In Congress: Looks Like Wannabe AG Blanche Is Already in Trouble

Todd Blanche hasn't even been formally nominated as the next Attorney General of the United States, and yet the pushback has already begun.

In our item about the nomination yesterday, we pointed out some of the reasons to think the nomination might not get past the Senate, and concluded: "[W]atch to see if today, or sometime over the next few days, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) says something to reporters along the lines of 'Well, I just don't know if this nomination can get over the line.'"

Yesterday, the first thing that reporters asked Thune about, naturally, was Blanche's prospects of getting confirmed. And the Majority Leader replied: "This is an environment where nothing's a safe or sure bet these days." That's exactly what an opening bid looks like when a majority leader is trying to gently suggest that a nomination be withdrawn (or, in this case, not made in the first place). Thune will likely get a little less gentle over time (though he might do so behind closed doors).

And then there is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), whose vote is doubly important because he is not only one of the swing votes in the Senate, he's also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also spoke to reporters yesterday, and told them:

I haven't made a decision yet, the key for Todd or anybody going through the Judiciary Committee is being pretty tight on January the 6th. They better not have said for one minute that the people that beat up police officers like these right down here were righteous people. You come even close to saying that. You don't have a prayer of my vote in Judiciary.

We must admit, we do not know what Tillis is playing at here. Todd Blanche has spoken sympathetically of the 1/6 insurrectionists many times, and has described those who were convicted of various crimes as "victims" of the "weaponization" of the federal government. He helped oversee the pardons that were granted to all of the insurrectionists. Then he almost singlehandedly created a slush fund that would have given (and may still give) insurrectionists money to make up for the "harm" that was done to them. If it is possible to be more friendly to the insurrectionists, we don't know how.

Tillis is presumably communicating one of two things, and we just don't know which it is. The first possibility is a Thune-like: "I'm warning you now, don't even bother with this nomination." The second is: "Todd, you better damn well lie, and lie convincingly, during your Judiciary Committee hearing, so I have cover to vote for you." If it is the latter, we're not sure Blanche can actually pull that off. If he delivers too fully on that, Trump will be angry. And if he delivers too little, Tillis will be angry.

Incidentally, we might as well pause here for a mini-civics lesson (and another one is coming in short order). The Judiciary Committee currently has 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats on it. As we noted yesterday, two of the senators who will lose their jobs in January thanks to Trump—Tillis and John Cornyn R-TX—are members of the Committee. If one of them breaks ranks, and everyone else on the Committee votes along party lines, then the nomination would fail, 11-11. If they both break ranks, and everyone else on the Committee votes along party lines, then the nomination would fail, 10-12.

The Committee's decision is not necessarily final, however. The nomination can still be brought to the Senate floor via a discharge petition, which requires the support of a simple majority (or 50 senators plus J.D. Vance). However, being the tradition-driven body that it is, the senators are far more likely to support a discharge petition in the case of a tie vote than they are in the case of a vote that failed outright. So, if either Tillis or Cornyn rejects the nomination in committee (i.e., tie vote), then it makes it harder for confirmation to happen. If they both reject the nomination in committee (i.e. outright fail), it makes it harder still.

The third piece of bad news, when it comes to Blanche's aspirations to be fascist in the Cabinet is that Sen. John Fetterman (R-PA) has already come out and said he is a "no." Fetterman is the only Democrat who might plausibly cross the aisle, and so his "no" means that there should be 47 solid votes against confirmation. So, if four Republicans join with the Democrats and indepdendents, it's all over. A 50-50 vote will be broken in favor of Trump by Vance, but there's nothing he can do about a 49-51 vote.

As we have noted many times, there are already four Republicans who are headed for the exits, and who have no particular interest in "I Enabled Donald Trump's Gross Corruption" being the final chapter of their political biographies. Those four are Cornyn, Tillis, Bill Cassidy (LA) and Mitch McConnell (KY). There are also the "sometimes mavericks," namely Lisa Murkowski (AK), John Curtis (UT) and Rand Paul (KY), even if each of them tends to be maverick for different reasons. And finally, there are the Republicans who are facing tough reelection battles and can't afford to give their Democratic opponents too much ammunition, most obviously Susan Collins (ME), Jon Husted (OH) and Dan Sullivan (AK).

