This would be a scandal that would have ended any other presidency.
Qatar gave a $400 million Boeing 747 to the Pentagon. Trump calls it a “free” gift. It is not free. The Air Force just spent months retrofitting it with secure communications, missile defense, and electromagnetic shielding.
The cost of that work is classified.
Estimates say north of a billion.
The number is enormous, and you are paying it.
Now the part they bury.
Under the memorandum signed by the Pentagon and Qatar, ownership of the plane transfers to Trump’s presidential library foundation when he leaves office. His own son says it will sit in the lobby of a future Trump hotel.
So follow the chain.
A foreign government hands a luxury jet to a sitting president. American taxpayers rebuild it from the inside out. Then Trump takes it home.
A gift you use for four years and then keep is still a gift. The Constitution bars foreign gifts to a president without the consent of Congress. This one never got that consent.
We are paying a fortune to gift wrap a luxury jet that ends up in his private collection.
Grift in plain sight.
https://t.co/RqGjdCjV6n
You hate Dems for "wasting your money", fair. So why are you SILENT when Trump's own people are caught with a slush fund paying loyalists $8K every two weeks?! You're not the movement. You're the SHIELD They get rich, you get lied to, and they laugh all the way to the bank #Trump
Someone calls the Obama Center "concrete," The museum is clad in New Hampshire granite. Up close, ribbons of warm tones are twisted, folded, and layered throughout the igneous rock, adding depth, texture, and movement.🖤
⚡️ Former Ukrainian President Yushchenko returns his Polish Order of the White Eagle.
The former president renounced his award to protest Warsaw’s decision to strip President Zelenskyy of the honor.
@SAM410_2005@Booker4KY It's unlikely that Abraham Lincoln would have voted for Donald Trump, given the significant differences in their political contexts, ideologies, and the evolution of the parties since Lincoln's time. The GOP is now more aligned with the Dixiecrats.
Trump claims Putin had hundreds of tanks ready to reach Kyiv in three hours via a solid highway, but some general, "probably not around anymore," sent them through muddy fields instead. Record rains hit, the tanks got stuck, and Javelins he'd already supplied finished them off, he says.
Donald Trump removed Juneteenth and MLK Day as fee-free days at our national parks and replaced them with his birthday.
In no world does Trump deserve more recognition than the millions of enslaved Black Americans who realized they had independence on Juneteenth or MLK Jr. Ahead of Juneteenth, I was proud to introduce a bill to restore these and other service-oriented days as fee-free days.
That mud nest on your porch wall is not a threat. It's not even occupied.
Mud daubers are solitary wasps, meaning they have no colony, no workers, nothing to defend. A female builds the nest alone, hunts spiders, paralyzes them with a single sting, stacks them into each mud cell as food for one larva, lays an egg on top, seals the cell, and leaves. She does not come back.
The nest is finished. Whatever is inside is a developing larva and a pile of paralyzed spiders, sealed in clay, doing nothing.
The spiders she's hunting are often black widows. Mud daubers are documented as one of the primary predators of black widows across the South and Southwest.
Mud daubers can technically sting if grabbed, but without a colony to defend there's essentially no trigger for aggression. Thousands of people walk past active mud dauber nests every day without incident because the wasp has no reason to engage.
The nest looks alarming. It isn't. Leave it through the season. By fall the adult is long gone, the larvae have pupated, and the structure is inert. Knock it down then if you want the wall back.
Or leave it. She might use the mud again next year, which means more black widows getting paralyzed and stored in your eaves, which is not the worst outcome.
Before the 1950s, clover was a STANDARD component of American lawns.
Seed mixes included it on purpose.
Then broadleaf herbicides were invented.
They killed clover along with "weeds." So the chemical companies rebranded clover as a weed — to sell more herbicide.
That's it. That's the whole story.
Clover is not a weed. It's the future of your lawn.
White Dutch clover (Trifolium repens):
Self-fertilizing — fixes nitrogen from the air into the soil. No fertilizer needed. EVER.
…and it feeds the grass around it for free.
Drought-resistant — stays green when grass goes brown.
Bee paradise — constant blooms from May to frost.
Chokes out weeds — dense growth shades out weed seeds.
No mowing needed (stays 4-6 inches) — or mow monthly.
Soft underfoot — kids love it.
Costs $5-10 to overseed 1,000 sq ft.
How to add clover to your existing lawn:
Overseed in spring or fall.
Scatter seed (2 oz per 1,000 sq ft).
