty impeachment-worthy to me.

PLAIN TIFF Democracy Docket reported on Tuesday that the lead plaintiff in the VRA ruling, Phillip “Bert” Callais was not only at the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he also believes that Trump won the 2020 election and that “Bert” is short for “Phillip.”

Democracy Docket found old social-media posts by Callais, but even the outlet’s own reporting doesn’t note the explicitly Christian aspect of one post, including the fear of “loosing” freedom of religion. (h/t)

The war on voting rights is a Republican religious war initiated when Trump was still just a budding rapist and racist landlord. The way to win this war is to fight the real enemies and win over the people by serving them rather than serving them up to corporations.

REMINDER Republican gerrymandering is based on 2024 voting patterns, which have now turned against Republicans. Meaning, the GOP is diluting GOP strength right as they’re weakening, which even some Republicans now understand could end up losing them seats the way Trump lost the Strait of Hormuz.

Murder, He Extorted

If Zambia doesn’t give the U.S. its minerals, Pres. Donald Trump will give Zambia AIDS. Specifically, more AIDS. (h/t)

Since Trump cut back on foreign, um, aid to Zambia, the rate of infections and death has soared, the New York Times reports. They don’t know exactly how much, because the funds for testing are gone, too.

What AIDS funding the U.S. still gives Zambia will go away after April 30, the administration says, unless Zambia signs a deal handing over some mineral rights. A deal swapping commodities for health-care funding is known in technical terms as a vile moral obscenity.

America’s Debt Hits Milestone Under Businessman President

Pres. Donald Trump won the presidency by promising to run America the way he runs his businesses, and he has: Illegally, spending money he doesn’t have, and borrowing what he needs to make himself look successful.

Early estimates now show that he’s brought his billionaire brilliance to America. The national debt is now greater than the value of literally everything anyone in the country makes in a year.

• Gross domestic product (GDP): $31.21 trillion

• National debt (IOU): $31.26 trillion

In math terms, the ratio of debt to GDP is now 1:1 and you’ll never guess which 1 is growing faster. And these numbers don’t even include future spending Trump wants:

• $3 trillion in tax cuts for the rich from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) that haven’t even kicked in yet.

• $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon so the U.S. can staff bases around the world to keep the peace and to force the U.S. into starting wars to defend those bases the same way the U.S. had to start Iran War I because if Israel attacked Iran alone then Iran would attack nearby U.S. bases which are nearby to prevent attacks.

Historically, America’s debt has only topped GDP in times of crisis such as World War II, the COVID pandemic, and Trump being awake. Republicans who cared about such things when the numbers were far less worse — but Democrats wanted to spend money on people — have been oddly quiet about the far more worse things they themselves are now doing, as the Times notes in very different language.

Economic analysts tell the Times America’s still got several years to avoid dramatic increases in the interest rates America pays on its debt — presumably by Democrats regaining power and cutting social services instead of raising taxes. Either way, the U.S. now ranks by far as the largest casino Trump has ever bankrupted.

The Voyage of the HHS Juntavirus

Dearest America,

I pray this chronicle reaches you in good health. Our journey taketh us through treacherous waters, with a dullard lunatic our captain. He hath appointed as the ship of state’s phiſician an opium-eater who now subsists on a regimen of carrion and philandery. Be this my final epistle to you, my love, I prithee share these chronicleſ with the civilized world and the Americas:

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate Jan. 22, 2026: The U.S. leaves the World Health Organization (WHO) because of you-know-WHO.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate March 17, 2026: Argentina leaves WHO. WHY? To kiss you-know-WHO’s you-know-WHAT you-know-WHERE.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 1, 2026: A 70-year-old Dutch dude boards the MV Hondius in Argentina.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 10, 2026: CBS News reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has eliminated the last of its two dozen full-time Vessel Sanitation Program staffers who respond to and inspect cruise ships to prevent viral outbreaks like the one that’s gonna kill that Dutch dude tomorrow. (h/t)

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 11, 2026: Dutch dude dies on board, apparently of the hantavirus.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 24, 2026: Twenty-nine passengers, including six Americans, debark their asses right the fuck off the MV Ship of Death. Where’d they go? Unclear! What hantavirus were they carrying? Unsure!

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 25, 2026: Mrs. Dutch dude dies of hantavirus.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 2, 2026: A third passenger dies of hantavirus.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 7, 2026: Former Infectious Diseases Society of America President Carlos del Rio tells reporters it’s weird that the CDC didn’t deploy anyone to the ship. (Also weird: FBI Director Kash Patel didn’t chopper on board for Happy Hour on the Lido Deck.)

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 7, 2026: Infectious Diseases Society of America CEO Jeanne Marrazzo tells reporters it’s weird that the CDC hasn’t yet posted an alert about the outbreak.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 7, 2026: The CDC says it’s responding to the hantavirus outbreak. By working with WHO.

Media Watch for Jesus

An Associated Press headline Thursday heralded a watershed moment for religion in America: “Worship attendance at churches up for the first time in decades, according to new report.”

Holy shit!

The article informs us that a new report “shows signs of a shift” after decades of more people deciding they do not believe in an invisible sky wizard and do not wish to attend the meetings of those who do to read the books He wrote or listen to the people He speaks to without anyone else hearing it.

Not that I lack faith in the article, but pray let us look at the numbers. Not the Book of Numbers, mind you.

The AP tell us that median in-person attendance was 137 in 2000, fell to 45 during COVID, but has now rebounded to 70. What the AP doesn’t tell us is that median attendance doesn’t tell us anything about the total number of churchgoers in the country.

So while median attendance may be up at the sampled churches, which provided the attendance numbers themselves, those increases could be due to unsampled churches closing entirely.

Another point you won’t see in the flocking news, 78% of weekly churchgoers are flocking to just 13% of congregations. Meaning: Megachurches are cannibalizing minichurches — and megachurches are famously less about Scripture and more about the rapture of Christian rock and up-with-people social bonding.

If you’ll open your TFN to the next verse, let’s peruse the report itself for those signs — dare we say omens? — of that shift the AP bewitnessed:

“Nearly half of congregations continue to experience attendance decline, and the gap between larger, growing congregations and smaller, struggling ones has widened.”

The report specifically says that the signs of growth it’s found have more to do with recalibrating after COVID, rather than reversing decades of Americans turning to Satan and all that He offers.

If you look in the report for evidence of a broad religious revival, here’s psalmthing: “There is little evidence of a broad religious revival.” But then, who needs evidence?

