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Foreign. 20:26 Last night, in an unsigned opinion, the US Supreme Court expanded its finding in the recent Louisiana v. Calais decision. That decision overturned decades of law to declare that states could not construct majority minority voting districts as they had done under section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights act to ensure black vot voters had the opportunity to elect members of Congress who would represent the interests of the black community. After handing down the Calais decision, the Supreme Court sent a case involving Alabama's map back to the state. A lower court had ruled the 2023 map unconstitutional because it violated the 14th Amendment and in diluting black voting by spreading black voters across three districts, eliminated a majority black district in violation of section of the Voting Rights Act. As Lawrence Hurley of NBC News reported on May 26, a panel of three judges reaffirmed that the map showed intentional discrimination and was unconstitutional. The state took the case to the Supreme Court and last night the right wing justices allowed the state to use the 2023 map, saying it was likely to win its case that the map was lawfully drawn and so Alabama will likely replace a black Democratic lawmaker with a white Republican using a map that previous courts have said violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Republican lawmakers currently in power appear to be trying to grab as much power as they can as President Donald J. Trump deteriorates both personally and politically today. The nearly 80 year old Trump appeared in public for the first time since a cabinet meeting on May 27, a day after visiting the Walter Reed National Military Medical center on May 26th for what the White House said was a six month physical that he said went perfectly. He seemed tired and vague in the House of Representatives, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio was testifying before the Foreign Relations committee about Trump's 2020 budget requests for the State Department. Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat of California, played a video of Trump sleeping in two Cabinet meetings as Rubio was talking and asked how the president could make good decisions about war if he couldn't stay awake even during public events. Rubio insisted he had never seen Trump asleep in a meeting, although in the instances Lou showed the president was sleeping in a chair directly beside him. Lou accused Rubio of lying to Congress. This weekend's promises of an end to the war on Iran have fizzled and the economy is slowing under the pressure of higher oil prices. The administration announced on Monday that it is dropping tariffs on imported farm and construction equipment from 25% to 15% to ease prices, proving as critics have maintained all along that the tariffs are in fact raising prices On Sunday, when Shannon Bream of the Fox News Channel asked director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett about a Wall Street Journal report that delinquent credit card balances are at their highest level in 15 years as people use their credit cards for necessities, Hassett centered not the American people, but the credit card companies. We Talk to the CEOs of the credit card companies all the time, and we do see some increased stress like the numbers at the Wal quotes. But for the most part, there's not any kind of financial threat to the credit card companies. Americans trying to navigate rising prices by putting necessities on their credit cards were not likely to be concerned about how their financial pain might hurt credit card companies. As Trump and the administration falter, the MAGA leaders Trump has installed in the government are pushing their agenda as fast as they can. Russell Vogt, the co Author of Project 2025, who directs the Office of Management and Budget and who therefore has the power, although not the authority, to ignore the laws Congress has passed for the expenditure of money, proposed last Thursday, May 28, that political appointees in his office should have final say over research grants, including those for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science foundation and other governmental science agencies. The proposal promises to root out a WOKE policy agenda that deliberately favors certain identity groups over others. In addition to submitting scientific research to political approval, the new rules would also stop international research collaboration unless it was approved by political appointees. Aligning with Project 2025, which criticizes federal science programs for paying too much attention to climate change, the Trump administration is also tearing out a $368 million deep ocean observation System along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts that monitors marine ecosystems, coastal environments and the ocean currents that affect climate change. Eric Nyler of the New York Times reported that the US began operating the system in 2016 and expected it to continue for 25 years. Democrats have pledged to fight the plan to tear out the observation system, while those empowered by his 2024 win are pushing through their agenda. Trump himself appears to have abandoned any pretense of governing and is focusing on his Ultimate Fighting Championship ring in front of the White House. Today, he suggested making it permanent and the painting of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Today, he showed