That's at least nine plausible "nay" votes, and we could most certainly envision at least four coming out of that group. And really, we don't even have to envision, because the basic dynamic we anticipate played out yesterday. It wasn't linked to Blanche, but it WAS linked to something else Trump cares a lot about, namely his ballroom. Sen. Jeff Merkeley (D-OR) offered up an amendment to the Republicans' reconciliation bill that would have forbidden Trump to build the ballroom without approval from Congress. The amendment failed to get the necessary 60 votes, but six Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for it: Collins, Husted, Murkowski, Sullivan, Tillis and Jerry Moran (R-KS). Who knows what Moran was doing there—probably just garden-variety budget hawkishness—but the other five are all on our list of potential rebels.

And how about a second example, also from yesterday? As part of the Senate's vote-a-rama, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) put forward an amendment that would have forbidden Bill Pulte from serving even as interim DNI. The amendment failed, but three Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for it: Cassidy, Collins and Murkowski. In addition, McConnell put out a statement on eX-Twitter in which he named no names, but nonetheless made clear that Pulte would not get his vote to be permanent DNI. That's four votes right there, and once again, all four are in our "Gang of Nine." Trump isn't much of a reader, but even he can read those particular tea leaves. So, he said yesterday that he will not nominate Pulte to be the permanent DNI, and that the job will be only temporary.

One other bit of bad news for Blanche before we get to the second mini-civics lesson we promised. The House Oversight Committee released a transcript of the testimony that former AG Pam Bondi gave to the Committee shortly before she was broomed by Trump. In it, Bondi says that Blanche was "in charge of the process and the entire release of the Epstein files." It is quite a coincidence that her testimony just happened to be released yesterday, of all days, don't you think? In any case, any senator who is not happy with the current state of the so-called "entire release" of the Epstein files now has that to think about, too. That is a list that includes not only Murkowski, Collins and Paul, but also Josh Hawley (R-MO).

So, yeah, Blanche might want to hold off for now on shopping for new office furniture.

And finally, in yesterday's item, we ended with this: "Note, incidentally, that the Senate has only about 30 workdays left before the midterms, so the strategy of 'run out the clock, rather than defy Trump openly' is on the table." Some readers wrote in and wondered if we had our math right on that. Others were appalled to learn that Congress is out of session so very much.

This seems as good a time as any to explain how things work in Washington, particularly in an election year. Today, of course, is June 5. If you doubt that, see the top-left-hand side of this webpage. The election is on November 3, so we're talking 152 days, total.

Congress always takes a week off for the Fourth of July. They don't work weekends, except on an emergency basis. They take a summer break for pretty much the entire month of August, and a chunk of September, a tradition that began (and continues) because D.C. weather is pretty unbearable at that time of year. They usually don't work much in October or early November, because that is left open for those members who need to spend their time on the campaign trail. Oh, and of course they take federal holidays, like Juneteenth, off.

Due to all of these off days, here are how many days of work the Senate has scheduled—and it's the Senate that matters here, since they handle confirmations—for each month, between today and Election Day:

• June: 15
• July: 15
• August: 5
• September: 12
• October: 2
• November: 0

That adds up to 49, which is more than 30, of course. However, while Mondays are often "officially" scheduled, they are customarily not actual workdays, most of the time. That is because members might not get back to town in time for Monday sessions (unless it's an emergency), and because they have to have some time to do non-Senate-floor business. So, here are the totals if we exclude Mondays:

• June: 12
• July: 12
• August: 4
• September: 10
• October: 2
• November: 0

Now we're down to 40. The senators also tend to take half-days on Fridays, so that members who need to get out of town have time to do so. That doesn't always happen, but it often does. There are 9 Fridays in there, so maybe knock off another 4 working days, and we're down to 36. Then note that we included today, just to be accurate, but it's not like the Senate is actually working on the Blanche nomination, so we're down to something like 35 days of work available to deal with his nomination on the Senate floor, if it ever gets that far. And that, in a nutshell, is the breakdown of our ballpark estimation. (Z)

Legal Matters: Tom, Dick and Even Harry Might Be Able to Get Away with This, but Not John Bolton

Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced that is has struck a plea bargain with Trump v1.0 official, and Trump v2.0 critic, John Bolton over charges related to classified information. Bolton will plead guilty to one count of mishandling classified information, will pay a fine of $2.25 million, and will face a sentence of up to 60 months. It is hard to imagine he will serve anything close to that, but we won't know for sure until a judge decides. It is entirely possible that, at 77 years of age, Bolton will serve no time at all.

