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- Donald Trump Is Too Busy Posting Weird Memes to Go to Don Jr.’s Wedding
Donald Trump has made it known far and wide that, as president, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he’s too busy to attend his son Don Jr.’s second wedding to Florida influencer Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas this weekend. Earlier this week, the president said that with “a thing called Iran” and “other things,” the timing of the nuptials was “not good.” He added with his trademark tact, family feeling, and care for choosing his words, “If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed—by the fake news, of course, I’m talking about.” As the wedding weekend began, the president continued to express his regrets on TruthSocial, saying that “circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America” did not allow him to attend. Thus far, those “circumstances” have involved the president posting a volley of weird stuff on TruthSocial, including a bunch of AI-generated images and some general seething at Stephen Colbert. The president’s public schedule for the Memorial Day weekend is light, with a great deal of “executive time” on the docket. On Friday evening and Saturday morning, Trump devoted that time to posting several photographs of himself on TruthSocial, followed by an AI-generated image reading “GOLDEN DOME FOR THE WHITE HOUSE,” with a dome bathed in celestial light and surrounded by a clutter of satellites. He followed that up with a poorly Photoshopped image of himself looming like a harvest moon over a countryside dotted with houses and a mountain range, Trump’s fingers grasping one of its peaks. “Hello, Greenland!” the image read. (Apparently liking that image tremendously, Trump posted it again the following morning.) He also found time to post a tribute to late WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan, whom he mistakenly termed “the Huckster.” (Hogan was usually known by the nickname “the Hulkster,” but “huckster” might be a term Trump is more familiar with.) The president, who is, again, reportedly very busy, followed these important insights with a tribute to NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, who died unexpectedly last week, followed by an AI-generated video of himself throwing former Late Show host Stephen Colbert into a dumpster. Colbert, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump, hosted his last show on Thursday. CBS said last year that it would end Colbert’s contract and retire the Late Show franchise entirely, a decision the network improbably claimed was… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago - Stephen Colbert Escaped Late Night and Immediately Started Having FunIn a delightful Easter egg for fans of Stephen Colbert, local television, or the improbable combination of the two, following Colbert’s last-ever Late Show, he popped up the following day as the guest host of “Only in Monroe,” a public access show in Monroe, Michigan. Colbert presented an hour of local news, assisted, sort of, by his “volunteer musical director,” a deadpan Jack White hunched over a reel-to-reel tape deck with headphones clamped over his ears. “It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV,” Colbert declared. “So I am grateful to be here on Monroe Community Media before they are also acquired by Paramount.” “It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV. So I am grateful to be here on Monroe Community Media before they are also acquired by Paramount.” “We don’t have any sponsors? We actually lost a lot of money making this show tonight?” he also asked, peering offscreen at the crew. “Now I know how CBS felt.” Colbert previously guest-hosted “Only in Monroe” in 2015, and joked at the outset that he hadn’t slept since then. He led the guffawing camera crew through a series of jokes about local weed dispensaries, Monroe’s version of Comic Con, and a segment about a feud between two local hot dog businesses. Colbert’s guests on the program included “Only in Monroe’s” usual hosts, Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko. Jeff Daniels, who was raised in Chelsea, Michigan, also sat down for an interview, while Steve Buscemi read an ad for a local pizza place, Buscemi Pizza, while reminding viewers, “I’ve got nothing to do with it.” At another point in the broadcast, White, a native son of Detroit, joined Colbert to sample Monroe-style hot dogs. They consumed them, as White dryly put it, “Lady and the Tramp-style,” as the entire camera crew cracked up off-camera. Colbert also treated viewers to a helium-addled rendition of The White Stripes’ “Fell in Love With a Girl” as White struggled not to laugh. At the close of the program, Colbert gifted the show’s creative director Genevieve Benson a ham topped with a birthday hat and a lit sparkler. The whole thing was hilarious, awkward, and gloriously pointless. While the president of the United States seethes over Colbert, the man himself made it clear that he intends to use his sudden wealth of freedom to enjoy… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- With Tulsi Gabbard’s Resignation, the Right-Wing Conspiracy Machine Spins Into...Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced on Friday that she would resign, saying that her husband, Abraham, has been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” Gabbard wrote in her resignation letter to Trump. Gabbard, who represented Hawaii as a Democrat in Congress from 2013 to 2021, has been, from the start, a polarizing and intensely conspiratorial figure and a curious choice for this role. She grew up in a spiritual movement in Hawaii called the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of Hare Krishna that some critics and ex-members have dubbed a cult. (A Gabbard spokesperson has said that such criticism is unfounded and amounts to “Hinduphobia.”) Each time she’s been considered for a more substantial role, and during her 2020 presidential campaign, observers have debated how her upbringing has influenced her beliefs. Over her career, Gabbard has shown a special soft spot for the world’s autocrats: in 2017, she secretly met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, going on to say that she was “skeptical” that Assad had carried out a chemical gas attack on his own people. “There’s responsibility that goes around,” she vaguely observed to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, in response to a question about whether she believed Assad, in Blitzer’s words, “bears any responsibility for the horrific deaths that have occurred in his own country.” Assad is believed to have carried out “widespread and systematic” gas attacks against the Syrian people, according to Human Rights Watch. Gabbard was also harshly critical of Ukraine preceding Russia’s invasion of the country, claiming that the invasion could have been avoided if NATO and the Biden Administration had acknowledged what she called Russia’s “legitimate security concerns.” After she was appointed as DNI director, Gabbard quickly sought to curry favor with Trump, accusing the Obama administration of a “treasonous plot” against Donald Trump during the 2016 elections. But she fell out of favor with the president, and by April of this year, was reportedly not invited to strategy meetings on the Iran war. Naturally, her departure spurred a raft of conspiracy theories, especially on the right, with observers unable to agree on who was responsible for her sudden exit. In their estimation, some likely candidates included the CIA, the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and the broader, nonspecific… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- Once Dismissed As Weeds, Native Plants Are Flying Off the ShelvesThis story was originally published by Grist in partnership with Chicago Public Media, and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Renee Costanzo cranked on the rusty pulley with both hands, watching the greenhouse roof creak open in sections. A breeze of spring air swept over 12,000 seedlings lined up in plastic trays in the Kilbourn Park greenhouse. Costanzo, the Chicago Park District’s only full-time employee at the north-side greenhouse, spearheads a months-long effort to grow more than 15,000 plants, including vegetables, greens, and flowers, to get them ready in time for the Kilbourn Park’s annual plant sale. The massively popular sale, which took place earlier this month, typically draws upwards of 1,100 people every year, with local gardeners lining up around the park waiting to snatch up plants at $4 a piece. But this year, attendance broke records — more than 2,300 shoppers turned out. “We generally start these annuals at the end of February,” said Costanzo, pointing to rows of popular annual flowers like zinnias, marigolds, and geraniums, which provide bright blooms all summer long before dying at the end of the season. “So we’ve been coddling and loving these babies for months now, and we just want to get them into happy homes.” For decades, Chicago gardeners flocked to the Kilbourn Park sale to pick up tomatoes, cucumbers, and some annuals — the standard starter kit for backyard gardeners. But this year, the park responded to a relatively new demand: Nearly 1 in 5 plants for sale are native plant species that have adapted to the local climate and wildlife and are generally low maintenance. “Just in the last five years, people have asked for more natives, which is why we’ve been increasing our production,” said Costanzo, who experimented with 30 different native species in November ahead of the plant sale this year. For a long time, native plants were seen as little more than weeds, but their value has grown significantly in recent years. Other local plant sales across Chicago and the country are incorporating native species at a pace surprising to even veteran horticulturalists who remember a time when they couldn’t give them away. “I’ve watched this for 44 years, from almost zero to now,” said Neil Diboll, the president of Prairie Nursery, a Wisconsin-based nursery dedicated to growing and shipping native plants across the country. “It’s not a fad,” Diboll said. “This is a long, steady climb.” … [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- The Populist