economics

A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service, ordering it to not interfere with a group that had been flying an “8647” flag in Washington, D.C. Common restaurant slang for “eighty-six” goes back nearly a century, the judge noted, saying that it meant “to throw out” or “to get rid of.”

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued the two-week restraining order at the request of Accountability Now USA, an anti-Trump group that had been protesting the president “for months at a site in front of the federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue,” Politico reports. The judge “says the banner can’t plausibly be read to threaten violence against President Donald Trump.”

Judge Moss agreed that the group’s goal is to have Trump lawfully removed from office via impeachment, “and that ’86’ is not an unambiguous call to political violence — and certainly not the kind of ‘imminent’ violence that would be necessary to justify restrictions on speech,” Politico noted.

“The Court does not doubt that political violence is on the rise and that it poses a grave threat not just to the targets of the threats but to the country as a whole,” Moss wrote. “But the enormity of that problem does not change the meaning of Plaintiff’s speech, which by any reasonable measure merely advocated for the President’s impeachment and removal from office — that is, ‘to throw [him] out.’”

Anita Carey, an organizer with Accountability Now USA, said that the group was “pleased that the court saw through the government’s baseless accusations about our 8647 flag.”

“We want to lawfully, peacefully, and constitutionally impeach and remove the President from office. We will now resume proudly flying our 8647 flag, and we encourage everyone who agrees with us to do the same,” she said, according to the ACLU of the District of Columbia.

Judge Moss did not mention the Trump DOJ’s case against former FBI Director James Comey, who had posted to social media a photograph of shells arranged in the form of an “8647” message — Comey later deleted the message and apologized, but was indicted in late April. The indictment alleges that any reasonable person would have seen the “8647” message as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.”

Last month Trump called Comey a “Dirty Cop.”

Politico notes that Judge Moss’ “determination underscores questions about the genesis of the charges against Comey.” Comey has denied that his “8647” post was intended to provoke violence.

Russia is now bombing NATO countries, and it appears that President Donald Trump is asleep at the wheel.

Writing on Monday, MS NOW producer Steve Benen sounded the alarm about an incoming disaster visible on the horizon.

A Wall Street Journal report last week quoted several world leaders in Europe as saying that they fear Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to go beyond Ukraine and look at the countries he can go to war with next in an effort to grow the former Soviet Union back to its original borders.

"Russian drones have repeatedly crashed without causing casualties along the Danube River border between Romania and Ukraine since 2023. But the drone crash on Friday, on the roof of a residential compound in the port city, Galati, sharply escalated tensions between NATO and Moscow," The New York Times reported.

On Friday, a Russian drone hit an apartment building. The incident was condemned by world leaders, and even Trump's ally and NATO ambassador, Matthew Whitaker, reaffirmed the U.S.'s commitment to NATO, promising that the U.S. was ready to defend Europe.

Trump, by contrast, has remained silent. It's unusual, Benen said, because he loves to beat his chest and project strength.

Hitting a building in Romania isn't merely a one-off. Benen explained that it is a pattern with Russia. Last fall, Russian drones entered Polish airspace. NATO pilots shot them down.

Then, Russian pilots violated Estonian airspace.

Benen added that none of these "tests" happened under non-Trump administrations. It makes Trump's "weakness toward Vladimir Putin ... especially humiliating," he wrote. The GOP has similarly been quiet.

"In recent weeks, the Republican president has repeatedly criticized NATO as a 'paper tiger' because its members chose not to participate in his misguided war with Iran, but he has offered no comparable criticisms of Russia for incidents inside NATO member nations," Benen closed.

As President Donald Trump began his takeover of the Justice Department, it was revealed that anyone who touched any part of the investigations into him would be fired. The purge of prosecutors began. But it also extended into the FBI. While a group of DOJ lawyers came together to help each other, those fired from the FBI are now doing the same.

The New York Times reported on Monday that the FBI Support Network was established as a kind of "offshoot of the Justice Connection organization, made up of former Justice Department employees who offer legal, mental health or job search services to current agency employees."

Under the leadership of FBI Director Kash Patel, agents are being pressured to do things that they wouldn't normally do. It gives them the option to either be fired, or break long-held norms or ethics.

“There’s an incredible amount of tension inside the agency right now,” said former top executive Michael Mason. “We want our colleagues who are still in the service of the F.B.I. to know there are people out here who recognize what is happening. People are being fired without any due process as the Justice Department is being weaponized in a way that is totally unfamiliar to those of us who served long and distinguished careers there.”

