Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend to become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)

“If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.” ~ Plato, The Republic (as quoted (verbally) by Vasant Bharath (Dec. 9, 2024))

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig, now in its 14^th year on KPFT from Houston 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, Livingston/Goodrich 89.9-HD2, and Huntsville 91.9-HD2. KPFT is Houston’s Community radio.

And welcome to our international listeners from Hong Kong, Singapore, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

On this show, we discuss local, state, national, and international stories that may have slipped under your radar. At my website, THINKWINGRADIO-dot-COM, I link to all the articles I read and cite, as well as other relevant sources. Articles and commentaries often include lots of internet links for those of you who want to dig deeper. I do try to fact-check myself and include the links I use to do so.

It’s the 43^rd week of Trump’s military occupation of Washington DC; and 32 weeks since those states’ governors deployed National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana, at Trump’s request, which is where they remain for now.  

The next gubernatorial election in Tennessee is in about 5 months. I can’t wait to see how that one turns out.

LAWFARE has a chart of where US troops are currently stationed around the US. The link is in this show post at ThinkwingRadio-dot-com.

Due to time constraints, some stories may be longer in this show post than in the broadcast show itself.

1. First, from HoustonPress[.]com — How Did Letitia Plummer Pull Off the Win?; by April Towery | HOUSTONPRESS.COM | June 1, 2026. TAGS: Annise Parker, Cameron Campbell, Christian Menefee, Harris County Democratic Party, Homepage, Houston Progressive Caucus, Karthik Soora, Letitia Plummer,
   1. The tweet said simply, “Holy guacamole.”
   2. Beneath the social media post was a screenshot of early voting numbers that showed underdog Letitia Plummer, a dentist and two-term at-large city council member, in the lead in the Democratic primary runoff for Harris County judge over former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, an LGBTQ trailblazer with 18 years of elected public service under her belt. 
   3. As the evening went on and results trickled in, the text messages, phone conversations and comments became more pronounced: “I think Plummer might actually win this thing.”
   4. And she did, albeit by the skin of her teeth. 
   5. So how’d she do it? Parker outraised Plummer 10 to 1, adding more than $1 million to her war chest. Parker has more years of experience and more name ID. A U of H-Hobby School of Public Affairs picked Parker to win last week’s runoff by a whopping 18 points. But Plummer had a tribe of progressives who were genuinely fearful that Parker wouldn’t stand up to Republican state leadership. 
   6. Plummer supporters took note when Parker almost won the three-candidate March primary outright, missing the 50 percent threshold by just 1 percentage point.
   7. Karthik Soora, co-founder of the Houston Progressive Caucus, says there’s merit to the assertion that Plummer won because Black voters turned out to cast ballots in the heated Congressional District 18 race between Al Green and Christian Menefee. But not all Harris County voters live in CD 18. Plummer says she didn’t even campaign in CD 18 because she already had relationships with those voters.
   8. [Plummer says,] “I wasn’t surprised [by the win]. … We saw what was happening on the ground. We saw the people that were filling our rooms. They were not coming to learn about me. They already knew me. They were coming to get their marching orders.”
   9. Soora says it came down to aggressive information distribution from bloggers and influencers posting reels about Plummer and Parker. A video interview with Plummer shared by Houston resident Sim Kern outlining Plummer’s voting record and priority issues, while criticizing Parker’s public comments, got more than 91,000 views but was ignored by mainstream media, Soora says. 
   10. [Soora says]. “I think that video was the only exposure some people had to this race outside of mailers. … People should stop pretending, like the old school, that you can just send out a mailer and ignore the stuff that matters. People are tired of baby boomer politicians.” 
   11. Menefee, who won the nomination for Congressional District 18 last week, held a press conference on May 27 with Plummer and Dexter McCoy, the Democratic nominee for Fort Bend County judge. Menefee offered his endorsement to the pair and vowed to “campaign as hard as hell” to elect Democrats across the state in November. 
   12. [Menefee said,] “We are united in ensuring that Democrats win every single countywide race in Harris County and Fort Bend County and do all we can to flip the state of Texas and make sure that flows to Harris and Fort Bend counties. … Democrats right now are united.”
   13. At the press conference, Plummer said she won her race “because we heard people and met them where they were. We did not do politics as usual. We created hope for them.” 
   14. When pressed for how she pulled off what’s being referred to as the biggest Harris County upset in recent history, Plummer said, “I honestly believe people are speaking up and showing up. They’re tired of old leadership and dated ideas. They understand that people who have served, have served their time, and our problems are still exactly the same. They want to give someone else an opportunity to come up with new ideas and be able to deliver.”
   15. [MIKE: So, last week, the word “deliverism”, a word we should be suing. Continuing …]
   16. Soora says that while Plummer was a council member — the first Muslim woman to be elected to the Houston City Council — she worked on an apartment inspection ordinance and an immigration ordinance that involved many diverse constituent groups. She developed relationships with those voters that turned out to be more valuable than endorsements or yard signs.
   17. Both measures passed after Plummer left office last year but those who watch city politics closely credit her for initiating the conversations and doing the legal research to get the ordinances drafted.