Four Quickies

• The U.S. military on Monday murdered two people in a boat without warning or due process or being fired on first, which is what makes it murder. The military again declined to provide any evidence that might render its boat murder not murder. The U.S. military has now illegally murdered — as opposed to war-murdered — 188 people in 56 unprovoked attacks on defenseless alleged drug and/or terrorist suspects. Pres. Donald Trump is now attacking boats in three separate bodies of water — Caribbean, Pacific, Strait of Hormuz — in addition to targeting electric vehicles in the U.S. and taking down thousands of civilian airline flights around the world. Future targets could include kites, skateboards, the Millennium Falcon, and the Tardis1.

• The Intercept reports that Pres. Donald Trump’s serial-killing Boat-iac Murders™ aren’t even accomplishing the thing he said they were accomplishing, making it the Iran War of boat murders. Drug trafficking isn’t down 97% as he’s claimed. Even the Defense Department claims no more than 25% reductions.

• Remember how Pres. Donald Trump raised the limits on how much Argentinian beef could be imported here to make up for the low U.S. dead cow supply? Climate change is making it worse. Bloomberg reports that drought conditions are already threatening wheat harvests, already raising the cost of cattle feed, leading some ranchers to drop plans to expand their herds. Which is good news for fighting climate change! Circle of life!

• Looking to convert that MAGA neighbor or friend who’s showing signs of being sanity-curious? So you want to show you’re not against everything Trump? TFN’s got you, Newsfuckers! To demonstrate your lack of bias, you can point to this actual good thing Pres. Donald Trump is doing. The State Department as of today is revoking passports for people who owe more than $100,000 in child support. And that threshold will soon drop to just $2,500 owed. In other words, the president who fathered untold legions of abandoned children and pioneered new levels of deadbeatery is going after deadbeat dads.

Correction

For years now, I’ve voiced skepticism about claims that political prayer is unifying. That’s the claim of the National Prayer Breakfast, produced by the secretive, Christian Fellowship Foundation, aka The Family.

I’ve argued that political prayer is divisive, a claim based on nothing more than personal bias and history and facts.

Now, new polling has come out about the unifying power of political prayer, and I’m man enough to admit I was wrong.

In fact, the polling shows, political prayer and other religious displays and pronouncements by government officials are uniting the country together … against those things. Because they suck holy ass.

As Axios headlined the poll: “Even Trump voters reject his Jesus post.” Finally, something MAGA and brain-users can agree on!

Eighty percent of Trump voters agree with 87% of the entire country who reacted negatively to this post by Trump, suggesting falsely that he’s Jesus and/or supports health care:

Sixty-nine percent had a negative reaction to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s public prayer for divine violence against Iran. God had no comment.

Protest Songs

Okay, maybe they’re not protest songs, but the Newsfucker behind a new project called “The Editorial Key” told me his music is to “translate historical and civic analysis into an emotionally accessible musical form.”

You can check it out here, and subscribe to get notified when new ones drop. Although there is some AI involved, it seems to be on the benign end of the spectrum and I’m encouraged to see people trying new things to convey important truths about the systems that underlie the reality we’re all struggling to survive!

ALSO Red Star Sky dropped an anti-fascism-themed, four-song EP called Debt. You can order it and check out Red Star Sky here.

Red Star Sky is a project of Corey Layman, a Pittsburgh musician and songwriter and stalwart Newsfucker. I asked Corey whether I could share this with you, and asked him to tell me a little bit about his work:

“There is persistent worldwide human suffering - profound and mundane, loud and silent - due to the systems of violence and control that are woven through the fabric of our collective histories and yet we persist in finding hope, joy, and beauty through non-violence, play, and love, and this humble offering is my way of persisting.”

I know how you feel, Corey. Thank you.

TCB

DIDJA MISS ME? I’m extraordinarily grateful to all of you for making it possible for me to take off for five days over my birthday. It was wonderful and brain-resetting, although I’m already back on the mental treadmill of freaking out about all the reporting and newsfucking I’m now behind on. I won’t get it all done, but your support keeps me going.

SUPPORTING TFN If the weekly TFN roundup, Facepalm the Nation, is worth my aggregation aggravation, please consider letting me know by putting your money where my cursing mouth is with a paid subscription. Thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids!

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

If you’re a regular listener, the best way to keep TFN going is with a paid subscription, which you can get using this link or this button:

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the Facepalm podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil cash apps:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

For the second time in America’s history this year, war has broken out between Iran and the United States.

Historical archives show that Pres. Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared an end to Iran War I earlier this month, although the records of that earlier era don’t identify exactly when that happened. And then, Thursday night, the unthinkable happened again.

In the dead of night on Thursday (I mean, it was dead of night somewhere) Iran launched a sneak attack on American ships, Pearl Harbor style — except off Iran’s coast, not America’s, and against American ships that traveled thousands of miles to menace Iran, not nestled snug in U.S. harbors.

U.S. Central Command — which is patrolling the waters off Iran, blowing up small Iranian boats, destroyed the big ships in Iran’s navy, carried out more than 13,000 strikes on Iranian targets, killed Iran’s leadership, cut off Iran’s oil exports, and blew up an Iranian girl’s school, while the CIA armed Iranian rebels — called the Iranian attacks “unprovoked.”

Iran fired missiles or drones or something — it’s not like the Pentagon would tell us — at three U.S. ships Thursday. None of them were intercepted by God, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s request for His military aid.

Instead, Centcom — the cool-sounding war-porn name for Central Command — was forced to use up more of its dwindling stock of interceptors to fend off the missiles/drones and responded to the failed Iranian attacks by bombing Iranian military facilities left over from The First Iran War, in which Trump destroyed all of Iran’s military facilities.

The new hostilities shattered the ceasefire that was for some reason needed despite The First Iran War being over.

Trump said the ceasefire hadn’t been violated by the ceasing of fire-ceasing. Ever modest, he downplayed the start of The Second Iran War by forgoing the style of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s historic response to Pearl Harbor and instead addressing this day of more infamy by launching into a “Seinfeld”-style riff on the new conflict.

“They trifled with us today,” Trump said. “They trifled. I call that a trifle.” Trump’s wacky, racist buddy, Hegseth, presumably responded, “Oh, it’s a trifle, Jerry.”

The new war trifle broke out while Iran was still considering the one-page peace deal that Trump submitted to Iran on Wednesday to end The First Iran War that already ended.

Trump’s peace plan includes a moratorium on uranium enrichment and ending Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz but not his other objectives for Iran War I, like liberating Iran and ending Iran’s ability to attack Israel directly or via Hamas and Hezbollah.