to reporters images of how the reflecting pool is longer than skyscrapers are tall and that he is having it painted American flag blue. He is also trying to cement control over the government. Today, Trump signed an executive order stripping nearly 10,000 career civil service workers of their protected status, making it possible for the president to fire them at will. This move was introduced late in Trump's first term, but rescinded under President Joe Biden and was a key part of Project 2025. Trump's announcement yesterday that he is nominating the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte, as acting director of National Intelligence, or dni, illustrated that he is willing to pervert one of the most important positions in the US Government to his own. Whimsical Pulte has no experience in intelligence, but he has demonstrated a willingness to persecute Trump's perceived political enemies by making him an acting director. Trump can get around the requirement for Senate confirmation, but lawmakers who will have to face the voters in November appear to be getting queasy at being tied to Trump's actions. Pulte's nomination could be a bridge too far. The nomination threatens the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act, or FISA, which expires on June 12. Right wing influencer Jack Posobiek has called for Pulte to take control of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to start digging in on the domestic side of terrorism as well as the international and Democratic lawmakers have said they will not renew the controversial section 702 of FISA with Pulte as section 702 permits intelligence agencies to collect the communications of foreigners operating outside the US Without a judicial warrant. But in the process of that collection, the communications of US Citizens often get swept up. As Joseph Gedeon of the Guardian notes, the FBI used Section 702 to investigate protesters in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon who has led the charge against renewing FISA without significant protections for American citizens, warned that Pulte could use Section 702 as a political weapon, abusing surveillance powers for purposes of blackmail, smear campaigns or attacks on lawmakers, nonprofits or activists. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance added that Pulte could use his position to seize ballots or election equipment. Wyden urged lawmakers to refuse to reauthorize FISA without strong new safeguards for Americans rights. Mark Warner, a Democrat of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the person who can deliver the necessary Democratic votes for the renewal of fisa, warned that Pulte's nomination could doom the measure's reauthorization. Even Republicans, including former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican of Kentucky, are objecting to Pulte, citing his lack of intelligence experience, which the law requires for a DNI head as a deal breaker. House Republicans are also starting to balk at the administration's actions. Meredith Lee Hill and Kaylin Razor of Politico reported today that House leaders had to push back votes today when Republicans didn't show up from their holiday week. The House has been at work 43 fewer days in this congressional session than the Senate has as Speaker. Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, has avoided pushback against Trump in the House by keeping members away from Washington. The Republican majority in the House is so slim that attendance issues have forced Johnson to delay votes to prevent Democrats from defeating bills now that members don't want to go on the record, either against Trump or for him. The ability of the House to get through the work it needs to is in jeopardy. Johnson's slipping control over the House showed today when the House voted to pass a resolution introduced by Democrats telling Trump either to stop further strikes against Iran or to get congressional approval for them. Johnson sent House members home early before the Memorial Day holiday to keep such a measure from passing, but today it did, by a vote of 215 to 208. Although Johnson warned that the resolution was very dangerous and would weaken Trump's ability to find a way out of the conflict, members passed it, likely noting that, according to a recent New York Times Siena College poll, 64% of registered voters think Trump's decision to go to war was wrong, while only 30% approve of it. Shortly after passing that measure, the House rebuked both Trump and Johnson a second time when it advanced a measure that would aid Ukraine in its war to repel Russia's invasion by a vote of 218 to 204. If the measure now passes the House and then the Senate, it will provide $8 billion in loans and $300 million in security aid. Trump does not appear to be taking his loss of power well, retreating to the traditional Republican position that anyone who disagrees with him is a communist. This afternoon he posted on social media, communists always do well with the voters, or as they would say, the people in the early years. But in the end, the country, state or city goes to hell. Great violence proceeds at levels never seen before, and the entity dissolves into poverty, squalor and crime. Remember breathtaking popularity first and then guaranteed death and destruction? President Donald J. Trump.
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Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, MA. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss, Facebook.