   18. [Soora says,] “It is hard to find left-leaning progressive or activist groups or nonprofits [that] say, Plummer never showed up for us. … People like Letitia Plummer, and they’re passionate about her. It’s easy to say that Plummer wasn’t able to pass all these things, but she was one of the few people standing up to powerful special interests in a corporate-dominated city.”
   19. The Caucus, whose entire slate of endorsed local candidates won runoffs last week …
   20. [MIKE: Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The Caucus endorsed Annise Parker for Harris County Judge. I know this because I personally I am often guided by The Caucus endorsements in down-ballot races, and I departed from it to vote for Leticia Plummer. So in that instance, this story is incorrect. Continuing …]
   21. [They] targeted voters in the 18-45 age range with mass text messages and reminded them that Parker once spoke out in support of the Houston ISD state takeover. She later walked it back, but Soora says the purpose of the messaging was to let Democratic primary voters know there was actual evidence to support that Parker has a history of unpopular opinions or “centrist ideology at best.”
   22. Parker, who led the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund following six years as a council member, six years as city controller and six years as mayor, didn’t denounce HPD’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities and she endorsed Mayor John Whitmire, who was admonished by the Harris County Democratic Party last year. 
   23. … Plummer’s mother is Yemeni-Persian and her father is Black. The pair met in Africa while her father was serving in the Peace Corps. Dr. Matthew Plummer Jr., a Harvard-educated dentist, converted to Islam, and Plummer and her siblings were raised in Houston, worshipping in a mosque, but also visiting a Baptist church in Edna a couple of times a month with their paternal grandparents.
   24. [Plummer says,] “Growing up, I saw people speaking Arabic and Swahili in my home,” noting that she’s not in any way trying to distance herself from her Muslim faith while campaigning for judge. [She adds,] “I learned to pray in Arabic. This is who I am. I own that.”
   25. Plummer is a divorced single mom and does not wear a hijab to cover her hair. She was raised to have no alcohol or pork in the home. She admits she doesn’t know a whole lot about Sharia law, the religious principles derived from the Quran, or why it’s become so controversial.
   26. [She says,] “I was never really super religious. I would say I am spiritual. … I don’t pray five times a day. I probably get three prayers in. I am very clear who I am from a spiritual perspective.”
   27. Cameron “Coach Cam” Campbell, a Harris County Democratic Party precinct chair who led the Whitmire admonishment effort, says it’s up to the men in the party to step in and protect Plummer when she is attacked for her faith or for any other reason.
   28. [Campbell says,] “What we know about the anti-Black-woman playbook is that they’re going to insult her intelligence. … They’re going to say she’s incompetent. They’re going to bring up Sharia law. Every fear tactic they can play, they’re going to play. It’s not her job to be on defense. It’s our job to call BS when we see BS and step up to challenge these narratives. Part of building a winning culture is not only doing your job but advocating for your teammates.”
   29. The attacks on Plummer’s Muslim faith began soon after she won the nomination, as critics recycled a six-year-old congratulatory tweet from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group Gov. Greg Abbott has deemed a terrorist organization.
   30. History made in #Houston! On behalf of CAIR-Houston, we congratulate Dr. Letitia Plummer on her recent inauguration as Council Member, At-Large 4 and Houston’s first Muslim Council Woman. Read more… https://t.co/6cSgy8IyoY#MyMuslimVote #ChangingTXHistory twitter.com/WuTgzAG1gj — CAIR-Texas, Houston (@cairhouston) January 7, 2020
   31. Plummer says she’s aware there have been rumblings about her faith, but as a female Black Muslim, she’s faced prejudice her entire life, [saying,] “In middle school I was teased because people said I didn’t have a mom, that I was motherless. They thought my mom was my nanny. They said this woman who picked me up from school wore costumes.”
   32. She adds that Muslims, Christians and Jews are all children of the same Abraham. [Plummer says,] “Islam accepts the Bible and the Torah. … We share the same foundational covenant of just being a good human being. My grounding and my culture and my religion are going to allow me to govern Harris County and recognize every faith, every background and every family from a very personal perspective.”
   33. Plummer says she anticipated that the attacks on her faith would become an issue on the campaign trail but acknowledges that she’s “really protected” by people who support her and see the culture wars and Islamophobia for the fear-mongering that it is.
   34. [Referencing her first run for city council that began in 2018, she says,] “I’ve gone through this already. … If all they’re going to attack me with is my religion, then we’ve got this.”
   35. … In last week’s election, Parker dominated the older, white, 65-and-up voters and did “decently well with Latinos” but failed to reach Black voters of all ages, Soora says, [adding] “No one was excited about Annise Parker.” …
   36. Campbell says people also grew weary of the back-and-forth between current County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who didn’t seek a third term, and Parker. Hidalgo criticized Parker for being too close to Whitmire and former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, speculating that Parker would “govern like a Republican.” Parker referred to the current Harris County government as dysfunctional. 
   37. The age gap between Plummer and Parker has also been referenced as a possible reason why Plummer emerged with the nomination. Plummer is 55; Parker is 70. Some have suggested voter fatigue. Parker chalked it up to low turnout. [Parker told reporters at a watch party on the night of the election,] “While I didn’t think my opponent could beat me, low turnout absolutely could.”