If Iran accepts Peace Deal I, Trump will have succeeded in restoring things to how they were under Pres. Barack Obama. It’s not clear whether Iran War II will get a cool military name like Epic Trifle. Or whether Peace Deal I will apply to Iran War II. Or whether the Peace Deal II talks will take place during Iran War III.

MEDIA WATCH I know this headline is supposed to mean that the ceasefire holds even though Iran and the U.S. exchanged blows, but, Newsfuckers, when I first read it, I saw it as the ceasefire held despite Iran, and also that the U.S. blows:

WHICH WAR POWERS? Axios reports that Trump may have innodisruptovated yet another workaround around the work of the Constitution.

Congressional Democrats were planning to force votes on Trump’s war powers after Congress returns next week. The War Powers Act gives presidents 60 days after launching hostilities to seek the congressional permission that the Constitution requires, um, before launching hostilities.

But with Iran War I now just a vague memory of only America’s oldest veterans, Thursday’s launch of Iran War II sets the 60-day war-powers clock back to zero. So now, according to Axios, House Democrats are rethinking their strategy on stopping both illegal wars, one of which already ended and the other of which isn’t happening because the ceasing of fire-ceasing didn’t cease the ceasefire.

America’s Debt Hits Milestone Under Businessman President

Pres. Donald Trump won the presidency by promising to run America the way he runs his businesses, and he has: Illegally, spending money he doesn’t have, and borrowing what he needs to make himself look successful.

Early estimates now show that he’s brought his billionaire brilliance to America. The national debt is now greater than the value of literally everything anyone in the country makes in a year.

• Gross domestic product (GDP): $31.21 trillion

• National debt (IOU): $31.26 trillion

In math terms, the ratio of debt to GDP is now 1:1 and you’ll never guess which 1 is growing faster. And these numbers don’t even include future spending Trump wants:

• $3 trillion in tax cuts for the rich from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) that haven’t even kicked in yet.

• $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon so the U.S. can staff bases around the world to keep the peace and to force the U.S. into starting wars to defend those bases the same way the U.S. had to start Iran War I because if Israel attacked Iran alone then Iran would attack nearby U.S. bases which are nearby to prevent attacks.

Historically, America’s debt has only topped GDP in times of crisis such as World War II, the COVID pandemic, and Trump being awake. Republicans who cared about such things when the numbers were far less worse — but Democrats wanted to spend money on people — have been oddly quiet about the far more worse things they themselves are now doing, as the Times notes in very different language.

Economic analysts tell the Times America’s still got several years to avoid dramatic increases in the interest rates America pays on its debt — presumably by Democrats regaining power and cutting social services instead of raising taxes. Either way, the U.S. now ranks by far as the largest casino Trump has ever bankrupted.

U.S. Gears Up for, Like, 11th War with Mexico

The State Department is investigating whether Mexican consulates here are secretly waging a war against the U.S. or something, CBS News reports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has already initiated wars against Venezuela — for its secret war against the U.S. that wasn’t — and against foreign students whose radical beliefs that human rights should extend to Palestinian humans threatened the American way of supporting Israel, and he’s still working on a war against Cuba because it’s Right. There.

While those hostilities were based on obvious bullshit — unfounded conspiracy theories I reported on about Venezuela and right-wing media fiction about foreign students — Rubio appears to have obtained his new intelligence on Mexico via right-wing media fiction about conspiracy theories.

Back in February, the crack investigative team at, um, Breitbart reported on fabulated efforts by Mexican consular officials to oppose the agenda of Pres. Donald Trump, including “organizing protests,” according to author Peter Schweizer.

“They brag about getting involved with organizations that are resisting the agenda of the president. You can disagree with the agenda of the president, but as a foreign diplomat, you are not supposed to be doing that.”

As everyone knows, the job of foreign diplomats is to advance the agenda of whoever is president of the country they’re in.

Pro tip: Wanna know whether a right-wing “investigative” team is Woodward and Bernstein or Woody and Buzz Lightyear? Look at what they actually allege in actual quotes. If it’s all sweeping characterizations and no damning specifics, ignore the rabbit hole, it’s just Bugs Bunny.

So far, the U.S. military has only invaded Mexico ten times, but el noche is still joven.

The Voyage of the HHS Juntavirus

Dearest America,

I pray this chronicle reaches you in good health. Our journey taketh us through treacherous waters, with a dullard lunatic our captain. He hath appointed as the ship of state’s phiſician an opium-eater who now subsists on a regimen of carrion and philandery. Be this my final epistle to you, my love, I prithee share these chronicleſ with the civilized world and the Americas:

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate Jan. 22, 2026: The U.S. leaves the World Health Organization (WHO) because of you-know-WHO.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate March 17, 2026: Argentina leaves WHO. WHY? To kiss you-know-WHO’s you-know-WHAT you-know-WHERE.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 1, 2026: A 70-year-old Dutch dude boards the MV Hondius in Argentina.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 10, 2026: CBS News reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has eliminated the last of its two dozen full-time Vessel Sanitation Program staffers who respond to and inspect cruise ships to prevent viral outbreaks like the one that’s gonna kill that Dutch dude tomorrow. (h/t)

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 11, 2026: Dutch dude dies on board, apparently of the hantavirus.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 24, 2026: Twenty-nine passengers, including six Americans, debark their asses right the fuck off the MV Ship of Death. Where’d they go? Unclear! What hantavirus were they carrying? Unsure!

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate April 25, 2026: Mrs. Dutch dude dies of hantavirus.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 2, 2026: A third passenger dies of hantavirus.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 7, 2026: Former Infectious Diseases Society of America President Carlos del Rio tells reporters it’s weird that the CDC didn’t deploy anyone to the ship. (Also weird: FBI Director Kash Patel didn’t chopper on board for Happy Hour on the Lido Deck.)

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 7, 2026: Infectious Diseases Society of America CEO Jeanne Marrazzo tells reporters it’s weird that the CDC hasn’t yet posted an alert about the outbreak.

Asshole’s Log, Dickdate May 7, 2026: The CDC says it’s responding to the hantavirus outbreak. By working with WHO.

Media Watch for Jesus

An Associated Press headline Thursday heralded a watershed moment for religion in America: “Worship attendance at churches up for the first time in decades, according to new report.”

Holy shit!

The article informs us that a new report “shows signs of a shift” after decades of more people deciding they do not believe in an invisible sky wizard and do not wish to attend the meetings of those who do to read the books He wrote or listen to the people He speaks to without anyone else hearing it.

