The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[Fake Messiah]

> save $15M a year by cutting a screwworm monitoring program

> screwworm outbreak almost immediately

> $1B to combat it

Government efficiency

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing an all-out assault on the screwworm, which had been contained in the narrow isthmus of Panama for decades.

No matter the cause, driving screwworms back south and keeping them out of the U.S. will be expensive. The USDA estimated it would spend over $1 billion on efforts to save cattle herds and other livestock.

About $750 million will go toward building and operating a plant capable of producing up to 300 million sterile flies a week. The technique has been used for decades, as female screwworms mate just once, and if they choose a sterile mate, their eggs don’t hatch, and the fly population dwindles.

https://www.thereporter.com/2026/06/11/u...ight-plan/

[Angrboda]

Probably a bit misleading. They had used engineered breeding stock to impede the northward migration, but the species had recently broken through that barrier.

[Angrboda]

“This is different,” he said. “This is forward-looking persecution.”

Until now, Levistky points out, Trump has screamed and hollered for the prosecution of those who have wronged him in the past, sometimes even the distant past. Yes, he’s disgraced the Department of Justice with the demand it function as his own personal hammer of retribution, even putting his own personal attorney, Todd Blanche, in charge when Pam Bondi wasn’t accommodating or successful enough at stomping perceived enemies and quashing the Epstein files.

But those prosecutions have largely been grievance-based, not aimed at keeping power.

Going after Siebel Newsom seems more like a forward-looking, preemptive strike targeting Newsom ahead of the 2028 election through every decent man’s Achilles’ heel, his family.

In fact, the right-wing media — which is closely tied to the whims of the White House — has been targeting Siebel Newsom for months.

In particular, Siebel Newsom has been attacked for her work as a documentary filmmaker who focuses on female empowerment and parsing how and why we have the gender norms that we do when it comes to masculinity and femininity. I’ll let you figure out how popular that is in MAGA world, where real women make sandwiches.

Conservative commentator Sean Hannity has gone after Siebel Newsom for saying she sometimes changes the gender of a book’s character from “he” to “she” when she’s reading to her children. Fox News has attacked her for daring to give her boys dolls to play with, leading some MAGA influencers to label her “psychotic” or “abusive.” Right-wing icon Megyn Kelly called her a “nutcase” for sharing the tragic story of her sister’s death when Siebel Newsom was 6.

And other media have focused on the fact that some of the films she has been involved with have been approved for use in California schools, leading to conspiracies that Newsom used his influence to force his wife’s “woke” agenda on kids, by which we are apparently talking about the liberal plagues of decency and inclusion.

Newsom’s office said that in recent weeks, relatives, friends and business associates of the family have been contacted by investigators from the FBI and IRS. Siebel Newsom also does work around online safety for children, but it seems likely that any attention would focus on these films, and related nonprofits, and the perennially popular MAGA boogeyman of schools forcing ideologies on kids. Throw in Siebel Newsom’s company making even a dollar, and the way the IRS can find problems with any tax return, and you’ve got about 10,000 hours of right-wing propaganda.

So whether the pressure to target Siebel Newsom came from the White House or not, Newsom’s announcement raises the troubling specter that this administration is getting more serious about remaining in control by kneecapping potential replacements before they grow too strong.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story...-different

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^Once you begin to weaponize justice, it's pretty hard to stop.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'You know, the average American, they don't want their White House to stand for certain morals and values. The regular people in this country want their president to live in a slightly more violent Hooters, or a slightly less violent Waffle House.' - Jon Stewart, on the UFC 250 event at the White House.

Boru

[Angrboda]

There will also be a 60-day extension of the current ceasefire, during which talks aimed at further detailing efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions will continue.

However, Trump and his advisers were told during a series of meetings leading up to the MOU that U.S. intelligence indicated the way Iranian officials were discussing the deal internally did not match what they were communicating to mediators and U.S. officials.

This intelligence spooked Ratcliffe and Rubio in particular, who now fear Tehran is unwilling to go as far as the U.S. wants regarding its nuclear commitments.

“The intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal,” a source told Axios.

Among the provisions in the MOU is a requirement that Iran reiterate that it will never obtain a nuclear weapon.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/major-whit...eace-deal/

[Angrboda]

Five months after the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, President Donald Trump claimed that the project to construct a massive ballroom and a bunker in its place would cost up to $400 million and that private donors would pay for all of it.

“This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on March 31, describing the project as including bomb shelters and major medical facilities.

But a detailed project summary prepared for the White House by the contractor more than three weeks before Trump’s comments estimated the total construction cost at $600 million — with more than half coming from taxpayers, according to a copy of the contractor estimate obtained by The Washington Post.

By the time Trump made his comments in March, the federal government had already approved more than a dozen payments to the contractor overseeing the work, Clark Construction, totaling tens of millions of dollars in public funds, according to a log of the contractor’s invoices obtained by The Post.

Since first announcing the East Wing project last July, Trump has repeatedly said that the price tag would not exceed $400 million and that private donations routed through a nonprofit would cover its entire cost. At other times, he has said that the Secret Service and the military would contribute security enhancements, without elaborating on the price of those upgrades.

Multiple project summaries provided to the White House by Clark Construction show that internal cost estimates have been significantly higher than administration officials have acknowledged in public comments or court filings. They also show that the work was projected to rely heavily on taxpayer dollars from the moment it was announced.

The White House did not answer questions about the internal cost estimates or taxpayer funding.

“President Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the tune of approximately $400 million, which will be a secure and appropriate venue for Presidents for generations to come,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle wrote in a statement.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investiga...taxpayers/

[Paraselene]

Just a distraction from the fact that our taxes are likely funding Iran's recent monetary gain.

[Fake Messiah]

Laughter as workers put peroxide in algae-filled Reflecting Pool': '0 scientists in admin'

CBS News journalist Bob Kovach was on the ground at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Tuesday morning. He posted a video of gallon jugs labeled "hydrogen peroxide" lined up at the water's edge, with workers kneeling beside them and pouring the chemical straight in. The pool, which Trump had painted "American flag blue" and refilled just 12 days ago, has since turned a mossy green.

A pool renovation expert had seen it coming. Canadian specialist Steve Goodale, known as "Swimming Pool Steve," warned the Washingtonian that darker paint absorbs more sunlight, raises water temperature, and makes algae blooms inevitable.

"'If we change nothing else except the color, and we go from a lighter color to a darker color, absolutely you're going to have more prolific algae growth,'" Goodale said. "'It's a foregone conclusion.'"

"'Y'all, not to be a huge nerd but for the reflecting pool you would need a minimum of about 8,000 liters of 12% hydrogen peroxide to reach the 50 parts per million concentration to kill algae,'" Dr. Michael O'Brien, a South Carolina pediatrician, wrote on X. "Is this what happens when you have 0 scientists in your administration?"

https://www.rawstory.com/reflecting-pool...-peroxide/

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^And unless the workers were wearing the appropriate PPE (face shield, chemically resistant gloves and apron at a minimum), I guarantee what they were dumping in wasn’t 12%. That shit is crazy corrosive.

Boru