   38. In the March primary, 333,926 Democrats cast ballots for Harris County judge. On May 26, with only runoffs on the ballot, 112.968 people voted in the Parker-Plummer race. 
   39. Plummer acknowledges that while the turnout wasn’t great, it was clear that those who went to the polls chose her because of the relationships she built as a city council member.
   40. Parker conceded the election to Plummer late on election night and sent an email the next morning thanking voters and volunteers for their support. [She said,] “This campaign is over, and our job now is to defeat the Republicans in November.]”
   41. Plummer will face the GOP nominee, former Harris County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez on November 3. If elected, Soora says Plummer will be the most powerful Black woman in Texas in terms of the budget she’ll oversee and the authority she’ll have. But both Soora and Campbell say Plummer and her supporters shouldn’t count out Sanchez. 
   42. [Campbell said,] “I think it’s going to be a hell of a fight. … I’m interested to see how Sanchez can bandage what Trump has damaged with the Hispanic men in the Republican Party.”
   43. MIKE: Regular listeners to this show probably have a pretty good idea of where I stand politically, ideologically, and philosophically.
   44. MIKE: There are parties and candidates that I like or don’t, but I can’t endorse politicians on this show because KPFT is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. Nonetheless, I think that I can mention my choices after the election.
   45. MIKE: When I voted for Leticia Plummer, I didn’t know that she was Muslim, and it wouldn’t have made a difference, nor should it have.
   46. MIKE: Religion has no place in our civil society as a qualifier or disqualifier for government office, except insofar as their religion actually impacts their policies when in office. A person’s religious beliefs have little or no place in civil law that governs a vast, diverse pool of people.
   47. MIKE: I felt that in city council, Plummer has been assertive, creative, and constructive. I agreed with the positions I read she had taken and statements she had made.
   48. MIKE: I didn’t have strong feelings about Annise parker that I could articulate. Her sexual orientation had no impact on my ideas about her, except that I presume it makes her more cognizant about the importance of privacy rights and human rights.
   49. MIKE: My impression, however, was that perhaps she is a bit too centrist for our times. I’m not sure whether she would be a “Whitmire Democrat” — which is to say, barely a Democrat at all — and I wasn’t aware that she was 70, but I’m not sure that her age would have made a huge difference, although it’s borderline.
   50. MIKE: I strongly agree with “Coach” Campbell that Democrats have to stand with Plummer when she is attacked by the right for being black or a woman or a Muslim.
   51. MIKE: Maybe my being Jewish has something to do with that, since my religious ethnicity impacts my views on many levels insofar as prejudice and human rights are concerned.
   52. MIKE: Going back at least as far as being in college, I remember concluding that the stupidest thing a Jew can be is a bigot [aside: Stephen Miller], and I often said as much.
   53. MIKE: Democrats — and everyone, really — must stand against ethnic and religious scare tactics and hate tactics in our politics, whether those attacks are overt of covert. So in that regard, there should be no tolerance for those sorts of attacks by anyone.
   54. MIKE: A point in the story that I found interesting, and maybe mildly amusing on a personal level, was the statement that “Parker dominated the older, white, 65-and-up voters”.
   55. MIKE: I found that amusing because I am an “older” white male who is “65-and-up”, and I voted for Plummer, but of course they did say “dominated”, and that doesn’t mean unanimously.
   56. MIKE: On the age issue, I doubt that Parker’s age would impact her ability to do the job of Harris County judge, but I did feel that Plummer’s relative youth was an asset because of the generational differences in her views about society and about the roles of government in society.
   57. MIKE: I appreciate the grace with which Parker conceded and her call for unity by Democrats behind Leticia Plummer for Harris County judge. Given the nastiness and spite we have been seeing in so much of our politics, that was very refreshing.
2. Next, from TEXASTRIBUNE[.]ORG, because the fascists in Austin can never exercise enough control — Texas lawmakers put limits on cities’ abilities to enact progressive policies. Some want to go further.; by Joshua Fechter | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | June 4, 2026, 4:23 p.m. Central. TAGS: Erin Zwiener, Greg Abbott, Houston, Mitch Little, The “Death Star” bill,
   1. Confusion surrounds a sweeping law aimed at stopping Texas cities from adopting progressive policies three years after state lawmakers passed it, supporters and critics said Thursday.
   2. The 2023 law, known as the “Death Star” bill, made it illegal for cities and counties to enact local ordinances that go further than certain broad areas of state law. Texas Republicans including Gov. Greg Abbott and business groups long argued the law was needed to undo a “patchwork” of local rules they said made it hard to do business in Texas and to rein in progressive policies in urban cities.
   3. Critics, including local officials, argued the law was overly broad and vague while wiping out key protections like water breaks for construction workers, payday lending ordinances and noise regulations.
   4. Today, it remains unclear just what local rules and regulations are out-of-bounds under the law, supporters and detractors told members of the Texas House Joint Committee on Government Oversight Thursday.
   5. Still, the law has had a chilling effect on cities, who might not pursue certain ordinances for fear that they could draw a lawsuit. At the same time, the law’s proponents worry that cities aren’t proactively striking ordinances from [their] books that could violate the law — and that outside of individual lawsuits brought by residents, there’s no way to make sure they’re following the law.