Water lightly for 2 weeks. Done.
Stop using broadleaf herbicides (they kill clover).
Stop fertilizing (clover makes its own).
Mow at 3-4 inches.
The lawn industry told you clover was a weed so they could sell you chemicals.
Take your lawn back.
Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s crusade to purge women and people of color from our Armed Forces has never been subtle.
But today, a New York Times exposé revealed exactly how far he’s gone to dismantle the careers and achievements of our finest servicemen and women.
More than a dozen military insiders — both active duty and those already purged — spoke to the Times anonymously to unmask a horrific ongoing attack.
They detailed a process used by Hegseth and his team to halt senior officer advancements for reasons completely unrelated to merit, job performance, or fighting wars.
Hegseth’s efforts are part of a quest to advance his white-and-male centered worldview, facts, history, and actual service be damned.
In the absence of any such evidence, insiders confirmed that he has used his position to withhold promotions from qualified, decorated veterans. The Times cited several enraging examples:
• Last fall, Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll to remove two Black and two female officers from a 29-person promotion list. Driscoll repeatedly refused, citing their decades of exemplary service. In March, Hegseth bypassed him, removed their names, and sent the modified list to the White House.
• In total, Hegseth has removed 32 officers from Air Force and Navy one- and two-star promotion lists. He also pulled the only Black officer and the only female officer from a Marine Corps list, leaving their promotions in limbo.
• Vice Adm. Sara Joyner, a highly decorated three-star fighter pilot, saw her advancement stalled over a 2021 Navy recruiting ad where she said, "I’m not just a girl with a dream. I’m a sailor with one." Hegseth deemed the line a "big problem." Joyner has since retired.
• Rear Adm. Stephen D. Barnett was recommended for a promotion after successfully managing the aftermath of a massive Navy fuel spill in Hawaii. Hegseth blocked his advancement after Barnett participated in a Navy-sponsored Pride event back in 2018.
It is an outrage to watch a media personality whose greatest battles have been with hangovers intentionally harm the careers of people who risked everything to keep America safe. Hegseth’s actions are insult to all who have served and a risk to national security.
[Image: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov]
APPLEBAUM: Ukrainians revolutionized drone industry, rewritten rules of war, and suddenly, perception of Ukraine is different.
Suddenly, Ukraine isn’t victim, it’s provider of security, even despite the fact that U.S. cut off supplies to Ukraine, hoping Ukraine would surrender.
Suddenly, Gulf states want visits from Ukraine and Ukrainian military because they want drone interceptors that Ukraine has to hit Shaheds.
Suddenly, European companies want to do deals with Ukrainian drone companies, and there are several big joint-venture projects now happening all over Europe as well as inside Ukraine.
Ukrainians are enormously helped by Europe, by European money and cooperation with European companies. But a lot of it is coming from Ukrainian society itself.
And this change happened a while ago, like a year ago. But in the last couple of months, it’s suddenly become clear.
And perception is shifting, and that changes also the way Russians see the war. And that changes assumptions that people are making about its outcome.
And certainly, the ability of Russians to move forward has also stopped.
@PpollingNumbers What is going on? The Dem Party is becoming a collection of isolated, smaller groups Dems generally share progressive values of advancing policies to make life better, but the word 'progressive' has been co-opted by smaller factions that are unable to focus on the broader picture
🔵 Jasmine Crockett says she hasn't decided whether she'll support Talarico's Senate campaign in Texas.
“I have no idea. I am more focused on down-ballot races in general.”
Alaskans are sick of excuses. We don’t need more career politicians who go to DC and forget where they came from. We need leaders who put working people first, every time.
@chyeaok 100% get money out of politics. States need to start passing laws, ERA hasn't gotten a constitutional amendment, do you really think this will?
End big money in politics, pass bills in every State, this isn't just a Dem issue, most Independents, and Republicans agree.
😮 BREAKING: Arizona ESA voucher enrollment data once again shows that participation is heavily concentrated in the state's highest-income zip codes. Rather than helping low-income families, the universal voucher program is disproportionately subsidizing wealthier households.
One of my proudest moments in the Senate was when I helped to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Today, I’m thinking back to the journey of passing that legislation five years ago alongside Dr. Opal Lee.
At 12 years old, Opal Lee’s family home in Texas was burned down by white supremacists.
At 89, she walked from Texas to D.C. to get Juneteenth declared a federal holiday.
We owe today to Ms. Lee’s determination.