And the winners are…
Good morning! I thought we'd kick off the new week by cheering a trio of heroes who this morning are the proud recipients of the 42nd annual 2025 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Awards. They are:
Jeanette Vizguerra is a well-known activist who has been fighting for immigrant rights since 2009.
Jeanette Vizguerra
Named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, she is best known for seeking refuge in Denver churches after being targeted by ICE during President Donald Trump’s first term. She was detained on March 17, 2025, and is currently being held in an immigration detention facility in Aurora.
"I work independently, using my own resources. With these resources, although limited, I believe I have made a difference in the movement for social justice. The government wants to silence my voice, but I will continue to sow rebellion until I reap freedom.”
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Elizabeth Oyer is a former Pardon Attorney who was fired after she opposed restoring the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson. She was later intimidated by DOJ officials, who warned her against speaking about the incident to members of Congress.
Elizabeth Oyer
“The Department’s headquarters building, which bears Attorney General Kennedy’s name, prominently features this inscription: ‘No free government can survive that is not based on the supremacy of law. Where law ends, tyranny begins, law alone can give us freedom.’ This award is...a timely reminder that we must be brave when our values are challenged, and we must keep fighting what threatens our freedom.”
And last but certainly not least, a state governor is the third recipient. And whose governor could that be? Why, it's…
Maine Governor Janet "I'll See You in Court" Mills, who successfully sued the federal government to restore funding for school nutrition programs that serve 172,000 school children, after that funding was unlawfully withheld.
Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME)
“Throughout my career as a District Attorney, Attorney General, and now as Governor of Maine, I have fought to uphold the Constitution of my state and my country. I feel it is the responsibility of all Americans to speak in defense of their principles, for the rights of others, and for the rule of law which protects us all. As a member of the generation of Americans who were inspired by the career of Robert F. Kennedy, I am truly humbled and grateful for this award, which recognizes how his remarkable legacy should inspire all of us today.”
Congratulations to an inspiring and courageous group of winners.
Meanwhile, RFK's son is the recipient of this years Human Misery Award for his unceasing dedication to fucking up our health care system. He wins a year's supply of roadkill, a free case of measles, and a lifetime family pass to his choice of fecal matter-infected waterways.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, June 9, 2025
Note: Oh, silly me, almost forgot: Happy Amnesia Awareness Month.
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Saturday!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the nationwide June 14 No Kings Protests: 5
Days 'til the La Kermesse Franco-Americaine Festival in Biddeford, Maine: 10
Number of jobs added in May (the unemployment rate stayed at 4.2%), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: 139,000
Number of federal jobs, out of 2.3 million, axed since Jan. 20: 59,000
Forecast temperature in Washington, DC for Trump's glorious birthday tank parade: 85F
Latest health inspection score for Trump's Bedminster country club, the lowest grade of any such establishment in Somerset County, New Jersey: 32 out of 100
Number of violations for which Bedminster was flagged, including all three requirements in the "food protected from contamination" category: 18
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Puppy Pic of the Day: And the Grammy goes to...
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CHEERS and JEERS to hostility among the hanky sniffers. Pity the poor billionaire class. Over the weekend their tears created fissures in their face plaster so deep that emergency plastic surgeons had to be airlifted to Mar-a-Lago. (Thank you, FEMA, for acting so swiftly.) And for good reason: in addition to losing the support of Federalist Society star chamber ghoul Leonard Leo, Dear Leader was Dear-John'ed by none other than BFF Elon Musk. During the public breakup we learned from Trump that Musk is a shit because he hoovers up drugs like potato chips and refused his offer of orange makeup to cover the black eye he received when his toddler son realized who his dad is. And from Musk we learned that Trump's "big beautiful bill" is an abomination and that Trump is pedophilically featured in the Epstein Files. Ruh-roh:
House Democrats are asking the Department of Justice and FBI whether it is true, as Elon Musk now claims, that President Trump is in the Epstein files, Axios has learned.
The Trump-Musk brawl (artist sketch). Amazingly, no hair was mussed.
Why it matters: It's the starkest example to date of how the highly public feud between the president and his onetime lieutenant is playing right into the hands of the Trump's political opponents.
Trump "is in the Epstein files," Musk wrote Thursday in a post on X, adding, "That is the real reason they have not been made public."
Trump says he will not be returning his half of their friendship locket. Musk says Trump can forget about getting an invitation to his next slumber party. Thank god we put the grown-up party in charge of our country.