On one hand, Bolton is getting a raw deal here. There is no chance that he would have faced this kind of scrutiny, and that he would have been assessed this harsh a penalty, if he was not regardad as an enemy by the Trump administration. Certainly, Bolton's crimes, when it comes to mishandling classified information, are but a drop in the bucket as compared to the crimes of Trump, vis-à-vis the bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago.

On the other hand, Bolton clearly did commit a crime, and the sentencing guidelines are statutory, and were not invented just for him. Further, on a karmaic level, he's a warmonger who has no problem with sacrificing the bodies and lives of American soldiers in service of his neocon fantasies. He's also a Grade-A jerk who is famously abusive to his underlings. So, it's hard to feel too badly for him.

In any event, the Trump Department of Justice "got" one of its targets—the only one it had an actual, viable case against. The President better celebrate heartily, because we don't foresee many—or any—other victories of this sort in the future. (Z)

The Sporting Life: What Would George (Washington) Do?

We wrote yesterday about Donald Trump's decision to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals series between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs. If we were professional political advisors, and Trump had asked us whether it was a good idea, we would have said, "No. Stay away." There are the various problems we laid out in yesterday's item, namely that it's just too disruptive for the other attendees at the game, and it's obvious grandstanding. We forgot to add a planned paragraph—and many readers who noticed the oversight wrote in—in which we were going to add that screwing around with a Knicks finals game, in deep-blue New York City, is going to result in many loud and lusty choruses of booing. Do you really want those clips to be all over social media by Monday night, Mr. President?

If Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-New York City) came to us with the same question... well, it would be a tougher answer. Finals series like this are very much matters of civic pride and civic identity, such that the mayors of the competing cities will make branding-centric bets (like, "If the Red Sox win, I'll send you a case of California wine, and if the Dodgers win, you send me a case of Boston clam chowder"). Further, Mamdani is clearly a much more serious Knicks fan than Trump is, or ever was. And, of course, mayoral security is not nothing, but it's nowhere near as disruptive as presidential security.

However, mayoral security is going to be at least a little bit disruptive to the others in attendance. Further, Mamdani's "man of the people" populist image does not square too well with attendance at an event where even the "cheap" seats cost $4,000+. Not too many Joe Sixpacks have that kind of coin laying around, to be spent on something that is ultimately only 2-3 hours' entertainment.

So, again, it would be a tough question for us. We don't know if it was a tough question for Mamdani and his people, but we do know that he has announced that he will be there. He did tell reporters that "I will be in a very different section of the stadium," which somewhat implies he'll be up in the nosebleed seats, thus providing a contrast with the courtside seats Trump will probably occupy. We wouldn't have thought you could make the statement "See! I'm not an elitist!" while occupying a seat that cost more than many Americans make in a month, but Mamdani may have found a way to do it.

Note that, as reader D.M. in Alameda, CA, brought to our attention, these issues would be muted some if Trump sits in a luxury box instead of courtside. That is certainly possible; he's buddy-buddy with Knicks owner James Dolan, and Dolan definitely sits in his luxury box for most games. Still, we're only talking "muted" here, not eliminated. Nosebleed seats vs. luxury box still carries some very clear connotations in terms of class and privilege. Meanwhile, Trump will still be shown on the jumbotron a couple of times, affording ample opportunity for booing.

There is some chatter about whether Mamdani and Trump will meet at some point, while they are in the same general vicinity. This is the "news" angle, at least for most outlets, though we don't find that question interesting at all. Maybe they will meet, maybe they won't—they've met before, and they got along fine. No, we think the "messaging" angle is considerably more interesting, and that is why we devoted this entire item to it. (Z)

The Golden State: Vote Counters Have Miles to Go before They Sleep

Following up on yet another item from yesterday, we had a brief piece in which we explained that California takes a while to release final voting tallies (because they have to wait for the "any ballot mailed by Election Day, and received within the next 7 days" deadline) and we also said we did not know if state election officials would be working over the weekend to process ballots.