Not that I lack faith in the article, but pray let us look at the numbers. Not the Book of Numbers, mind you.

The AP tell us that median in-person attendance was 137 in 2000, fell to 45 during COVID, but has now rebounded to 70. What the AP doesn’t tell us is that median attendance doesn’t tell us anything about the total number of churchgoers in the country.

So while median attendance may be up at the sampled churches, which provided the attendance numbers themselves, those increases could be due to unsampled churches closing entirely.

Another point you won’t see in the flocking news, 78% of weekly churchgoers are flocking to just 13% of congregations. Meaning: Megachurches are cannibalizing minichurches — and megachurches are famously less about Scripture and more about the rapture of Christian rock and up-with-people social bonding.

If you’ll open your TFN to the next verse, let’s peruse the report itself for those signs — dare we say omens? — of that shift the AP bewitnessed:

“Nearly half of congregations continue to experience attendance decline, and the gap between larger, growing congregations and smaller, struggling ones has widened.”

The report specifically says that the signs of growth it’s found have more to do with recalibrating after COVID, rather than reversing decades of Americans turning to Satan and all that He offers.

If you look in the report for evidence of a broad religious revival, here’s psalmthing: “There is little evidence of a broad religious revival.” But then, who needs evidence?

The Lonely War of Pete Hegseth

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth isn’t just losing Iran War II to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that Iran War I closed. He’s also losing the battle for the hearts and minds of his own party.

The Hill reports, behind a blooming garden of pop-up ads like every gotdam website these days, that Hegseth would not be confirmed by the Senate today and that some Senate Republicans want him to “move on.” As if he’s qualified for a real job!

They’re all anonymous because they lack that warrior spirit Hegseth fetishizes. But the reason he’s lost them isn’t purging women and Black people from top ranks or waging war on defenseless LGBTQ+ troops. No, Senate Republicans are miffed about the handful of white people Hegseth has torpedoed as if they were people in boats.

Hilariously, The Hill says Republicans have always — but secretly! — had concerns “over Hegseth’s lack of experience managing a large and complex bureaucracy, as well as leeriness about his unconventional and often brash leadership style.”

Still, his incompetence and radical, divisive ideologies were tolerable. What’s now pushing the GOP over the edge, according to The Hill, are “his battles with senior military leaders who have strong relations with policymakers on Capitol Hill.”

This is Senate Republicans opening fire on a target so he can’t fire back, like Hegseth does to people in boats: Invisibly, from a distance.

One of the few Republicans with the basic integrity to speak publicly, because he’s leaving, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), said, “I think he’s missing the mark on personnel. He has separated some of the most extraordinary generals that we’ve had in play.”

In other words, how Hegseth treats the troops and Constitution is irrelevant. The problem is how he’s treating Republican senators’ friends in uniform. Supporting the troops always meant their troops.

Three Quickies

• Looking to convert that MAGA neighbor or friend who’s showing signs of being sanity-curious? So you want to show you’re not against everything Trump? TFN’s got you, Newsfuckers! To demonstrate your lack of bias, you can point to this actual good thing Pres. Donald Trump is doing. The State Department as of today is revoking passports for people who owe more than $100,000 in child support. And that threshold will soon drop to just $2,500 owed. In other words, the president who fathered untold legions of abandoned children and pioneered new levels of deadbeatery is going after deadbeat dads.

• The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Thursday pleaded not guilty to charges it defrauded donors by using their money to help racist groups instead of dismantling them. The SPLC used donated money to pay insiders at extremist groups for information to use against those groups. If paying informants is helping their groups, by that logic, the FBI would be guilty of … hmmm!

• Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is keeping “an open mind” on crypto, Politico reports. Brown has been one of the staunchest foes of corrupto-currency, a favorite tool for presidents and other criminals. Brown’s campaign manager told Politico that Brown will “ensure that as more people use cryptocurrency, it expands opportunity and lifts up Ohioans.” Which is not what crypto does. Brown was, you may recall, defeated in 2024 under a flood of cryptonations after taking a hard line against crypto.

TCB

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! Remember, if this is Iran War II, that makes us the Greatest Generation!

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

Congressional Republicans right now are advancing legislation to provide more than $70 billion in funding for an agency that destroys U.S. jobs. Because election years are zany!

Researchers at the National Bureau for Economic Research in a study published Monday found that when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surged its deportation efforts, jobs for American male workers with no more than high-school degrees disappeared faster than anyone who looks like an immigrant to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (h/t)

Now, in the fairy tale version of immigration, undocumented immigrants take lower salaries, so companies hire them instead of American workers. But the study found that this is a fairy tale.

Undocumented immigrants tend to take jobs that American-born workers don’t or won’t take. So when that labor is deported to make America great again, or when someone doesn’t show up for work out of fear of being deported to make America again, those jobs don’t get done. And when those jobs don’t get done, those companies can’t make as much crap. And when less crap gets made, fewer Americans get hired.

For instance, suppose you were a dumb president. If you deport disproportionately undocumented construction workers, then the house they won’t build won’t require disproportionately American electricians and roofers. And they’ll be out of work, too.

Between the fear factor and the job-go-away factor, in areas victimized by an ICE surge, for every undocumented worker arrested, six other undocumented workers also disappeared from the workforce. And each surge area also lost 1,200 of its male, American-born workers with no more than a high-school degree.

According to some math that involves this…

…the numbers translate to one of those high-school-dude jobs disappearing every time six undocumented workers disappear courtesy of either ICE or their feets not failing them now.

Something similar happened, although at lower rates, under Pres. Barack Obama, despite his belovedness, a previous study found.

The new study, it’s worth noting, didn’t measure the impact of other immigration enforcement, including deporting and killing people regardless of whether their papers were in order. But there’s no reason to doubt similar effects outside of ICE.

Employment is ecosystems within ecosystems. Making one part of an ecosystem extinct hurts the rest of it.

Meanwhile, even leftie media are losing their minds because 1/71th of the GOP’s proposed $71 billion for immigrant xenophobia might fund Pres. Donald Trump’s underground bunker. Read your history, people: You want your dictators to have bunkers!

The real problem is with the other 70/71ths of that $71 billion. The new study shows that it won’t just rack up more debt, it’s going to kill American jobs (and maybe more humans). But instead of fighting to abolish ICE, like half the country and most Democrats want, congressional Democrats are fighting for ICE Band-Aids™ which might save some lives, but won’t save those jobs.