   6. Some Republican lawmakers in the hearing floated enhancing the law to hold cities more accountable, including giving the attorney general more power to go after the law’s violators — an idea that died when legislators met last year.
   7. James Quintero, policy director at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Taxpayer Protection Project, told lawmakers he asked several cities and counties what steps they had taken to comply with the law. [He said that] Those cities and counties “came back and effectively implied that they had done nothing.”
   8. [Quintero said,] “Sometimes the Legislature can pass a law, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into local action. … We don’t necessarily see cities and counties executing the law faithfully.”
   9. Critics of the law argued there’s no evidence localities have openly violated the law. In fact, the law has had a chilling effect on cities, said Bill Longley, general counsel for the Texas Municipal League, a lobbying group that represents a majority of the state’s 1,200-plus cities.
   10. [Longley said that] Some cities have changed or repealed ordinances, like ordinances that regulate car towing, to avoid costly legal fights, … while cities have sought to closely vet newly proposed ordinances to make sure they’re not running afoul of the law. But given the law’s broad scope, cities may rather not pass new ordinances to address urgent problems rather than risk a lawsuit.
   11. [Longley said,] “It sounds like there may be some frustration that cities haven’t just jumped in and started repealing ordinances left and right, but we’re talking about a standard that I think is not entirely clear.”
   12. Adding to the confusion is a certain amount of legal limbo. The law is in effect, but a legal fight initiated by Houston, El Paso and San Antonio challenging the law’s constitutionality hasn’t been settled. Meanwhile, a group of Dallas residents have sued that city to force it to repeal dozens of ordinances, including a slew of LGTBQ+ protections, that they allege violate the law. The outcome of that case is pending before the 15th Court of Appeals.
   13. [Said state Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood,] “Why should they do a good faith effort to follow a law they believe is unconstitutional?”
   14. The law relies on private citizens to bring lawsuits, which can get tied up for years in appeals.
   15. State Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, floated the idea of allowing the Texas Attorney General to sue cities if they find evidence that suggests cities aren’t following the law — and fast-track those suits through the appeals process to arrive at a quick ruling. Residents and businesses, he noted, often don’t have the money to pay for long legal battles.
   16. [Rep. Little said,] “I can’t imagine a car mechanic or an auto shop deciding that it was a good use of its capital to sue the city of Dallas over an ordinance.”
   17. Lawmakers tossed around other ideas, like requiring cities to audit their ordinances to make sure they’re following the law or issuing financial penalties to cities and counties that violate it. Quintero noted a new state law that freezes cities’ property taxes if they don’t follow financial requirements set by the state as a potential model. Democratic lawmakers on the panel pushed back, arguing that cities and counties ultimately pass on those penalties to taxpayers.
   18. The law is seen as the high-water mark in a years-long push by GOP state lawmakers to curb the rulemaking authority of the state’s urban areas, which often lean liberal.
   19. State Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo, said he supported the law in part because few people vote in municipal elections, and it makes sense for state lawmakers, elected in higher turnout elections, to correct any perceived overreach. But he was skeptical that cities were openly violating the law.
   20. Others argued that the state’s cities have diverse needs specific to their communities and shouldn’t be barred from meeting those needs.
   21. [Said state Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston,] “Why even have a city council? … Why even have a mayor if Austin is going to be the one that dictates what you do and can’t do?”
   22. MIKE: I agree with Rep. Walle. Why, indeed?
   23. MIKE: There was a time when Democrats controlled many offices in Texas and the other states, and the Republicans constantly castigated them for alleged governmental overreach. Their complaint was that local governments should have the power to govern in ways that the cities and counties need to or wanted to.
   24. MIKE: How times have changed. Now that Republicans have been in power in Texas state government for over 30 years, we see what hypocrites they are about “local control”.
   25. MIKE: While in control of state government, their actions toward Texas cities can best be described as official oppression under color of law.
   26. MIKE: That phrase, “official oppression under color of law”, has an actual legal definition.
   27. MIKE: The Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice describes it thusly: “Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
   28. MIKE: For the purpose of Section 242, acts under “color of law” include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within their lawful authority — [MIKE: Which is what Texas does, in my opinion], — but also acts done beyond the bounds of that official’s lawful authority, if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties. Persons acting under color of law within the meaning of this statute include police officers, prisons guards and other law enforcement officials, as well as judges, care providers in public health facilities, and others who are acting as public officials. It is not necessary that the crime be motivated by animus toward the race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin of the victim.”
   29. MIKE: Now it’s entirely possible, even likely, that I’m using that phrase metaphorically rather than legally, just like someone accusing a person of treason. Treason has an actual legal definition that is really very narrow, so most folks are actually using the term metaphorically rather than legally.
   30. MIKE: So, acknowledging that this is probably the case, the official oppression that I see is elected state officials “depriving” citizens in cities and counties “of right[s] and privilege[s] protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” And they are doing so even though they may be acting within their lawful authority, as stated in section 242.
   31. MIKE: It’s my belief that within the limits of state and federal law, local governments such as cities, towns, and counties have the right to govern their territory and protect their residents as they see fit.