Reader S.C. in Mountain View, CA, knows far more about the mechanics of California elections than we do, and wrote in with some additional information we thought we'd pass along. So, we yield the floor:

(Z) wrote: "It would be helpful to know if the state will process ballots over the weekend, but there is nothing online that clarifies whether that is the case."

Election Code Section 15150 says, "The semifinal official canvass shall commence immediately upon the close of the polls and shall continue without adjournment until all precincts are accounted for." (Emphasis added.) The "semifinal official canvass" is when they count the votes. During the final official canvass they do such things as reconcile the number of ballots cast in each polling place with the number of voters who signed in at that polling place.

But tallying the ballots and posting the results online and to the Secretary of State's office are two different things. The guest speaker at the May 30th annual meeting of the League of Women Voters Los Altos—Mountain View Area was the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters. He explained that the equipment that scans and tallies the ballots is not connected to the Internet; it is "air-gapped," as required by state law. To report the results they take a clean USB stick, plug it into the air-gapped tallying computer, download the results, then walk the USB stick to an Internet-connected computer in a different room, and upload the results to the website that reports the results. That USB stick is then not used again that election; it will be erased and reformatted before it is used in the next election to ensure no viruses picked up while it was in an Internet-connected machine can infect the air-gapped equipment. Presumably a similar procedure is followed by the other 57 counties.

According to a media release sent out this week, after election night Santa Clara County will report its results at 5:00 p.m. daily. On the other hand, Alameda County's website says they'll update on Friday, June 5; Monday, June 8, and Friday, June 12. Election Code Section 15306 only requires updates twice a week. The Secretary of State has a page that lists when each county has last reported results. Counties also have to report, both on their own website and to the Secretary of State, how many uncounted ballots they have left at least twice a week. The Secretary of State also has a page for that, but as I write this it has no numbers.

That each county decides how often above the minimum, and when, it reports results to the Secretary of State can affect how long it takes the media to call a contest and for a candidate to decide they are not going to make the November ballot and so publicly concede (not that conceding has any legal significance).

As for wanting to know the results the day after the election (and I am not accusing Z of this) [FLAME ON] WHO THE HELL CARES?Clearly candidates and their campaign staff would like to know, and reporters are always looking for a scoop. But the rest of us (and that includes electoral junkies like myself) can wait; knowing the winners today or next week or in 3 weeks doesn't affect our daily lives. As I heard an election official say, as she was interviewed on the radio (it might have been Secretary of State Weber, it could have been a county official), "Would you rather have the results be fast or be accurate?" I agree with her; I'll take accuracy every time. There's a reason there are several weeks between the primary and the general election, and several weeks between the general election and when the winners officially take office. In case it's not obvious, it's to make sure all the votes have been counted and that the result is correct. [FLAME OFF]

I'll now return to the persona of a mild-mannered electoral reformer.

Thanks, S.C.!

Never Forget: Short Stories, Part I

This week, and continuing for the next three weeks, we're running stories about the people who have helped to keep America safe over the years. Many of the submissions we get run 500-2,000 words, and so work well as their own standalone item. But we also get a lot of briefer reminiscences. So, on Fridays this month, we're going to present collections of those. Here's the first set:

M.D.H. in Coralville, IA: When the U.S. used two atomic bombs, my late father—who would later meet my mother as a grad student in Madison, then join her in teaching at UW-Milwaukee for many years; he taught U.S. History, and she taught Modern Europe and also English)—was a crew member on an ammunition ship in the Pacific. My father's first thought on hearing the news of the bombings on the radio was, "Now I know I will have a future."

He wrote his second thoughts in a letter home:

Most of these people were killed by the radiations of the blast. I believe that nothing in the world can justify the use of such a bomb. It cannot be kept a secret indefinitely. We have loosed on the world the monster that can destroy us all. It could be the greatest disaster since the Flood.