Paralympian Who Wants to Roll Into the SenateIt was the final quarter of a US men’s national wheelchair basketball game at the Tokyo Paralympics against Turkey in 2021. Josh Turek was benched for most of the game. Fouled soon after coming in, Turek sank both his free throws to widen the US’ two-point lead in a game it went on to win. Turek, who played in all eight US men’s games at that year’s Paralympics—the team went on to win gold—had no complaints about sitting out most of the game. Ryan Neiswender, Turek’s teammate on that squad, called him a consummate team player. Playing wheelchair basketball on a national team requires people to be self-sufficient, prepping on their own for most of the year. If an athlete doesn’t put in that work, it shows. “Nobody wins a medal by themselves,” Neiswender told me. “You have to have someone that you can rely on, that you can trust, that you can take at their word…Josh never showed up unprepared.” German Paralympian Thomas Boehme under pressure from now-state Rep. Josh Turek (right).John Walton/PA Images/Getty Now a second-term representative in Iowa’s state legislature, representing Pottawattamie County—which has voted red in every Presidential election since 1968—Turek is vying for the seat that Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst will vacate at the end of her term. Ernst herself flipped what was then a blue seat from former Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who represented Iowa in the Senate from 1985 to 2015; she announced in September that she wouldn’t run for re-election after immense backlash to her comments on President Trump’s then-proposed Medicaid cuts at a May 2025 town hall: Ernst notoriously responded to an audience member’s remark that “people will die” with “We all are going to die.” Her popularity among moderates never recovered. Turek was born with spina bifida, linked to his father’s exposure to Agent Orange during his service in Vietnam, a condition that compelled him to have 21 surgeries by the age of 12. His family grew up poor; the Tureks shared clothes from Goodwill, and Josh qualified for free lunch programs, attending college thanks to the financial support of his state’s vocational rehabilitation program. “Look, I certainly didn’t win the genetic lottery. Didn’t win it economically,” Turek told me, “but I worked incredibly hard to get a bachelor’s degree [in history], to get a master’s degree [in business], to be able to represent my country on the… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- Some Lawmakers Want a Gerrymandering Truce
Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Suozzi occupy a lonely space in Congress. Their respective parties—Fitzpatrick is a Republican from Pennsylvania, Suozzi a Democrat from New York—are waging a nationwide gerrymandering fight that neither wants any part in. With the seat-for-seat battle expanding to new states seemingly by the day, Fitzpatrick and Suozzi are calling for a truce—if only anyone would listen.“There’s got to be people that come to the table and agree that it’s in the best interest of our nation to not do this, that it’s a race to the bottom,” Fitzpatrick told me.National leaders in both parties, however, are in no mood for peace. President Trump has directed Republicans to seize every opportunity to draw House seats in their favor, in hope that the GOP can create a buffer big enough to overcome the president’s sagging poll numbers in the midterm elections this fall. The Supreme Court’s decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act last month freed Republicans to redistrict even more aggressively across the Deep South, building on the party’s gains in Texas and a handful of other states last fall.Democrats, who hit back in California but lost a court fight in Virginia, have vowed their own escalation in blue states next year. “We’re going to win in November,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed to reporters last week, before adopting a bit of fantasy-flick hyperbole: “And then we’re going to crush their souls as it relates to the extremism that they are trying to unleash on the American people.”The gerrymandering frenzy will likely extend for at least two more years, which in turn will only exacerbate the polarization and partisanship that has gripped Congress and steadily diminished its standing. “We’ve just made this so bad for our country,” Suozzi told me. “We have got to address this problem, or we’re going to fall further into this spiral, this death spiral.”Fitzpatrick and Suozzi are co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, a group that in an ideal world might comprise the entirety of Congress—after all, what else is a legislative body for?—but in these dysfunctional times make up a few dozen lawmakers along the center political axis of both parties. With the House so closely divided over the past decade, the caucus has occasionally exerted influence over policy—when it’s been able to avoid its own issues. I spoke with Fitzpatrick and Suozzi in a joint phone interview… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
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