   32. MIKE: When the state passes rules and laws that improperly and unreasonably impede that local governance, those rights to local self-governance have been interfered with to a degree that might be considered official oppression, even though the oppression has been conducted under lawful authority.
   33. MIKE: As a layperson, that’s how I see it. Of course, as they say, your mileage may vary.
3. Here’s an interesting story from last week from AXIOS[.]COM — AOC takes more steps toward 2028 run for president; By Alex Thompson, Holly Otterbein | AXIOS.COM | May 24, 2026. TAGS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), 2028 Democratic primary, 2028 Senate Campaign, 2028 Presidential Campaign,
   1. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she hasn’t decided whether to run for president, but the New York congresswoman is making new moves toward a possible White House bid.
   2. Ocasio-Cortez launched a national tour in recent weeks — without calling it one.
   3. … Whether AOC jumps into the race is one of the biggest X factors in the 2028 Democratic primary.
   4. Democratic operatives expect she would easily raise $100 million just from small-dollar donors, mobilize many supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ past campaigns, and command attention as few other candidates could.
   5. … Just in May, Ocasio-Cortez has: Rallied voters in Philadelphia for a left-wing congressional candidate in a competitive primary; Spoken at a rally in Montgomery, Ala., about voting rights; Addressed the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta with Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock. (Democrats note that Warnock, the church’s senior pastor, doesn’t always allow visiting politicians to speak at this church. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg didn’t speak when he visited in March.); Met with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter at the King Center in Atlanta to talk about data centers and voting rights; Visited Morehouse School of Medicine, also in Atlanta, to discuss Black maternal health; [and] Rolled out several endorsements in races across the country.
   6. [Last] week, Ocasio-Cortez [traveled] to Missoula, Mont., to campaign for congressional candidate Sam Forstag, a smokejumper and union leader who spoke at a rally with AOC and Sanders last year.
   7. [MIKE: As a side note, he won. Continuing …]
   8. AOC also has raised eyebrows by attending meetings with Democratic Party powerbrokers.
   9. In April, she attended the Power Rising Summit in Chicago — an event that bills itself as “a space for Black women to turn power into action and create an actionable agenda to be implemented in their communities, and nationally.”
   10. The summit was founded by influential Democratic operative Leah Daughtry.
   11. Between the lines: It’s not just where Ocasio-Cortez is going, it’s what she’s saying that signals her ambitions go well beyond her New York City district.
   12. During her speech in Philadelphia, she approvingly quoted an activist who recently said that “MAGA is the last dying breath of the confederacy.”
   13. She added: “In response to a confederacy, we have this moment here of liberation, abolition, and revival of the values that make this country actually great.”
   14. She also waxed poetic about how the “founding of our nation introduced a radical new idea into the world that all people were created equal.”
   15. At Ebenezer Baptist Church, Ocasio-Cortez brought the congregation to its feet when she said,
   16. [MIKE: And rather than read it, I’m going to play the audio of the cited quote (44s):] “I’m here today, brothers and sisters, with a simple message: We stand together and we are not going back.” She continued: “What happens in Georgia happens to New York, what happens to Tennessee happens to California, what happens to Louisiana happens to all of us, Ebenezer, because this is America. We are not divided by state, we are united by our humanity and common citizenship.”
   17. [MIKE: By the way, I’ve linked to her full speech at the church in this show post at ThinkwingRadio[.]com. The quote cited in this story starts at about the 3m 39s mark. Continuing …]
   18. … Ocasio-Cortez recently said that speculation about her running for president assumes that her “ambition is positional,” but “my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.”
   19. A person close to AOC told Axios that she is still genuinely undecided on whether to run for president. She’s also considering a Senate bid in 2028.
   20. [The source said,] “The way she will evaluate the decision is really around where she believes she can make the most change.”
   21. Ocasio-Cortez also is skeptical of early 2028 primary polls that are positive for her, including one this month showing her first among possible contenders, the source added.
   22. [As this story points out,] Presidential politics have a long history of potential candidates denying White House ambitions only to reverse course.
   23. In January 2006, then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said: “I will serve out my full six-year term.” Pressed on whether he would run for president or vice president in 2008, he said: “I will not.”
   24. Ten months later, Obama said that “given the responses that I’ve been getting over the last several months, I have thought about the possibility” of running for president.
   25. In 1990, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton also committed to serving for four years, and said only “a plane crash or something” would prevent that.
   26. After a listening tour through Arkansas in 1991, he changed his mind — and won the presidency in 1992.
   27. MIKE: I remember when Obama gave the keynote speech for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I clearly recall that after that speech — and I’ve linked to the video in this show post — I was telling people that this guy had a potential shot at president.
   28. MIKE: When Obama said he wasn’t planning to run, he meant it at the time he said it. But after that speech, there was a lot of political buzz about a possible run for him. I recall a story that it was Ted Kennedy who changed his mind.
   29. MIKE: Kennedy reportedly told Obama that while he might not feel ready for a presidential run, timing was everything and this was his moment. As history proved, Kennedy was right.
   30. MIKE: Likewise, AOC might be serious when she says that she has no present plans to run. And frankly, it’s very rare for a member of the House with no other elective office behind them to run for a national office (successfully, at least), but is this her moment?