The website for the group explains, "The FBI’s workforce is under assault like never before. This administration is firing and intimidating Special Agents, Intelligence Analysts, and professional staff for blatantly partisan reasons. Political leaders are using the FBI’s authority to open poorly predicated investigations to interfere with elections, advance ideological goals, and seek vengeance."

The group will work to connect agents to "legal, mental health, and employment support" that they may need in the coming years of the Trump administration.

In a video announcing the formation of the group, former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll made a call to action.

“It’s time for those of us who served our country with the F.B.I. to offer our assistance to the special agents, intelligence analysts and the professional staff who are under attack," he said. "Those facing these unprecedented times are not alone."

The Times said that Patel maintains that no one was fired for political reasons.

Former counterintelligence agent Michael Feinberg questioned Patel's denials

There is now a “wide gulf between what the director says in public and in testimony before Congress, and what the workforce sees happening to their colleagues on a daily basis,” he said.

“I think the way a lot of employees feel right now is that at least some senior career executives have been willing to compromise with Kash Patel in those matters in an effort to secure their own employment. It’s difficult to articulate how much of a betrayal of the F.B.I. ethos this is," he added.

During his 2024 presidential campaign, convicted fraudster Billy McFarland reportedly helped President Donald Trump get celebrity endorsements. McFarland is best known for co-organizing the Fyre Festival, a 2017 concert infamous for not delivering its promised performers, providing unsafe accommodations and leaving thousands of concertgoers stranded.

Flash forward two years and, according to one conservative commentator, Trump is channeling the Fyre Festival’s incompetent energy to the White House UFC event — and that it is therefore a disaster waiting to happen.

“Mid-June through mid-July see a lot of thunder and lightning in Washington and GIANT STEEL ARCHES are about the most dangerous thing you could possibly be near if there’s lighting,” noted The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last on Monday. “This isn’t a venue. It’s a Dome of Electric Death.”

He added, “Which is why if there’s even a hint of lightning anywhere within a 10-mile radius, they’ll have to evacuate the South Lawn area, to get people away from the death trap. And, if you listen to the beta-cucks at Weather.gov, the audience will have to stay evacuated for at least 30 minutes after the final flash of lightning.” Compounding matters, Last observed, if the audience disperses outside the security perimeter, they will need to be processed through security again to enter.

Even if the weather is fine, however, Last said there will still be a major logistical problem.

“The other thing the Dome of Electric Death will do is attract bugs. A lot of them,” Last wrote. “These bugs will swarm the super-bright lights that are studded along the entirety of each steel arc. After they buzz around the lights for a while, the bugs will die. And fall. Their little dead bug bodies will rain down on the audience in a steady trickle all night long. Maybe the people in attendance won’t notice. But if I were there I’d probably wear a hat.”

After pointing out that it will be difficult to sell quality food in this environment, Last also predicted that if someone gets drunk (as tends to happen among UFC audiences), they could yell something “unfortunate” that gets caught on camera. Given these risks, Last concluded, Trump would be better off just holding a political rally, especially since he seems more interested in promoting himself than American history anyway.

From there, he mused on the meaning of America 250 years into its history.

“On the one hand, America, the brand, made it to 250 years. Good on us,” Last wrote. “On the other hand, America the liberal democracy is in its decadent, late-imperial phase. Most of our political and civic institutions have failed the authoritarian test. One of our political parties is explicitly searching for ‘post-liberalism.’ Thanks to abdication by the legislature and legislation by the judiciary, our president is now a defined-term monarch.”

In addition to the UFC fight, Trump also planned a concert, although many of the booked acts pulled out after claiming they signed on without being told about the president’s involvement. In response to their withdrawals, Trump has threatened to cancel the concert altogether. MS NOW’s Jeff Slate wrote that this signified Trump’s loss of cultural cachet.

“This was major news, and MAGA world took notice,” Slate explained. “Remember that it was only a year ago that contemporary country star Carrie Underwood happily accepted an invitation to perform at Trump’s second swearing-in ceremony, despite not insignificant backlash from progressive fans.”

After pointing out that some of the people withdrawing are explicitly apolitical in their image, such as singers Martina McBridge and Bret Michaels, Slate concluded that “something, clearly, has shifted. And fast.”

He added, “Despite what some of her loudest critics are now implying on social media, McBride does not have a track record of supporting leftist causes. Instead, her decision highlights in the starkest of terms just how culturally corrosive Trump has become during his second term. That’s what a war of choice, soaring gas and food prices, stagnating inflation, and an aggregate job approval rating in the 30s can lead to.”