In December 1945, his ship passed under the Golden Gate Bridge at night. Somebody had arranged for lights in houses on the hills of San Francisco to spell out "WELCOME HOME." In the galley, where Dad was one of the cooks, "Pat and I could not make salads fast enough" during the final few days before the crew was paid off and allowed to go home, because everyone had only had canned and frozen food for months at sea. "Allowed to go home," of course, didn't mean leaving right away; it took a while for thousands of sailors to arrange transportation out of San Francisco.

I doubt the Golden Gate Bridge could have looked more beautiful to anybody than it did to the crew of the Whitman Victory that night in 1945.

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P.G. in Boston, MA: My Great Uncle was Robert Carver North (possibly a name familiar to one of the Electoral-Vote.com authors). As far as I know the story, he volunteered for the Marines the day after Pearl Harbor. Early in the war, he volunteered for a role as a Marine ground spotter. The role entailed arriving days or weeks ahead of an invading force, and getting in position to direct aircraft and naval bombardments to assist the main Marine assaults. He was more or less on his own from the time he was dropped, usually in a one man dinghy, until the Marines arrived at his position some days or weeks later. He was in combat several times, including the Battle of Saipan. In July of 1945, he volunteered for a suicide mission to land on the Japanese mainland in preparation for the U.S. invasion. As he told me this story, the assignment was volunteer only, as he would be assigned a location where he would surely be overrun by the Japanese prior to the invasion reaching his position. The mission was scrubbed due to Japan's surrender in August after the dropping of the atomic bombs.

After the war, he became a professor of Political Science at Stanford University, earning his Ph.D. through the GI Bill. During these studies, he published a book that in places took aim at McCarthyism, and, as noted in his obituary, drew a rebuke from former President Herbert Hoover. Apparently, Robert Carver North was a constant splinter in his mind. High praise, indeed! He wrote several books, and is credited with pioneering quantitative analytical methods in international studies. In the 1960s, at a conference in India, he met a Japanese man he started a collaboration with, apparently co-authoring several articles (although I can not find these online). The conversation that triggered the collaboration was one in which the two men discovered that not only had they both served in combat, but they were likely shooting at each other's foxholes at Saipan. The work my great uncle was most known for was his analysis that war is not the default state of human relations, but an aberration. His work largely focused on trying to understand the measurable factors that led nations into war, and whether we could avert armed conflict through better understanding of those factors.

I only met my great uncle a few times. He lived his adult life in California, near Stanford. I was born and raised in Massachusetts. I learned some of Robert's story from my grandmother. However, in the summer of 1999, my mother and I took a trip to California to visit much of her extended family. One night, while staying with Uncle Bob and his wife, Dorothy, Bob took me aside, and talked to me for 2 or 3 hours about his war experiences. That fall, when I talked about that conversation, she told me that what Bob had talked about, she had never heard before. I don't know what triggered the flood of memories or the need to put them into words. Perhaps I reminded him of the person he was when he went off to war, as I was 20 at the time. Robert Carver North died in 2004.

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D.L. in Upper Saddle River, NJ: My father-in-law, Emil L. Nelson, grew up on a farm in Eastern Montana and joined the Montana National Guard after graduating from high school in 1939, presumably to help pay for college at the University of Washington. The Montana National Guard regiment was combined with other National Guard units from the Pacific Northwest to form the 163rd Infantry Regiment, which was assigned to the 41st Infantry Division. The 163rd Infantry Regiment left San Francisco for Australia early in 1942 and were deployed at the end of the year to Papua New Guinea to help defend Port Moresby from the Japanese. They were sent to fight along the Sanananda Trail, which was an elevated road descending the Owen Stanley mountains to Port Moresby and surrounded by jungle swamp. The Japanese controlled the road, the Americans and allied units were positioned in the jungle. Emil did not like to talk about his combat experience, but eventually he shared some of the details with us. He remembers being near the road one day, in the jungle, when a large contingent of Japanese troops began passing by, far outnumbering the members of his unit. They had to quickly crouch down in the jungle cover and remain completely silent while the Japanese troops cleared the area.