Trump Outsourcing Iran War to Saudi Arabia

Just two days after announcing that the U.S. would escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Pres. Donald Trump announced that no it wouldn’t. Why not? Because he felt a peace deal was near, he said.

Why should the proximity of a peace deal stop the U.S. from escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz? He did not say.

But announcing the pause in his two-day-old Project Freedom, Trump did say that it was “Based on the request of Pakistan and other Countries.”

Well, that explains it. You know how accommodating Trump is to the requests of other Countries.

Actually, it so happens that you need air cover to protect naval escorts. And for that you need things like air bases and air spaces.

NBC News reports that Trump launched Project Freedom without, like, checking with people. Including the other Country of Saudi Arabia, all the base of which are belong to them.

And Saudi Arabia said no.

Then, because Trump had said Iran was close to a peace deal, he had to come up with something to which Iran could be close. So the U.S. sent Iran a peace deal. Newsfuckers, it was one page. Shorter, in other words, than most college résumés. Probably with yuge point size and margins like no one’s ever seen before.

Axios got the bullet points of Trump’s one-slide, 14-point PowerPoint™ and it reads as if Trump asked ChatGPT for a fifth-grade-reading-level version of Pres. Barack Obama’s deal that Trump killed. Only Trumpier.

Axios reported Wednesday that Trump gave Iran 48 hours to respond for no discernible reason other than that sounds like ChatGPT’s idea of a cool deadline. The deal Trump is now trying to get sounds a lot like the one Obama already got:

• Nuclear-enrichment moratorium

• Opening the Strait of Hormuz

In return for Iran returning to what Obama already got, Trump would lift sanctions on Iran and unfreeze billions of dollars of Iranian funds that otherwise could have been used here in America for important needs like Trump’s underground bunker and an arch.

The plan calls for both sides to declare an end to the war and begin talks on nuclear enrichment, opening the strait, and sanctions. In other words, the war would end before achieving Trump’s objectives for it, dropping objectives like ending Iran’s ballistic-missile capacity and support for Hezbollah and Hamas.

MINOR BUT IMPEACHABLE COVERUP In yet another sign that Trump’s uniquely bad presidenting is just an amalgam of previous bad presidenting, it turns out he’s covering up how badly the Iran War is going.

A Washington Post — them again! — analysis of satellite imagery finds that Iran has been blowing up American shit more precisely and in greater quantity than the Pentagon has let on. Iranian strikes have hit at least 228 U.S. structures or pieces of equipment at sites in at least six countries in the region.

Hilariously, the Post also reports that many of the bases the U.S. has there to keep the peace were evacuated beforehand to escape the lack of peace, raising questions of geopolitical strategy such as what the fnork are we doing?

New GOP Map Achieves Maximum Possible Racism

Long thought unachievable by physicists, absolute racism was achieved outside a lab on Wednesday in a new congressional map released by Tennessee Republicans.

Absolute racism has been approached in previous maps, but last week’s ruling by the Supreme Court removed some of the last limitations on racist map-drawing, declaring maximum racism permissible as long as you don’t say it’s racism.

The same principle affects the observation of light, which can behave as energy or matter depending on whether you’re Justice Clarence Thomas.

Tennessee mapmakers were able to achieve absolute racism despite the problematic presence of Memphis — the state’s second biggest city, where most people are Black — by splicing the city up between majority-white districts.

As the New York Times reported, the new lines did away with the current, relatively contiguous districts (with the colors representing the 2024 vote):

That’s Memphis lower left and Nashville in that pink gerrymander.

Wednesday’s racism breakthrough utilized attenuated districts that dilute everyone’s representation by reducing each district’s population down to one single, defining factor: Just enough Black people to dilute their strength elsewhere, but not enough to overcome white votes anywhere:

Nashville is still carved up, now the hub of a swastika-esque racism pinwheel. And look closely at Memphis, lower left, with not one but three probosci nosing into its business…

…trisecting Memphis to dilute the city’s Black vote.

The legislature could vote on the map as soon as today, without giving voters a chance to weigh in, because whattaya think this is, a democracy? The new map will likely be challenged in court, but that road leads to the same Supreme Court majority that made this breakthrough possible.

As TFN keeps saying, however, Republicans may have auto-fucked themselves by diluting their strength too much, based on 2024 voting patterns that no longer exist, and spurring Democratic turnout by achieving absolute racism.

White House Heeding Inflation Fears Now That They’re Coming from Corporations

Administration officials are “increasingly worried” about soaring jet-fuel prices, the Wall Street Journal reports.

That’s not because the White House is listening to everyday Americans struggling with rising costs. It’s because the White House is listening to airline lobbyists.

And the White House isn’t listening out of concern for everyday Americans. It’s out of concern for their own necks, the Journal reports:

“Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs... Many of those advisers are eager to end the war in hopes that prices will begin moderating before November’s midterm elections.”

Former Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) has been warning the administration for weeks. Why? Because he’s an airline lobbyist now, unlike when he was governor and worked for all corporations.

Now, Pres. Donald Trump’s team fears that high gas prices could last so long that voters might not forget by Election Day. Republicans have been predicting for weeks that gas prices would go down in weeks, giving voters time to forget and regress to hating people who aren’t hurting them.

But industry analysts say it’s going to take months until gas prices come down in weeks.

The average price for a gallon of gas Wednesday was $4.54. One analyst told Axios that if there’s a deal now — or within 48 hours! — about a third of the Trump spike might go away in the next three months. But the entire Trump spike wouldn’t go away until early 2027 at the soonest.

There are lots of complicated production/supply/demand reasons those Axios axalysts axalyzed, but as you Newsfuckers know, there’s also Wall Street juking gas prices with every incentive to keep things volatile.

Rollins Celebrates Hunger as Positive Economic Sign

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is bragging about how many people have been deprived of government aid to buy food to eat and not die, Brad Reed of Common Dreams caught (h/t via h/t).

New Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) figures show that 4.3 million Americans are no longer receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits that pay for food, which contains supplemental nutrition. Sharing a White House post, Rollins took a victory lap with the energy she had thanks to food:

Here’s the chart the White House “rapid-response” account was celebrating:

It’s true that this could be a result of 4.3 million Americans suddenly getting new jobs that the Trumpconomy hasn’t created. But it’s also true that last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA) slashed SNAP funding by $186 billion over ten years, in the fraudulent name of fighting non-existent fraud, forcing states to cut benefits and tighten eligibility.