President Donald Trump is reportedly planning on abandoning his planned $1.8 billion slush fund.

"The Trump administration plans to drop its controversial $1.8 billion 'weaponization' fund the president sought to compensate alleged victims of prosecutorial conduct under his predecessor," reported Axios' Marc Caputo on Monday based on comments from two anonymous administration officials.

Caputo added that one source told him, "It's dead for now." He added that the story matters because the $1.8 billion allocation was "bashed as a political slush fund that could be tapped by those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, Trump's proposal has drawn bipartisan pushback in the GOP-led House and Senate."

The $1.8 billion slush fund was created by Trump earlier this month as a rushed settlement to his lawsuit against the IRS for a contractor there leaking his tax returns during his first term. The slush fund was controversial because it involved Trump suing an agency he controls (the IRS) and controlling the agency intended to defend it (the Department of Justice), creating a clear conflict of interest; for the fact that the basis of his lawsuit was a crime that had never before led to any kind of monetary compensation;p and for the fact that he planned on allegedly self-dealing (through agencies connected to his businesses, and with which he remains linked) as well as allegedly giving money to Jan. 6th insurrectionists and other criminals.

When the judge in charge of the case, Judge Kathleen M. Williams, ordered the parties involved to appear before her court on May 20th to prove that the litigation and any possible settlement were legal, the administration rushed to finalize a settlement before the May 20th deadline.

At the time of the settlement, one legal expert speculated it could be an impeachable offense.

"I assumed we would never see the 'settlement agreement,' or whatever you want to call it, but evidently, DOJ went ahead and posted it on its website,” New Mexico civil litigator Owen Barcala posted on Bluesky. “A couple things are interesting if you can steel your mind for the outrage and horror of its general nature.”

He later added that it "must be nice to have figured out the One Neat Trick to avoid Congressional appropriations. Just sue yourself, direct yourself to settle for billions, and agree with yourself that you can put that money wherever you want.”

The reversal comes amid intense congressional scrutiny and legal challenges questioning whether Trump had constitutional authority to unilaterally create the fund without Congressional approval. Republican lawmakers, concerned about political blowback heading into the midterm elections, reportedly urged the administration to abandon the plan.

Legal scholars argued the settlement violated separation of powers principles by allowing Trump to effectively circumvent standard appropriations processes. The decision also reflects growing concerns about potential criminal liability for administration officials involved in what critics characterized as an unlawful self-dealing scheme designed to reward political allies.

Alabama is working to redraw its congressional maps in time for the 2026 midterm elections, but it has run into several barriers. Monday, it was due to a brick wall of their own making.

Last week, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Alabama could use a legislative district map found to violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Democracy Docket reported. The vote was a 2-1 split, with both appointees appointed by President Donald Trump.

“Alabama seeks a stay in part on the theory that it can, or will, undo those election results and hold a new primary election,” said Judge Nancy Abudu's dissent. “That request, which may generate widespread confusion, warrants careful consideration, and the Supreme Court has cautioned federal courts to tread carefully when elections already are underway."

The decision comes after a panel of federal judges ruled in April that the maps could not go forward.

So, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced in a court filing that he would immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and seek a stay. Justice Clarence Thomas is the Circuit Justice for the Eleventh Circuit.

The state begged for a ruling before June 1 at 10 a.m., a timeline that has come and gone. Thomas requested a response from the challengers to "Alabama’s racist maps by 4 p.m. on Monday," former political and legal analyst Mike Sacks wrote on BlueSky.

Monday is a state holiday in Alabama.

"State of Alabama offices will be closed on Monday in observance of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ birthday," Al.com wrote over the weekend. It is one of three holidays that the state has to celebrate the failed Confederacy

"Thomas has not issued an admin stay, and the Court almost certainly won’t issue a decision before Thomas’ 4 p.m., Monday deadline for the map challengers’ response," commented Sacks. "Telling SCOTUS that Alabama can’t push through its racist maps because it’s too busy honoring Jefferson Davis’s Birthday is perhaps the best thing I’ve ever read. That we’re here because Clarence Thomas ignored Alabama’s request for a SCOTUS decision by this morning is just the cherry on top."

Alabama is trying to move the U.S. House Districts 1, 2, 6 and 7 and state Senate seats 25 and 26, said AL.com in a timeline of election days.

An issue is that there was already a primary election in Alabama during the last week of May. Outgoing GOP Gov. Kay Ivey crafted a special primary election for Aug. 11 to take into account the new districts. The rules for that, however, dictated that "the secretary of state must certify the names of opposed candidates to probate judges by Friday, May 29."