JEERS to Billeh's Really BIG Monday Morning Tariffs Update. Since you count on us here at C&J to keep you informed-ish, here's what we can report during our brief Saturday Google search in between slugs of Jim Beam:
✿ The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the glorious tariffs will reduce that dastardly ol' deficit by 2.8 trillion buckaroonies over the next decade. And since we all know that tariffs are actually a tax, the real story is that Trump and his Republican yes-men are going to reduce the deficit by 2.8 trillion buckaroonies by raising taxes 2.8 trillion buckaroonies. Merry Christmas, everyone.
✿ I just did a Google search and, contrary to what my bottle of Jim Beam tells me, I did not invent the slang term "buckaroonies." My bottle of Jose Cuervo Daiquiri mix now tells me that I probably should've checked that before I invested my life savings in buckaroonies t-shirts, hats, mugs, URLs, non-fungible tokens, billboards, and condoms.
✿ Congresswoman Madeleine Dean (D-PA) peels the brain of the Secretary of Destroying the Department of Commerce like a banana after he suggests banana prices will come down on bananas once we start "building them in America."
✿ There were a few changes in tariffs over the weekend. 30 percent is now 50 percent. 50 percent is now 145 percent. 145 percent is now 10 percent. 10 percent is five percent. And five percent is the percent of King TACO's tariff policies that make any sense.
Oh, and as of this morning there's an extra 50 percent tariff on steel. "Excellent," said the little pig who makes houses for his clients out of bricks.
CHEERS to that shining city on a hill surrounded by gaseous swampland. 232 years ago today, in 1793, Congress—back when it was functional—voted to make Washington, D.C. the official replacement for Philadelphia as the nation's capital. Today the beltway politicians, lobbyists and pundits have so sullied the name of the place, and besmirched the memory of the person for whom it's named (Ronald Reagan Washington, the Texas School Board history textbooks tell me), that we really should think about moving it again. I offer up my usual candidates: Goober Hill, LA…Devil's Den, CA…Cuckoo, VA…Crooks, SD…Rattlesnake Bend, FL…Mayday, GA…Oil Springs, KY…Petroleum, MT…Crappo, MD…Hell, MI…Money, MS…Loco, OK…and Idiotville, OR. Completely out of the question, however: moving it to any town named Normal.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to proud moments in American history. One day, years from now, you'll be bouncing your grandchild on your knee. And that sweet little cherub will turn to you and say, "Why is June 9th a holiday?" And you'll look down into those sweet innocent eyes, pinch those pink puffy cheeks, and say, "That was the day in 2006 when Tom DeLay went to work in Congress for the very last time. And then you'll go into the kitchen for ice cream and Oreos. Because that's the kind of awesome grandparent you are.
CHEERS to today's edition of Mission: Un-Impossible. It couldn’t be done, they said. No freakin' way, they said. It's out of our hands, they said. You'd have to be a fool to attempt it, they said. You're dealing with the primal forces of nature, they said. You'd have more success asking a man with no arms, legs or head to solve a Rubik's Cube, they said. Or asking a camel to schlumpety-schlump through the eye of a needle, they said. It…can…NOT…happen, they said. No, no, no, no, NO NO NO!!! they said. And that settles th…..
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who the Trump administration admitted was mistakenly deported back to his home country, has been returned to the U.S.
Turns out the Justice Department had forgotten to use the magic words: pretty please. (Who knew the wardens at El Salvador torture prisons were so sensitive?)
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 9, 2015
CHEERS to the flying flan. Looking like a puffy pastry and delayed by a few days, NASA finally got to test its new flying saucer—the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator—yesterday, achieving an altitude of 180,000 feet and a speed of Mach-4 before falling victim to a faulty parachute, for which we can all thank Herb in the NASA sewing room. It's primary mission:
The LDSD project is conducting this full-scale flight test of two breakthrough technologies: a supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator, or SIAD, and an innovative new parachute. These devices potentially will help us deliver double the current amount of payload — 1.5 metric tons — to the surface of Mars. They also will greatly increase the accessible surface area we can explore, and will improve landing accuracy from a margin of approximately 6.5 miles to a little more than 1 mile. All these factors will dramatically increase the success of future missions on Mars.
The craft will also perform a critical secondary mission: flying to other planets in the middle of the night and administering anal probes to unsuspecting farmers in remote areas with no witnesses. Let's see how they like it.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to hot Joe-on-Joe action. 71 years ago today, during the Army-McCarthy hearings, attorney Joseph Welch quietly destroyed bedraggled, belligerent Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy (and his little brat lawyer Roy Cohn, who would later be Donald Trump’s legal kneecapper and BFF) with the immortal words: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
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Within a couple years McCarthy was dead of alcoholism, and today his grave is guarded by an emaciated demon vulture. Birds of a feather.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Everybody was recommending Cheers and Jeers through the roof. But I was worried that I would need to be taken off in an ambulance, seeing that kind of stuff in the kiddie pool."
—Al Pacino
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