Week of June 1, 2025

1. The new head of FEMA, David Richardson, said during a meeting today that he was not aware the US had a hurricane season. (Reuters, CBS News, NYT, etc. But “merit”, right?

2. Trump, while praising law enforcement in a speech said, “…that includes our fire departments, too. They don't get spoken about enough, you know. They go into some of the areas, I read, where they're shooting them off ladders. Can you believe it? They go up to put out a fire […] and they go and they shoot them off a ladder. It's just unbelievable.” This is entirely made up. There have been a handful of incidents where firefighters were ambushed in the US, but there is no report of anyone being shot off of a ladder. It was a false report spread on social media. (Snopes)

3. Walking National Security threat flagrant bigot Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to strike the name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk from one of its ships, orchestrating the change as Pride month celebrations take place. A defense official said the decision's timing was intentional. (ABC News)

Harvey Milk served in the Navy on submarines and as a diving instructor during the Korean War. He was a combat veteran who served his country well. He was a much beloved politician in San Francisco until he was assassinated by a right-wing former City Supervisor named Dan White – who only served five years for the murder(!). (Brittanica)

4. Courts just told employees at Institute of Peace they could return to their jobs after 2 months. When they returned, they found graffiti, water damage, rats, roaches and drugs left behind by Elon’s “DOGE” miscreants. (Economic Times, Yahoo, AOL)

5. The Trump administration has taken over 500 migrant children out of their homes, into government custody. (CNN)

6. Good news alert: Judge rules The National Park Service must reinstate ALL 1,000 probationary park staff who were terminated on February 14 by DOGE.(NPCA, LA Times).

7. A 22-year-old with no experience, Thomas Fugate, is now leading the Department of Homeland Security's anti-extremism center under Trump. Just last year, he was working in a grocery store and graduated from UT San Antonio. He also recently worked as a neighborhood gardener. But he also interned at the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, and for Texas Representatives Terry Wilson and Steve Allison. (ProPublica, Daily Beast, Economic Times)

8. Speaking of Project 2025, here is an online tracker that shows the degree to which the program is being implemented by the Trump Administration (while Trump claimed over and over again that he was not associated with it at all – and then filled his Administration with its authors).

9. ICE conducted raids in Los Angeles and for the most part the residents aren’t having it. ICE agents covering their faces, not identifying themselves (or misrepresenting themselves as police), not presenting warrants, and throwing people into vans. Residents protested and Trump called in the National Guard. Neither the Governor or the Mayor want the National Guard deployed, but as always Trump doesn’t care. (ABC, NYT, CNN) There is zero reason for all of this other than Trump likes to pretend to be a badass, wants his immigration arrests numbers to look good (who cares about due process or who gets hurt), hates the blue states, and I guarantee you, he is testing declaring Martial Law.

I realize my list is short this week. It's all so troubling, and it seems I can do nothing about it, so I may have zoned out a bit too much on puppy videos like this one.

As always, in the words of Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton, “So what did I miss?”