In a battle in early 1943, his unit was pinned down by a Japanese machine gun emplacement that had the high ground. Emil was one of a few soldiers who were given the task of destroying the pillbox that housed the machine gun. He was able to climb up the mountain slope to reach a position where he could throw a grenade into the pillbox, resulting in the elimination of the threat. While throwing the grenade he was shot in the upper arm and shoulder and was flung backwards down the slope. It took several days before he could be evacuated to a field hospital, during which time he was put with other injured soldiers in the jungle. Flies laid their eggs in the soldiers' wounds, and many soldiers were determined to remove the larvae in order to keep the wounds clean. Emil allowed the larvae to remain and they consumed the dead flesh around his wound, which he credits for his survival. Many of the soldiers who removed the larvae died of sepsis from the rotting flesh before they could receive treatment at a field hospital. He received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star for his actions that day. Here is the text of his Silver Star citation:

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Sergeant Emil Leroy Nelson (ASN: 20929239), United States Army, for gallantry in action while serving with Company F, 2d Battalion, 163d Infantry Regiment, 41st Infantry Division, in action against the enemy at Sanananda Point, New Guinea, on 18 January 1943. The gallant actions and dedicated devotion to duty demonstrated by Sergeant Nelson, without regard for his own life, were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Army.

After recuperating in an Army hospital in Australia, he was assigned to General MacArthur's motor pool and served as his driver for a period of time. For the rest of his life, he absolutely detested MacArthur and was never shy about expressing that opinion in the strongest terms.

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J.M. in Arvada, CO: My maternal grandfather, Maurice Botham, was a career Navy man. Oddly, that meant my mom went to high school in Billings (a cross-posting with the Air Force in Montana) but they ended back up in the Seattle area after retirement, where I grew up.

My grandfather passed away in the 80's, when I was 11, so I only have 'kid' memories of him and I was never old enough to even understand asking him about the war. Lately, I've been reading Ian W. Toll's Pacific War trilogy, so I asked my mom what she remembers about my grandfather's service. After some back and forth with her and my uncle, I found out that he missed the Battle of Midway as his ship, the USS San Diego, was escorting the Saratoga but they didn't arrive in time. He eventually ended up on the USS Ticonderoga and was aboard it on January 21, 1945, off (now) Taiwan when it was hit with a kamikaze attack. He survived the attack and stayed on board as the ship limped back to Bremerton, WA, for repairs. While in drydock he was given leave and took the train to Portland, OR, where he met a nurse. They eventually got married and raised three kids, added a fourth college-age daughter (who was my mom's college roommate and who was far from home looking for a family at the holidays), 9 grandkids, and I've lost count of the number of great-grandkids at this point. I didn't know my grandfather as any sort of sailor or military man, but I know that, like most people of his generation, he sacrificed a lot for the war effort.

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S.D. in York, England. UK: This is inspired by R.A. in Paris, who wrote: "Like many veterans, he would talk about his military experiences but never about combat."

My grandfather served in World War II. Before his birth, his parents had desperately wanted a girl, so they already had a name picked out: Shirley. When he turned out to be a boy, they gave him the name anyway.

Just before he shipped off to the war, he and my grandmother found out they were expecting their first child. Knowing he would be overseas for the birth, my grandmother asked him, "What should we name the baby?"

He replied, "I want a Junior."

My grandmother completely misunderstood his meaning. Thinking he meant a literal namesake for himself, rather than just "a son," she dutifully named my uncle Shirley Jr.

I share this story because it is practically the only thing our family knows about my grandfather's time in the war. Whenever I asked him as a child where he served or what he did, his answer was always the same: "I served in the South Pacific." He refused to share anything else with anyone.

Now that I am an adult, I can understand that war is hell. He simply couldn't bring himself to speak about the things he had experienced and witnessed.

He went on to raise five children in total. He was not an easy man, but I will never forget his "non-story" of the war. It speaks volumes all on its own.

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J.R. in Barto, PA: My father-in-law, Bill Eaton, grew up in a tough Texas oil town and signed up in 1939 for what was then the Army Air Corps. His posting to Hickam Field on Oahu meant that some of the first shots of America's war were fired at him. The Army sent him to the southwest Pacific, where he crewed B-17s in combat, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and Silver Star. Bill's wartime experiences made him a nearly absolute pacifist. Remembering him on Memorial Day, I'd encourage your readers to consider and respect the central lesson taken from battle by one of the best men I have known.