   31. MIKE: According to Google Ai, when I posed the question, the only president who was elected straight out of the US House was James A. Garfield.
   32. MIKE: To put that in perspective, out of 47 presidential elections over 250 years, only one sitting Congressional representative has been elected president. That would make an AOC run even less likely to be successful than US vice presidents who have successfully run for president, and sitting US VPs have a terrible record of successfully running.
   33. MIKE: So could this be AOC’s moment? Will a Ted Kennedy encourage her to run? Could she win? That’s what makes the 20/20 hindsight of history so interesting.
   34. MIKE: In advance, we just never know.
4. Switching gears, most of us already know that the Trump regime is the most corrupt government in US history, making us the richest and most powerful banana republic in the world. Back on March 5^th, PROPUBLICA[.]ORG published a lengthy story on just how corrupt. I’ve updated some of the official titles. The story is entitled —Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate; By Corey G. Johnson, Brandon Roberts and Al Shaw | PROPUBLICA.ORG | March 5, 2026, 5:00 am. TAGS: Trump Administration, Government Corruption, Graft,
   1. Thousands of companies are jockeying for billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts to build a shield designed to intercept and destroy missiles launched against the United States.
   2. But amid the intense competition, a handful of firms have an important inside connection.
   3. At least four of the companies awarded contracts so far are owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm founded by billionaire Steve Feinberg, who until last year ran the company and is now the deputy secretary of defense — the second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon.
   4. Feinberg oversees the office in charge of the Golden Dome for America project, which is modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
   5. Feinberg filed paperwork saying he divested from Cerberus and its related businesses. But his government ethics records contain an unusual clause: He is allowed to continue contracting with the company for tax compliance and accounting services as well as health care coverage, a financial relationship that documents show could continue indefinitely.
   6. Feinberg’s financial statements and ethics agreement are part of a trove of nearly 3,200 disclosure records that ProPublica is making public today. The disclosures, which can be viewed in a searchable online tool, detail the finances of more than 1,500 federal officials appointed by President Donald Trump. Records for Trump and Vice President JD Vance are also included.
   7. The documents reveal a web of financial ties between senior government officials and the industries they help regulate — relationships that have drawn scrutiny as Trump has dismantled ethics safeguards designed to prevent conflicts of interest.
   8. On his first day back in office, Trump rescinded an executive order signed by President Joe Biden that required his appointees to comply with an ethics pledge. The pledge barred them from working on issues related to their former lobbying topics or clients for two years. Weeks later, Trump fired 17 inspectors general charged with investigating fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest across the federal government. Around the same time, he removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency that oversees ethics compliance throughout the executive branch. The office is currently without a head or a chief of staff.
   9. Against that backdrop, ProPublica has, over the past year, used the disclosure records to investigate how personal financial interests have intersected with government decision-making inside the Trump administration.
   10. The documents helped show that senior executive branch officials, including [former] Attorney General Pam Bondi, made well-timed securities trades, at times selling stocks just before markets plunged because Trump announced new tariffs. (The officials either did not respond to requests for comment, or said they had no insider information before they made their trades.)
   11. Other disclosures revealed that two high-ranking scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency who recently helped downgrade the agency’s assessment of the health risks of formaldehyde had previously held senior positions at the chemical industry’s leading trade group. (The EPA said the scientists had obtained ethics advice approving their work on the project.)
   12. In December, ProPublica reported that Trump has appointed more than 200 people who collectively owned — either by themselves or with their spouses — between $175 million and $340 million in cryptocurrency investments at the time they filed their disclosures. Some of those appointees now hold positions overseeing or influencing regulation of the crypto industry. Among them are Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney and now the [acting Attorney General] in the Justice Department.
   13. Blanche’s disclosure records show that he owned at least $159,000 in crypto-related assets last year when he shut down investigations into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges.
   14. After ProPublica reported on Blanche’s actions, six Democratic senators accused him of a “glaring” conflict of interest, and a watchdog group asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate. [MIKE: They still have one?] A Justice Department spokesperson has said Blanche upholds the highest ethical standards and that his crypto orders were “appropriately flagged, addressed and cleared in advance,” but she did not respond to questions asking who had cleared his actions.
   15. Conflicts of interest have long plagued both Democratic and Republican administrations. But ethics experts say Trump’s second term marks a sharp break from modern norms.
   16. Trump has openly defended his family’s financial enrichment while he is in office, including through cryptocurrency deals that critics say allow investors, including foreign entities, to curry favor by boosting the president’s personal wealth.
   17. [Referring to his family’s business dealings, Trump told The New York Times,] “I found out nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.”
   18. Trump also remains unapologetic about accepting a Boeing 747 worth about $400 million from the Qatari government and transferring nearly $1 billion from a nuclear weapons program to retrofit it. Virginia Canter, chief counsel for ethics and corruption at Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit governmental watchdog group, cited Trump’s new plane as a brazen example of self-dealing.
   19. “Ethics is in the toilet,” said Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House, Treasury Department, and Securities and Exchange Commission during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
   20. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly defended the president and his appointees, [saying,] “President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history. … He has also nominated highly-qualified individuals across the Executive Branch who have a wide range of public and private sector backgrounds.”
