Today’s comic by Matt Bors is Begging Trump's pardon:
• String of tornadoes set record: Wednesday was the 12th consecutive day with at least eight tornado reports in the United States — a new record. The last day without a tornado was May 15. This is the longest such stretch on record for at least eight reports per day. Tornadoes have been reported in at least 22 states. May averages 276 tornadoes across the country — but this May has seen more than 500. Most of those reports have come from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. More than 39 million people are under an enhanced risk of severe weather from northeastern Texas through the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast.
• Michael Wolff’s latest book quotes Steve Bannon as saying investigation of Trump’s finances will bring him down:
The former White House adviser Steve Bannon has described the Trump Organization as a criminal entity and predicted that investigations into the president’s finances will lead to his political downfall, when he is revealed to be “not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag”.
The startling remarks are contained in Siege: Trump Under Fire, the author Michael Wolff’s forthcoming account of the second year of the Trump administration. The book, published on 4 June, is a sequel to Fire and Fury: Trump in the White House, which was a bestseller in 2018.
• Navy says it’s reviewing whether service members violated policy by wearing Trump-themed patches on their uniforms: The patches included an amateurish caricature of Donald Trump and the line “Make Aircrews Great Again,” an echo of his campaign theme. The patches were worn for Trump’s visit to the USS Wasp. The Navy and other branches of the armed forces have uniform dress codes and regulations against partisan political acts while in uniform.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Minds, which presents itself as the anti-Facebook, doesn’t know how to deal with neo-Nazi infestation on its site:
A social network described as the "anti-Facebook" has become a haven for neo-Nazis connected to militant hate groups, Motherboard has found.
Minds is a US-based social network that bills itself as being focused on transparency (its code is open source), free speech, and cryptocurrency rewards for users. Much of the recent media coverage around Minds, which launched in 2015, has focused on how it challenges social media giants and its adoption of cryptocurrency, while also noting that the site's light-touch approach to content moderation has led to a proliferation of far-right viewpoints being shared openly on its platform.
• Donald J. Trump State Park in New York is a big mess: Trump included only one condition when he donated 436 acres of undeveloped land in 2006 for a new state park—it had to be named after him. He said he hoped it would become "one of the most beautiful parks anywhere in the world." It hasn’t.
The road to Donald J. Trump State Park in Hudson Valley is filled with potholes, and it's difficult to find, situated at the end of an unmarked dead-end street. The park itself has no restrooms or garbage cans, no rangers or employees, no picnic tables, not even an entry booth. It does have plenty of weeds, dandelions, brush and trash.
"It's not a coincidence that it's hard to find, because I think the state is embarrassed," said state Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, admittedly no Trump fan. "It's a shambles, not too different from what we see in the day-to-day operations of the presidency."
• “Coal cleaning” company abandons its failed project in Utah. The company, Bowie Refined Coal, proposed to blast substandard coal from local mines with air to separate out sulfur, dirt and other impurities and sell it as fuel. The company failed and left behind a 30-acre site contaminated with coal ash. State and local authorities are left to clean up the mess and recoup taxes and fines from a nonresponsive company.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter are back with polls to parse and headlines to hammer. Is “It’s the economy, stupid” stupid? Amash & Mueller keep I-word talk in the air, so it’s back into the weeds on what powers the impeachment does & doesn't unleash.