Thanks to all of you. We'll have more next week. (Z)

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: The N.I.S. Never Did Find Dorothy

This is pride month, as many readers will know, and we have a few items planned on that subject. For now, we'll relate a historical anecdote that will be familiar to a smaller subset of the readership. From the 1930s, either due to the movie The Wizard of Oz or to the writer Dorothy Parker (there are adherents for both origin stories), the question "Are you a friend of Dorothy?" was code for "Are you gay?" And that question was being asked often enough by frisky sailors that the Naval Investigative Service launched an investigation into who this "Dorothy" was, and why she was leading so many of our boys astray. As the headline notes, however, they somehow never did find her.

We gave two hints as to last week's headline theme. The first was: "[Y]ou might want to think about which bone is connected to the—brief pause—thigh bone, and is connected to the—brief pause—back bone." And the second was: "[T]he band that recorded 'New Orleans Is Sinking' and 'Wheat Kings' would likely have an advantage."

And here is the solution, courtesy of reader J.S. in Atlanta, GA:

To be Square? All the headlines contain a word that makes a new word if you add "-hip" to the end of it:

• Legal Bytes: Courts Continue to Push Back against the Trump Administration—Courtship
  
• TrumpWatch: What's a Little Nepotism among Friends?—Friendship
  
• Texas Senate: Will the Stars Align for Democrats in the Lone Star State?—Starship
  
• Polling: Guess Who the Leaders of the Democratic Presidential Field Are?—Leadership
  
• I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: This Theme Was Not a "W" for Most Readers—Whip
  
• This Week in Schadenfreude: Even C + C Music Factory Isn't Interested—Chip
  
• This Week in Freudenfreude: Aussies Stick to their EV Guns—Gunship
  

And, of course, the hint comes from the old spiritual "Dem Bones."

Correct. Although we intended "W" for the fifth headline, "Readers" also works, incidentally. From this item's headline, "S" works. And the Saturday clue refers to the band The Tragically Hip.

Here are the first 60 readers to get it right:

S.K. in Ardmore, PA B.J.M. in Steep Falls, ME D.E. in High Springs, FL M.K. in Seattle, WA J.T. in Philadelphia, PA B.M. in Chico, CA T.K. in Half Moon Bay, St. Kitts D.D. in Bucks County, PA G.H. in Acton, ME M.M. in Dunellen, NJ P.A. in Redwood City, CA H.B. in Santiago, Chile J.N. in Zionsville, IN P.R. in Kirksville, MO L.D. in Bedford, MA B.B. in Avon, CT H.B. in Croydon, England, UK M.W. in Altea, Spain R.S. in Milan, OH R.S. in Landing, NJ J.S. in Atlanta K.G.W. in Lafayette, IN G.M.K. in Mishawaka, IN D.B. in Pittsboro, NC M.L. in Everett, WA J.H. in Pittsburgh, PA R.P.E.H. in London, England, UK H.B. in State College, PA S.W. in Corvallis, OR D.L. in Springfield, IL

G.W. in London, England, UK P.W. in Tulalip, WA H.H. in Fort Lauderdale, FL S.R. in Robbinsville, NJ T.T. in Conway, AR S.G. in Durham, NC R.D. in Cheshire, CT P.R. in Havertown, PA G.W. in Avon, CT D.H. in Boston, MA P.H. in Bozeman, MT A.O'N. in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany J.G. in Dallas, PA D.M. in Oakland, CA K.J. in Toronto, ON, Canada L.B. in Veldhoven, the Netherlands M.Z. in Sharon, MA J.B. in Los Angeles, CA H.S. in Scranton, PA S.C. in Vancouver, BC, Canada L.A. in San Diego, CA M.M. in Springfield, OR P.K. in Tulsa, OK S.B.M. in Paris, France A.W. in Wilkes-Barre, PA H.S. in Fort Lauderdale, FL J.H. in Dallas, TX C.D. in Fremont, CA D.E. in New Orleans, LA J.N. in Tucson, AZ

The 60th correct response was received at 9:19 a.m. PT on Sunday.

For this week's theme, it relies on one word per headline, and it's in the category Arts & Entertainment. For a hint, we'll tell you that you're not on the lookout for just ONE friend of Dorothy, but for THREE friends of Dorothy. And note that the "Never Forget" headline is not part of it. We're not going to make a game out of people's war service.