   21. The idea of a space-based missile defense shield has persisted ever since President Ronald Reagan proposed his own version nicknamed “Star Wars.”
   22. Trump rekindled the idea on the campaign trail. His Golden Dome for America imagines a battery of weapons, deployed from land, sea and space, able to destroy missiles launched at the U.S.
   23. In December, the Defense Department started selecting companies for the project, for which it has allocated as much as $151 billion. So far, the agency has granted awards to more than 2,000 firms. Cerberus owns or is a majority investor in at least four of them: North Wind, Stratolaunch, Red River Technology, and NetCentrics Corp.
   24. Citing national security concerns, defense officials have not publicized the amounts of each contract or the products or services the companies are providing. (The Defense Department is required by law to publicly announce only contracts worth more than $9 million.)
   25. Feinberg, who co-founded Cerberus in 1992, listed assets worth at least $2 billion when he was nominated by Trump last year. In his ethics agreement, Feinberg said he would divest his stake in the firm, potentially giving assets to irrevocable trusts benefiting his adult children — a maneuver that is legal under federal conflict-of-interest law but one that ethics experts say undermines its intent.
   26. Feinberg also told ethics officials that he needed to contract with Cerberus for accounting, tax, and health care services in the short term but would find other providers by April 2026.
   27. However, at Feinberg’s request, Defense Department officials approved an extension earlier this year, allowing the financial relationship to continue without an end date.
   28. [MIKE: Based on my current research, he still has not found a new healthcare provider or severed that relationship. Continuing …]
   29. Other agencies have similar industry links. Across the administration, former lobbyists and corporate executives now occupy influential positions …
   30. … ProPublica’s searchable online tool provides the public an important glimpse into the financial relationships or industry links of a powerful and often hidden cadre of presidential appointees within the federal bureaucracy.
   31. [MIKE: The story includes a link to that tool. Continuing …]
   32. Reports show that after being nominated to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Jonathan Morrison revealed he served for two years as a director of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, the trade group that represents companies that make and use self-driving cars. He left the position in February 2024.
   33. At his confirmation hearing last year, Morrison said he wanted the NHTSA [Pron: “NIT-sa”] to set national standards and play a leading role in the industry’s development of self-driving vehicles.
   34. Sean Rushton, an NHTSA spokesperson, said Morrison had an unpaid position on the autonomous vehicle group’s board of directors and doesn’t have to recuse himself from matters involving the organization because he left long before the presidential election and his nomination as highway traffic safety administrator.
   35. [MIKE: As mentioned, he left that job just over 2 years ago, which puts him just barely incompliance with ethics regulations. Continuing …]
   36. Most political appointees and senior officials in the executive branch are required by law to file public financial disclosure reports. These documents detail their financial assets, the positions they hold outside government, their spouse’s holdings, their liabilities and their recent financial transactions (such as buying or selling stock) during a defined reporting period. For the most part, the law does not require appointees to provide exact financial values but instead a range.
   37. At least a dozen appointees withheld the identities of previous clients, ProPublica found.
   38. Appointees are allowed to keep the name of former clients confidential under exceptional circumstances, such as when the identity is protected by a court order, or revealing the name would violate the rules of a professional licensing organization. In New York and Washington, D.C., for example, the organizations that license attorneys prohibit them from revealing confidential information about a client in most situations, including if doing so would be embarrassing or is likely to be detrimental to the client. While the relationship between a client and an attorney is often made public, in some cases — if, for instance, an appointee had conducted legal defense work for a client during a nonpublic criminal investigation — the client’s identity could be withheld from the financial disclosure.
   39. Guidelines issued by the Office of Government Ethics say that such situations are unusual and “it is extremely rare for a filer to rely on this exception for more than a few clients.”
   40. But at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is responsible for tariff policy, the head of the agency, Jamieson Greer, withheld the names of more than 50 former clients from his time at King & Spalding, one of the nation’s most influential law firms. In his disclosure, Greer cited the New York and D.C. bar rules for not identifying the clients.
   41. Greer’s senior adviser in the federal agency, Kwan Kim, previously worked as an international trade lawyer for Covington & Burling. From October 2020 to February 2025, Kim helped businesses win federal exemptions from steel and aluminum tariffs and defended companies accused by investigators of import-related crimes, according to a Covington biography that has since been taken down. Kim kept the names of 52 companies he represented secret, citing the D.C. Bar rules, the disclosure documents show.
   42. The U.S. Trade Representative office did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.
   43. [MIKE: I think it’s important to remind listeners at this point that all defendants are entitled to vigorous representation in court, so representing clients in their defense should not in and of itself be a basis for judging an attorney. Continuing …]
   44. When the names of former clients are withheld, it becomes virtually impossible for the public to know if an official’s actions in government benefit a former client. Kedric Payne, ethics director at the nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, said the lack of disclosure is concerning. …
   45. ProPublica’s journalists have been gathering these records for more than a year. We obtained all of the disclosures that were available from the Office of Government Ethics. Those consist of the top appointees who require Senate confirmation. To get records for people working in lower-level positions, we made requests to individual federal agencies. Some didn’t respond or responded partially; records we requested for about 1,200 people weren’t provided.