Wonkette has more on Rollins and the federal fraud about alleged SNAP fraud. I’ll just add that Rollins is a sponsor of the White House Bible study that teaches that God doesn’t want government helping poor people because that’s the job of churches and rich people who you might have noticed say they don’t do that because that’s the job of government.

New Epstein File™ Released from Other Unreleased Epstein Files™

There’s no proof it’s legit, and no reason to think it matters, but The Last Epstein File™ was released Wednesday and I did want to note one thing.

It’s being called a suicide note, and supposedly was discovered by Jeffrey Epstein’s cellmate in the pages of a graphic novel in July 2019 after Epstein was found on the floor with a strip of bedsheet around his neck, three weeks before killing himself more successfully. A judge ordered the note’s release in response to a request by the New York Times.

Obviously, the most burning question here is what graphic novel was Jeffrey Epstein reading?!? Presumably something porny by Alan Moore, but who knows! (Suggestions in the comments, please!)

But here’s my burning question. Everyone’s reporting this text of the note:

“They investigated me for month [sic] — found NOTHING!!!”

“It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye.

“Whatcha want me to do — Bust out crying!!

“NO FUN - NOT WORTH IT!!”

But I haven’t seen anyone transcribe the second line, or even note that it’s illegible. You tell me, Newsfuckers, what’s it say?

As for whether it’s a suicide note, I’m unconvinced. Hard to believe this guy’s ego wouldn’t fill up at least the space it would take to write an Iran peace deal.

Plus, would he really not mention his best friend, Donald Trump? Or his good neighbor, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick?

Lutnick Confesses to Epstein Coverup

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — billionaire former neighbor of billionaire Pres. Donald Trump’s good friend, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein — said Wednesday that, okay, fine, yes, he went to Epstein’s private island and sex dungeon. But not in a bad way.

Lutnick was appearing before members of the House Oversight Committee investigating The Epstein Files™, but not in public, because that would be gauche, and not under oath, because that would be go-to-prison time.

Previously, Lutnick said that he cut ties with Epstein in 2005. But on Wednesday, according to committee members who instantly blabbed about Lutnick’s non-testimony, Lutnick copped to a 2011 discussion with Epstein, his next-door neighbor, about Epstein’s renovations.

But Lutnick said he had no explanation for having lunch with Epstein in 2012 on Girlagain’s Island.

Members who heard his testimony said he called it “inexplicable,” but I’m pretty sure I can explic it. Lutnick didn’t say what or who was on the menu.

Lutnick didn’t comment publicly about his congressional interrogation, but presumably it was NOT FUN.

Correction

For years now, I’ve voiced skepticism about claims that political prayer is unifying. That’s the claim of the National Prayer Breakfast, produced by the secretive, Christian Fellowship Foundation, aka The Family.

I’ve argued that political prayer is divisive, a claim based on nothing more than personal bias and history and facts.

Now, new polling has come out about the unifying power of political prayer, and I’m man enough to admit I was wrong.

In fact, the polling shows, political prayer and other religious displays and pronouncements by government officials are uniting the country together … against those things. Because they suck holy ass.

As Axios headlined the poll: “Even Trump voters reject his Jesus post.” Finally, something MAGA and brain-users can agree on!

Eighty percent of Trump voters agree with 87% of the entire country who reacted negatively to this post by Trump, suggesting falsely that he’s Jesus and/or supports health care:

Sixty-nine percent had a negative reaction to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s public prayer for divine violence against Iran. God had no comment.

TCB

SAVING TV NEWS Sorry about this, but former CBS News producer Alicia Hastey had to cancel on our Substack Live that was scheduled for today. My apologies!

You can, however, still watch the rest of my Substack Lives about the future of TV news here.

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! The White House knows it’s going to pay for our high gas prices…

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

Yes, I want to support TFN

You can support the TFN podcast with a one-time or recurring donation at your choice of evil digital pay sites:

• Buy Me A Coffee

• PayPal

• Venmo

You can also support TFN — and your own personal image! — with TFN merch sporting the TFN bullet, logo, or even our E Pluribus Fuckem slogan at TheFingNews.com.

• Other ways of supporting TFN

• Upcoming elections

• Other resources

• Me on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible

Go get ‘em, kids…!

More TFN: Podcast | Merch | Other TFN
Help TFN: Venmo | BuyMeACoffee | PayPal
Take action: Your representatives

Unable to conquer its military adversary, the U.S. forces battling Iran have succeeded in taking down an estimated 13,000 civilian flights, instead, new tracking data show.

An aviation analytics firm said Tuesday that increased jet-fuel prices caused by Pres. Donald Trump’s low IQ and lack of impulse control have led airlines around the world to cancel about 13,000 flights for May. The casualties include a total of two million seats.

The downed flights are all civilian jets, which are unable to fight back except by losing your luggage, slamming that fucking drink cart into your knee (which should be a war crime), or running out of stroopwafel.

Airlines in the U.K. have asked the government to reduce taxes and ease up on regulations that protect people from the airlines’ noise and pollution — the way they always ask that — only now with jet-fuel prices as a reason on top of greed and lack of empathy.

THAT WAS THE SPIRIT! Trump also managed to take out an entire airline this weekend.

He generously tried to credit former Pres. Joe Biden with taking down Spirit Airlines, but the company’s self-authored obituary specifically said it was the price of jet fuel, which had cost Spirit $25 billion.

The casualties included thousands of passengers MIA — Missing In Airports — and 17,000 jobs killed.

Even some ostensible Democrats are saying it was Biden who shot down Spirit. The argument is that the Biden Justice Department fought JetBlue’s attempt to buy Spirit, which would have saved Spirit, even though it would’ve been eaten by JetBlue.

But as the American Prospect explains, that acquisition would have been just as big a disaster as Spirit’s demise. JetBlue even admitted that ticket prices would go up thanks to the increasing consolidation.

As Matt Stoller wrote, JetBlue’s plan was to raise ticket prices as much as 40%. Spirit’s board of directors warned its own shareholders that the JetBlue deal would be killed because it was illegal.

And it was Spirit’s shareholders who killed a proposal to merge with Frontier, another low-cost airline, that might have saved both. (And even Frontier is in trouble now, anyway.)

Nevertheless, Democratic Florida Senate candidate Alexander Vindman and the Center for American Progress’s Neera Tanden are among Democrats blaming the Justice Department for doing its job under Biden by enforcing antitrust laws and preventing airline monopolization from being more monopolified (which a Republican-appointed judge agreed with).