If you have a guess, send it to comments@electoral-vote.com with subject line June 5 Headlines. (Z)

This Week in Schadenfreude: So Much for the Hagia Sophia de Trump

And so it begins. Or ends, maybe.

The Trump administration, facing the business end of a court order, has been told to remove Donald Trump's name from the Kennedy Center. Team Trump's normal response, in nearly all circumstances, is to appeal, appeal, appeal. But in this case, they seem to be aware that the administration has no leg to stand on, and that continued resistance will just serve to heighten the embarrassment. And so yesterday, the Kennedy Center's general counsel sent out a memo giving detailed instructions for the removal of Trump's name from the venue.

The stuff that's easy to change has to be changed immediately. That means things like letterhead, e-mail signatures and outgoing voicemail messages. The stuff that's harder to change... well, the staff gets a whole extra week. Assuming that the terms of the memo are followed to the letter, then Trump's name will come off the front of the building and all other signage, the various Kennedy Center websites, and promotional brochures, by June 12.

Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, said that she and her staff are "evaluating all legal options to preserve this revitalization and recognize President Trump's leadership," but that sure seems like empty verbiage. Trump himself has said that if he can't do what he wants—name the center after himself, and then shut it down for 2 years so it's not obvious that nobody wants to appear there—then he will "transfer control to Congress." Which, let's be clear, is just status quo ante Trumpum. The venue has, for its entire life, been governed by laws and funding decisions made by Congress, with the Kennedy board, and the venue staff, handling the programming decisions and day-to-day operations.

Ultimately, this is a small thing. And yet, it's a good example of the system holding firm, and resisting some of Trump's weird fascist stuff. Hopefully, it is the first of many such examples. (Z)

This Week in Freudenfreude: Instead of Raging, Morello Rose to the Occasion

What if you gave a concert and nobody came? That is a question we apparently will not learn the answer to in July. Yesterday, Donald Trump officially announced that the whole slate of Freedom 250 concerts has been scrapped, and that they will be replaced by a rally with him as the headliner. God Bless America.

Maybe the problem was that people just don't want to go to concerts these days. Alternatively, maybe there just aren't enough people out there who want to see tired acts performing in service of a wannabe dictator. Hm, is there any way to figure out which it might be? Why, yes, there might just be an answer. We give you: The Power to the People Festival, which will be staged on October 3, in Columbia, MD.

We'll let the concert organizers explain what the event is about. From the press release announcing the show:

Power To The People is a celebration of peace, love, justice, music and community action. Curated by Tom Morello, this one-day event at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD is about the power everyday human beings have when they come together—through music, art, community and action—to shape our country and our planet on, and beyond, Election Day.

Expect an extraordinary lineup of artists and activists delivering intimate, collaborative performances across two stages, plus the Freedom Village—an immersive space where nonprofits and community partners highlight ways to get involved through civic engagement, grassroots organizing and mutual aid. A portion of the proceeds from all ticket sales plus 100% of the net proceeds from VIP tickets will be donated to VoteRiders—a pro-democracy, pro-voter organization working to restore and strengthen democracy by eliminating confusing and restrictive ID-related barriers to the ballot box—and HeadCount who will also be on site to help fans register to vote and learn more about how to participate in upcoming elections.

Those who know their hard rock are presumably most familiar with Morello due to his work as a founder and member of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.

The organizers were not kidding when they said they had an "extraordinary lineup" of artists on tap. The headliners are Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez, Public Enemy and Morello himself. There are approximately six artists on that list of six that we would much rather see than Flo Rida or Vanilla Ice. Among the second-stage acts are Jack Black, Dropkick Murphys, Cypress Hill, Serj Tankian, the Linda Lindas and Daryl "DMC" McDaniels.

In short, between the various activities planned, and the music on tap, this is our kind of show. If we lived in Maryland, we would be ordering tickets at this very moment. Well, except for one small problem: The show sold out in less than 15 minutes once they were made available to the general public.

This is something of a companion to this week's "schadenfreude," a different example of the system working. It would seem there are quite a few people interested in democracy and civic engagement, and in pushing back against creeping fascism. That is a hopeful sign.

Have a good weekend, all! (Z)

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