June 1 is the deadline for "changes to voting rolls for the special primary," the state says.

Thus, the conflict with the original schedule.

"Because of the June 16 primary runoff, the voter registration records will close after June 2 — leaving registrars unable to reassign voters until the records become unlocked again after runoff results are certified," said the Alabama Reporter.

It may be that Ivy moves the calendar again. It has "already been heavily altered to accommodate" the GOP's efforts to carve out Democratic districts.

"It also remains unclear whether those primaries will be held if the Supreme Court denies Alabama’s appeal or fails to respond in time," the Alabama Reporter added.

Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte argued in her Monday column that Donald Trump’s supporters are buying an obvious health fantasy because MAGA politics function less like a normal movement and more like a cult built around a swaggering strongman.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday that Trump's medical records lack the specific information that physicians say they would expect from a thorough physical.

In Marcotte's telling, the reason MAGA believes Trump's every claim is that it is a cult.

After his physical, Trump cheered that "everything checked out perfectly."

"This is almost certainly a lie, though how big of one remains to be seen. People in perfect health don’t have swollen and bruised hands or the water balloon-sized ankles Trump sometimes sports," wrote Marcotte.

She noted that even Trump's staffers have exposed his health issues. They attribute any problems to Trump's chronic venous insufficiency, which Trump was diagnosed with after his legs started swelling up.

"There is zero reason to trust Trump or his staff; they lie constantly about nearly everything," said Marcotte. "This includes false explanations about the president’s health, because the White House keeps insisting he’s merely blinking in photos with his eyes closed, when anyone who watches the videos can see his eyes are shut for long stints of time, and not just milliseconds."

She noted that normal people with good health don't have the medical problems that Trump appears to have, like the rash on his neck, the swelling in his legs and the bruising on his hands.

Overnight, Trump was posing on social media again, prompting questions about whether he's having insomnia problems.

But, she said that as a "life-long con artist," Trump is great at playing the "Daddy-like figure," as his supporters are desperate to satisfy the "childish impulse" to believe that he will always save them.

"Trump’s political success is due almost entirely to his understanding of this, along with a willingness to lean more fully into the role of cult leader beyond what even [Ronald] Reagan or [George W.] Bush were capable of," wrote Marcotte.

Marcotte closed by acknowledging that past presidents had huge egos, but Trump's level of narcissism and ignorance of history "allows him to half-convince himself that he’s a great man. This is certainly why he picked the GOP over the Democratic Party when he decided to run for office. A lifelong con artist, Trump saw that the Republican Party was a sea of marks who would offer themselves up for exploitation forever, as long as he was willing to pretend to be the almighty prophet-leader they craved."

A prominent economist has calculated the overall cost of President Donald Trump’s Iran war on American consumers, boiled it down to how much it is costing each U.S. household, and is issuing a warning on the economy.

Dr. Mark Zandi is the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and the co-founder of Economy.com. He puts the total cost of Trump’s war at $100 billion — a conservative estimate to some — which amounts to about $750 per household so far.

That $100 billion includes “the additional U.S. military costs and the higher energy and other prices resulting from the war,” says Zandi, who calls it a “big economic blow.”

Last week, Zandi told CNBC that if prices stay roughly the same, and the war drags on to a full year, the total cost will jump to about $2,000 for each U.S. household.

He warns that while Trump’s “deficit-financed tax cuts have cushioned it” so far, as of the middle of last month, “the bigger tax refunds Americans have received this year no longer cover the higher costs of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel caused by the war.”

Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, on May 19 reported that “Americans will be spending $2 billion more on gasoline over the four day Memorial Day weekend compared to a year ago, according to GasBuddy estimates, or roughly $22 million more every hour.”

Looking at the “hard-pressed middle and lower-income households,” Zandi found that the financial pressure is “mounting quickly.”

He notes that the U.S. consumer’s savings rate is now “about as low as it ever goes,” and warns that “unless the war ends soon and energy prices come down,” Americans “will have little choice but to rein in their spending, weighing further on the already sagging economy.”

Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, told CNBC that consumers “are increasingly facing an income squeeze, which is forcing them to use savings, credit and wealth to sustain their spending patterns.”

The Trump White House over the weekend offered a different take.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters that “People are spending more on gas, but they’re also spending more on everything else — not just groceries, but restaurants and so on,” MS NOW reported. “I think that that’s a sign that you would see when people are optimistic about the future.”