And if JetBlue had eaten Spirit? Well, JetBlue is right now on Spirit’s flight path: Down. Its own CEO is predicting bankruptcy. Turns out, Spirit wasn’t the only airline that uses jet fuel.

Spirit used to save passengers money on every airline. Because Spirit didn’t use the hub system the big airlines use, it could jump into any direct route whenever it wanted.

In the face of that potential competition, and Spirit’s low fares on the routes it did fly, the big airlines kept their prices at least nominally competitive. If Spirit did jump in, prices on that route fell an average of 17% across all airlines.

When Spirit abandoned any routes, prices on the other airlines rose 30%. (Note: Spirit just abandoned all its routes.)

Here’s how Brandon Oglenski, a Barclays aviation analyst, aviation-analyzed things for the presumably snooty Barclays clientele:

“…we also suspect industry pricing could benefit significantly for nearly all airlines given the removal of excess point-to-point capacity, which will likely drive even higher unit revenue outcomes in the near term.”

Let’s Duolingo that from the native Oglensk, shall we? “Industry pricing could benefit” means you could suck it. “Removal of excess point-to-point capacity” means robbing you of low-cost direct routes. “Higher unit revenue outcomes” means more of your money outgoes.

Spirit, of course, isn’t the first airline to go down with Trump at the helm. Previously, the black box that is Trump’s brain spent $365 million of someone else’s money to start an airline and then ran it the way he does every business: So poorly that it crashed.

Date of U.S. Victory Over Iran Remains Classified

Pres. Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio say the Iran War has ended, but won’t say when.

“Operation Epic Fury is concluded,” Rubio said Tuesday. “We achieved the objective of that operation.” That operation had multiple objectives, aside from the eponymous fury.

As the New York Times tallied Trump’s objectives in the war:

• Deny Iran a nuclear weapon forever, the way a child thinks

• Destroy Iran’s ballistic-missile capacity, presumably less than forever

• Destroy Iran’s navy

• Stop Iran’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas

• Regime change, clearing the way for popular uprising

Trump’s fury was only epic enough to destroy Iran’s navy (not counting the boats still fucking with the Strait of Hormuz).

Weirdly — despite the post-war, non-fire-ceasing ceasefire — after Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. will escort ships through, Iran fired on U.S. forces ten times, the Pentagon said.

How was Iran able to do this despite having lost the war it’s still fighting? Well, it didn’t hurt that Trump told Iran his escorts were coming — as Trump’s escorts usually tell him.

Axios reports that Trump apparently hoped to avoid military escalation by giving Iran a heads-up. And then Iran headed up its attacks. And then the Pentagon downplayed the attacks and then the media didn’t report any of this as they would have with a Democrat: As Trump betraying the country and jeopardizing the U.S. military by feeding Iran information through back channels instead of through insecure Signal chats.

Only two (2) ships made it through. Hundreds more are waiting.

And folks may not recall this from their high-school History class, but back in February, the reason for the fury being epic in the first place was that the diplomatic talks were not. And they remain not.

So Trump on Tuesday announced that while talks continue, the U.S. ship-escorting will be paused — the only time Trump has rejected escort service. These are the same talks that were the purpose for starting the war that’s now over even though the talks are not.

The focus now is on re-opening the Strait of Hormuz, Rubio said.

At this point it’s like America’s fighting the Revolutionary War to restore taxation without representation. Or if the North were still fighting to keep Confederate traitors from persecuting Black people. Wait, this just in…

Racial Gerrymandering Now as American as Apple Pie That’s Sold in Whites-Only Shops

Republican state legislators are taking a break from cutting arts education to draw new congressional maps, now that the Supreme Court says it’s legal to erase non-white people.

Louisiana, of course, was the subject of last week’s Supreme Court ruling. But Republicans in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and elsewhere are also pulling out their crayons.

More Democratic-controlled states are preparing to fight the gerrymandering wars, too, just six months before Election Day.

And Democrats are also talking about measures to address the Supreme Court’s scurrilous, mendacious perfidy by expanding the court. Or slapping term limits on it.

Your gimlet-eyed TFN looks with gimlet eye upon such proposals because the Constitution already provides a mechanism for relief: Winning.

Instead of changing the rules, the party that embarrassingly can’t figure out how to do more than eke out victories against the rich-serving, abortion-banning, sex-hating, rape-loving, child-exploiting, labor-plundering, environment-despoiling party could run and govern well enough to stomp Republicans consistently, rather than merely when Trump reminds people what Republicans want.

With a Democratic president and congressional majorities, Democrats could use the system to fix our problems, instead of fixing the system. How so? With the most immediate, harshest legal remedy available: Impeachment.

Take Chief Justice John Roberts. Please.

While working in the Reagan Justice Department, Roberts wrote that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was “constitutionally suspect.” And yet, on Sept. 13, 2005, during his confirmation hearing, Roberts said, “the existing Voting Rights Act, the constitutionality has been upheld and I don’t have any issue with that.”

Liar! Perjurer! Scalder of cats!

As David Daley chronicled for The Atlantic, Roberts has been trying to gut the heart of the VRA for decades, while putting on a face of not trying to gut the heart. He’s been claiming since the early 1980s that racism is over, so the law need not protect Black voters.

And yet, in his 2005 confirmation hearing, Roberts heard Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) remind him that racial disparities remained clearly visible, especially in Louisiana, where Katrina’s victims were “the weak, the poor, the elderly and the infirm, and largely African Americans, who were forced by poverty, illness, unequal opportunity to stay behind and bear the brunt of the storm’s winds and floods.”

And yet, in 2013, Roberts again proclaimed “Our country has changed,” just like he said back when MTV had to be pressured to play Michael Jackson videos.

Not enough impeachment cause for today’s Democratic nerds?

In 2005, the Progressive Librarians Guild opposed Roberts’s confirmation on multiple grounds that would pass muster for impeachment if Democrats were Republicans or governed like opponents of Republicans.

Roberts withheld documents about his record. Coverup! Refused to recuse himself from a 9/11 case while interviewing to be chief justice. Conflict of interest of Thomasian proportions and Clarencesque scale!

Roberts testified that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent. Then overturned it.

Impeachment doesn’t require a crime and politics don’t require a reason. Members of Congress can impeach just because Mercury is in retrograde and so is the court. Republicans tried to impeach Homeland (sic) Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for replacing an ‘x’ with a ‘j’ that’s said like an ‘h.’

The court’s flamboyantly hypocritical rulings under Trump give Democrats the option of impeaching on the basis of corruption, competence, or, fuck it, pure spite.