   46. Still, ProPublica’s online tool is the most comprehensive public source of financial disclosures from across the executive branch.
   47. MIKE: This is already a comprehensive article, so I don’t have much to add. I’ll just note that some basic searches don’t turn up anything that updates this story.
   48. MIKE: As noted in the article, ProPublica has a searchable online tool you can use for more detailed information.
5. And along the same lines as that last story, from WASHINGTONPOST[.]COM — Ballroom donors won $50B in contracts after giving to Trump project, watchdog group finds; By Jonathan Edwards | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | June 4, 2026 at 3:24 p.m. EDT/Today at 3:24 p.m. EDT. TAGS: President Donald Trump, Trump’s White House Ballroom, Corporate Donors, Public Citizen Nonprofit Watchdog Group, Federal Contracts, Graft and Corruption, Pay-to-Play,
   1. More than half of the publicly identified donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion during the past six months, according to a report released Thursday by a government watchdog group.
   2. Fourteen of the 27 known corporate donors to the $400 million project, which would replace the East Wing that Trump demolished in October, have seen their government business grow in that window, according to the report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit. Most of those same companies are also facing federal enforcement actions over alleged wrongdoing or have had such actions suspended by the Trump administration since the start of Trump’s second term, the nonprofit found.
   3. The donors have sprawling interests that touch nearly every aspect of American life, including defense contracting, technology, and energy. Trump has repeatedly touted the gifts as a boon to taxpayers, but critics of the project say the administration’s refusal to release a full list of donors creates the potential for corruption.
   4. [Said Jon Golinger, a public policy advocate at Public Citizen and an author of the report,] “These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom fiasco out of the goodness of their hearts. … They have massive interests before the federal government, and they hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration.”
   5. The analysis builds on a report from the group last fall that found the known donors held $279 billion in government contracts over the previous five years and had spent $1.6 billion on political contributions and lobbying during that time. The new report focuses on contracts awarded in most of the seven months since the East Wing’s demolition, which Trump’s critics have argued created new urgency around potential conflicts of interest.
   6. Of the known donors, no single contributor received more new business with the government [than Lockheed Martin since giving to the project]. The defense giant received roughly $43.8 billion in new or expanded contract funding since last fall, according to the report.
   7. Booz Allen Hamilton followed, with more than $4.2 billion, and Palantir, with just over $1 billion. Other donors that received new or increased contracts include Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar and T-Mobile. (Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Altogether, more than two-thirds of corporate ballroom donors — 19 of 27 — have received government contracts over the past five and a half years, totaling $338 billion, the report says.
   8. Sixteen of the 27 donors are facing federal enforcement actions or have had such actions suspended by the Trump administration, the report found, including major antitrust reviews involving Amazon, Apple, Meta and Nvidia; labor rights cases involving Google, Lockheed and Meta; and securities matters involving Coinbase and Ripple, whose cases have been dropped or scaled back under Trump.
   9. The White House on Thursday pushed back on the report’s pay-to-play framing.
   10. [White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.] “The same critics who are alleging fake conflicts of interests, would also complain if American taxpayers were footing the bill for these long-overdue renovations. … The donors for the White House ballroom project represent a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals, all of whom are contributing to make the People’s House better for generations to come.”
   11. The White House has closely guarded some details of the project, publicly disclosing only 21 corporate donors. News outlets subsequently identified six more. Public Citizen sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the secret fundraising contract that permits officials to conceal donors’ identities, unearthing the terms set between the White House, National Park Service and the Trust for the National Mall, the nonprofit handling ballroom donations.
   12. Thursday’s report arrives as the ballroom project continues to face legal and political turbulence. A federal judge has ruled that construction must halt until Congress authorizes the project, but a three-judge federal appeals panel allowed construction to continue while the case proceeds.
   13. [MIKE: In other words, always the courts are letting the damage persist instead of halting the damage while it’s pending. It makes me furious. Continuing …]
   14. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear the case Friday.
   15. [MIKE: This story was published on Thursday. Continuing …]
   16. Last month, Senate Republicans tried to have Congress allocate $1 billion for what it called the “East Wing Modernization Project,” which included other initiatives, a move that collapsed amid public backlash.
   17. Congressional Democrats have pressed for greater disclosure for months. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) has sent letters to known donors asking what they contributed and what they expected in return. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and colleagues have introduced legislation that would ban anonymous donations for ballroom and other White House grounds projects.
   18. [Blumenthal said in an April statement to The Post,] “At every turn, President Trump has sought to conceal the facts about his monstrous multimillion-dollar ballroom.”
   19. MIKE: So to the surprise of absolutely no one who has been paying attention to Trump’s long career, grifters are gonna grift.
   20. MIKE: All I can say after these last two articles — and it’s more like a mantra than an observation — is that there must be investigations and there must be trials at the end of this corrupt road.
   21. MIKE: And that will be in addition to legislation and constitutional amendments that will be required to rein in the power of the presidency and to change who the US Attorney General is responsible to, among other things

 There’s always more to discuss, but that’s all we have time for today.