Too many Democratic politicians want us to think our problems are Trump problems. But without the Supreme Court justices of Presidents Bush, the Voting Rights Act would have triumphed.

Trump’s justices didn’t kill it; Republican justices did. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are arguably more extreme than any Trump appointee. Over at Balls and Strikes, Madiba K. Dennie lays out just some of Alito’s lies in his majority ruling, which the other five liars signed onto.

The right-wing majority claimed Louisiana had to “fix” (in the gambling sense) its maps now or else the elections would take place with “illegal” maps — something the Supreme Court has been entirely okay with when illegal maps were illegally Republican.

In fact, the Supreme Court has allowed elections to go ahead with illegal maps in the past when there was much more time until the voting — and when it gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives. Violating their oath to uphold the Constitution in order to facilitate a Republican takeover of a branch of government seems pretty impeachment-worthy to me.

PLAIN TIFF Democracy Docket reported on Tuesday that the lead plaintiff in the VRA ruling, Phillip “Bert” Callais was not only at the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he also believes that Trump won the 2020 election and that “Bert” is short for “Phillip.”

Democracy Docket found old social-media posts by Callais, but even the outlet’s own reporting doesn’t note the explicitly Christian aspect of one post, including the fear of “loosing” freedom of religion. (h/t)

The war on voting rights is a Republican religious war initiated when Trump was still just a budding rapist and racist landlord. The way to win this war is to fight the real enemies and win over the people by serving them rather than serving them up to corporations.

REMINDER Republican gerrymandering is based on 2024 voting patterns, which have now turned against Republicans. Meaning, the GOP is diluting GOP strength right as they’re weakening, which even some Republicans now understand could end up losing them seats the way Trump lost the Strait of Hormuz.

Deep-State Conspiracy Covered Up Truth about COVID Vaccines (Being Safe)

The government censors who don’t want you to know the truth, man, have been covering up what’s really going on with vaccines. With agents everywhere, especially Twitter, the conspiracy for years has tried to kill Americans by driving a wedge between them and science and reason and reality.

But on Tuesday, the Health (sic) and Human (sic) Services (sic) (HsHsSs) Department admitted it’s been covering up the truth that vaccines for COVID and shingles are safe as houses that have shingles.

Studies funded with taxpayer dollars and analyzing millions of patient records were kept secret by the HsHsSs to perpetuate the conspiracy, an HsHsSs spokesperson revealed. The studies were kept secret because the HsHsSs didn’t agree with them, according to spokesperson Andrew Nixon, who just blew his last shot at living down his name.

The agency has experienced symptoms of mental decline since it received an injection in early 2025 of a lethal dose of Robert Effthatguy Kennedy, Jr.

Trump Finds Someone He Can Beat: Republicans

Pres. Donald Trump on Tuesday scored a rare victory the best way he knows how: Turning on his ostensible allies.

In Indiana’s Republican primaries Tuesday, challengers backed by Trump ousted at least five of the eight incumbents who blocked his half-assed effort to redraw the state’s congressional maps to protect him from being impeached again next year for something he hasn’t even done yet but it’s only Wednesday.

Politico’s right-wing-curious coverage portrays this as a Trump victory: “The president successfully ousted a majority…” the subheadline swoons. Actually read the story, and you’ll see that it was money.

Donations to both sides in the eight races totaled $13.5 million, a wild number for normally sleepy state Senate races in abnormally sleepy Indiana. Most of that was for the MAGA candidates. More than two million pro-Trump dollars came just from the right-wing Club for Growth, which is a club for the growth of Trump’s ego and/or metaphorical wiener.

Politico also notes that Trump’s triumphant crushing of Republicans will cow other Republicans into Trump-obedience, without noting that Trump-obedient Republicans are more likely to get crushed by Democrats in November. Or that Republicans are now the only foe Trump appears capable of beating.

Three Quickies

• The U.S. military on Monday murdered two people in a boat without warning or due process or being fired on first, which is what makes it murder. The military again declined to provide any evidence that might render its boat murder not murder. The U.S. military has now illegally murdered — as opposed to war-murdered — 188 people in 56 unprovoked attacks on defenseless alleged drug and/or terrorist suspects. Pres. Donald Trump is now attacking boats in three separate bodies of water — Caribbean, Pacific, Strait of Hormuz — in addition to targeting electric vehicles in the U.S. and taking down thousands of civilian airline flights around the world. Future targets could include kites, skateboards, the Millennium Falcon, and the Tardis1.

• The Intercept reports that Pres. Donald Trump’s serial-killing Boat-iac Murders™ aren’t even accomplishing the thing he said they were accomplishing, making it the Iran War of boat murders. Drug trafficking isn’t down 97% as he’s claimed. Even the Defense Department claims no more than 25% reductions.

• Alleged Trump wannabe-assassin Cole Allen was indicted on four charges Tuesday, and we learned that he (allegedly) shot a Secret Service agent … with buckshot. Which didn’t pierce the agent’s vest. Just as Allen said in his minifesto was his reason for going with buckshot. Meanwhile, the allegation of anti-Christian motives has disappeared the way miracles disappeared after the invention of recording devices. Allen’s lawyers say he’s been deprived of a Bible and a chaplain, and wants to be released into the general population, where he will be adored as a hero and made king of the weight room.

Protest Songs

Okay, maybe they’re not protest songs, but the Newsfucker behind a new project called “The Editorial Key” told me his music is to “translate historical and civic analysis into an emotionally accessible musical form.”

You can check it out here, and subscribe to get notified when new ones drop. Although there is some AI involved, it seems to be on the benign end of the spectrum and I’m encouraged to see people trying new things to convey important truths about the systems that underlie the reality we’re all struggling to survive!

TCB

DIDJA MISS ME? I’m extraordinarily grateful to all of you for making it possible for me to take off for five days over my birthday. It was wonderful and brain-resetting, although I’m already back on the mental treadmill of freaking out about all the reporting and newsfucking I’m now behind on. I won’t get it all done, but your support keeps me going.

SAVING TV NEWS On Thursday, I’ll be joined for a Substack Live by former CBS News producer Alicia Hastey, whose departure made headlines. You can bookmark this link now to make sure you don’t miss “How To Save TV News: Alicia Hastey.”

You can watch all my Substack Lives about the future of TV news here.

SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.

Go get ‘em, kids! My absence made my heart grow fonder of all of you Newsfuckers and your generosity and compassion and passion for a more perfect union. Thank you.

TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

1

It’s a Dr. Who thing: