Progressive Patriots Movement

Dear Lying King,

Would this strategy be helpful in ending your stupid war with Iran? Why not withdraw all U.S. Navy ships and reposition them in the Mediterranean Sea to assist Ukraine, and in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea to assist Taiwan? And at the same time, withdraw the 50,000 U.S. troops who have been on standby in the Middle East for far too long? Bring them home and honor them with improved medical benefits and rapidly increased funding for rural hospitals and clinics.

Then have a QUIET phone call with the Iranian military leaders and inform them that you are ready to negotiate, but only after they reopen the Strait of Hormuz with no other conditions, fees, etc.

Then have some QUIET phone calls with President Xi of China, PM Modi of India, and the leaders of the NATO nations, and ask them to quietly put the pressure on the Iranian military leaders to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Then have a QUIET phone call with Israeli PM Netayahu and inform him that until he ends his genocide war operations in the Gaza Strip and in southern Lebanon, all U.S. funding support for Israel will be ended immediately.

Then have a small press conference at the White House to announce that the war with Iran is over, and you will focus on peace negotiations with Iran in future.

Just some quiet thoughts for your consideration.

The Lying King Trump and his fascist minions are working day and night to attack our legal and civil rights.

From the Civil Discourse blog by Joyce Vance, June 15, 2026:

The Question Inside Trump's White House Wasn't Whether They Could Suspend Rights—It Was Whether They Could Get Away With It [headline]

"The headline read “Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right.” It teased the story like this: “Secret memos show that the White House debated last year, to a greater degree than previously known, whether to limit habeas corpus rights for undocumented immigrants.”"

"On April 29, 20205, A confidential memo written by White House staff secretary Will Scharf, who is a lawyer, warned Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles that a plan to suspend habeas corpus for unauthorized immigrants was in the works. Haberman and Swan write that it was “careful and lawyerly but amounted to a warning against end-running the rule of law.”"

"Habeas corpus is the legal right to challenge government-imposed confinement. The Latin phrase roughly translates to “you shall have the body,” and the legal doctrine brings people to court to require the government to justify why an individual is in custody—regardless of citizenship status. In other words, it’s the basic check that prevents government from locking people up indefinitely without sufficient reason. It’s a foundational protection against “disappearing people”. Habeas is the heart of due process."

"Its constitutional roots are in Article I, Section 9, which prohibits interfering with the right of habeas corpus, noting that it “shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Its origins go back to England and the Magna Carta. And it is the law—something this administration and this president have shown casual disregard for at times, frequently with impunity, so the fact that this instance drew high level concern signifies how truly shocking the ideas were."

"The Times reports that “Trump and some members of his team wanted to test how far the emboldened president’s authority could be pushed, setting off previously unreported internal struggles over where the limits should be.” That’s a polite way of saying they wanted to suspend habeas so people they were trying to deport couldn’t take advantage of it, something they were fully entitled to do. In his memo, Scharf cautioned Wiles that suspending habeas is only available in the face of rebellion or invasion and that courts “have almost uniformly held that only Congress can do it.” (The “almost” is because of Lincoln suspended habeas during the Civil War, not Congress, which drew dissent from Judge, later Justice, Taney, but the issue was never fully resolved)."

"The Supreme Court had already weighed in to confirm Scharf’s caution. By early April in the J.G.G. case, even as it permitted the government to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans who were in the U.S. without legal status, the Justices made it clear detainees could use habeas to challenge removal. The administration was frustrated by it because it slowed down deportations and the drive for large numbers they could tout publicly."

"Scharf also wrote a memo to warn against invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops on American streets for use against protestors exercising their First Amendment rights against Trump’s mass deportation policy. The reporting says JD Vance, who is a lawyer, pushed to invoke it shortly after a federal agent shot and killed Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis without justification."

"The push for suspending habeas came from Stephen Miller. Miller is not a lawyer and he frequently seems to view the law as an obstacle to be overcome rather than an essential element of American democracy. That view appears to be what galvanized the ultra-conservative Scharf. No closet liberal, he contributed to the legal work that allowed Trump to outrun the Mar-a-Lago criminal case."

"The reporting clarifies that Miller’s role extended to advocating for the suspension of basic rights, and that he was narrowly run off. The same appears to be true for the Vice President. The risk is not over. It is a warning for what could be coming, one that cannot be ignored."

***

We need to understand the big, direct threat here to ALL AMERICANS: If the Lying King Trump can suspend the legal rights of immigrants, the next step will be to suspend the legal rights of American citizens. And there is no doubt that Trump will do it if he can because he is a fascist, White Supremacist, who believes that he is our dictator king. And as we have witnessed repeatedly, ANYONE who challenges him or criticizes him or gets in his way is immediately branded as his enemy. And as we have noted in 2025 and 2026, he is dedicated to attacking and destroying his enemies by any means necessary.

It is time for all of us to unite to mobilize huge waves of voters to elect Democrats and Independents to the House and Senate in November so that we can stop the Lying King and his minions right in their tracks. Let's go to work!!

When it comes to cruelty and inhumane snobbishness, there is no match for the Lying King Trump and his fascist minions like Stephen Miller.

From the ProPublica website this morning:

More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes Federal Food Program [headline]

"As a House committee debated President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill last year, Republican backers repeatedly emphasized that its changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, wouldn’t affect vulnerable people."

"SNAP reforms would “restore integrity” to the program and ensure it works for the “most vulnerable among us, including children,” said Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican and chair of the House Agriculture Committee."

"But nearly a year after the measure was signed into law, the number of children receiving food assistance has plummeted by at least 776,000, according to a ProPublica analysis. At least 12 states break down program participation by age, and of the 1,670,011 people who are no longer receiving benefits in those states, 776,134, or 46%, were children."

"Another analysis reached the same conclusion: Just last month, the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found there were 700,000 fewer children receiving food assistance.

Arizona has seen the nation’s largest percentage decline in SNAP participants; 205,223 children are no longer receiving the benefit since July 2025, a 55% drop. Louisiana had the second largest percent decline among children, 22%."

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, hasn’t detailed the impact on children aided by the program, but initial figures show that compared to February 2025, 4.3 million fewer people received SNAP nationwide in February 2026, leaving 37.8 million participants."

***

Folks, the Project 2025 Plan is in high gear, and the targets are being hammered every day: Poor folks, low-income Americans, women with babies and young children, families with limited means, and Black, Latino, and Indigenous Americans are all suffering with food insecurity each day.

It is time for all Americans to come together to stop this inhumane cruelty. It is time to elect Democrats and Independents to the House and Senate in November so we can quickly move to impeach, convict and remove the Lying King Trump and his Cabinet officers and advisers. It is time to flush the toilet.

"The Art of the Deal" by the Lying King Trump was really a book about him and his own personal imaginings about his skills as a deal maker. What we are witnessing with the present negotiations with the Iranian military leaders, however, is a classic case of Trump being outmaneuvered at every turn by the Iranian negotiators.

Today, at some point, a Memorandum of Understanding will be signed, or so we are told, and it is essentially an outline of the items to be negotiated during the 60-day cease-fire that will take effect as soon as the MOU is signed. And the Lying King, of course, and his lying assistants, have been making all sorts of comments about their understandings of what is in the MOU. For example:

1. In Trump's interview with the New York Times on Sunday night, the New York Times explained, “The memorandum of understanding, for example, only suspends tolls in the strait for 60 days, and then promises a regional dialogue about the future. Iran had never charged tolls before the war, so Mr. Trump is essentially celebrating a return to the prewar status quo.” Reported by Jennifer Rubin in her Contrarian blog today.

2. When confronted over the weekend with reports that at least $20 billion in Iranian assets would be unfrozen, Vice President JD Vance insisted Iran would not be getting any cash. Was Vance giving us the full story? Well, Israeli and other sources reported that Iran will get at least $20 billion via the United Arab Emirates, which the UAE publicly denied. (Did Vance mean to exclude U.S. but not UAE cash pallets?) Separately, Iran also claimed $12 billion will be released before negotiations even start. By Monday morning, Vance added a new element — $300 billion in “reconstruction funds.” On CBS’s morning show he said, “[T]hat’s the sort of thing they could have access to, funded by the Gulf coast coalition, so long as they honor their end of the obligation.” Again, reported by Jennifer Rubin.

But most concerning, is the failure of the Lying King and his assistants to openly acknowledge the full truth of the costs of his stupid war with Iran that will be paid for by the American people:

1. 13 Americans died in reckless, ill-prepared combat operations, and hundreds of our troops suffered serious injuries.

2. The last 30 days of war cost at least $100 billion, not counting the operational costs of our naval vessels, which were not budgeted in this years Defense Department annual budget.

3. It will take years and more $billions to rebuild and replenish our military weapons like Tomahawk missiles, Cruise missiles and drones, Precision Strike Missiles, Stealth Cruise missiles, and air-launched missiles from our fighter aircraft.

4. And the biggest expenses of all, namely the high costs of vital life necessities that the American people have paid for, and will continue to pay for for months to come: very high prices for gas, diesel fuel, jet fuel, fertilizer, electricity, child care, health care, transportation, and both home loans and business loans.

Note: all of the above were also reported by Jennifer Rubin.

***

The Lying King made up a big lie to start his stupid war with Iran (alleging that there was an imminent Iranian attack on the U.S., which, as we know, never happened) and he has lied every day during his stupid war, and when all is said and done, our nation will have gained nothing of any significance from Trump's stupid war.

And in the meantime, the Lying King has utterly failed to do the right things right to help the brave people and military forces of Ukraine. Just think where we would be if Trump had invested $100 billion in supporting Ukraine.

It is time for the Lying King and his Cabinet officers to go. His endless lies are too costly and they have left the American people with a broken economy and serious threats to our national security.

Well, now, at least, we have a chance to end the Lying King Trump's stupid war with Iran. We have a memorandum of understanding that outlines a framework for a full treaty to end the war that will be signed in Geneva, Switzerland. And when it is signed a 60-day cease-fire will take effect.

Soon thereafter Trump's naval blockade of Iranian sea ports will end and after some days of mine sweeping the Strait of Hormuz will reopen for oil tankers to depart, and no fees will be charged.

Also, after the MOU is signed, the U.S. will release $24 billion of Iran's frozen assets (funds that belong to Iran that were frozen during the war).

The bottom line to all of this is that we will essentially return to the conditions that were in place before Trump lied about "an imminent Iranian attack on the United States" and then launched his stupid war.

However, the U.S. taxpayers will have to pay for the costs of Trump's stupid war which now exceed $100 billion, and the very high prices we are all paying for gas, diesel fuel, jet fuel, electricity, food, rents, health care, child care, etc. will take many months to go down, and the taxpayers will also pay many more billions of dollars to rebuild our weapons inventory. Our available supply of certain rockets and missiles is very low and it will take up to six months or more to replace them, and Tomahawk missiles, for example, cost $20 million each. Note: If we were smart, we would invest $billions in drones rather than expensive missiles.

And there is an unknown kicker in all of this: PM Netanyahu has stated that the Israeli military forces will continue to attack the Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, despite Iranian demands that the MOU agreement states that there will be a cease fire between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

We must, therefore, continue our hard and rapid work to unite and build a huge tidal wave of voters to elect Democrats and Independents to the House and Senate in the November elections. Then we can quickly act to impeach, convict and remove the Lying King and all of his incompetent fascist Cabinet officers.

To gain more detailed insights into the disgusting levels of corruption with the regime of the Lying King, please read the following blog post by Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, historian, posted yesterday, June 12, 2026. It is a bit long, but well worth your time.

The following are quotes from the blog:

Today was the deadline set by Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for Donald Trump’s name to come off the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, more commonly known as the Kennedy Center.

In his ruling of May 29, Cooper noted that “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” and Congress stipulated that “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas” of the Kennedy Center.

As soon as he took office in early 2025, Trump replaced trustees on the Kennedy Center board and appointed himself a trustee as well. Now weighted with loyalists, the board elected Trump chair and then replaced the president of the Kennedy Center. Then the board voted to change the center’s bylaws to concentrate their own power. Then, in December, the board voted to rename the Kennedy Center the “Trump Kennedy Center,” and the name went up over the Kennedy Center portico the next day.

Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), who as an ex officio member of the center’s board had been sidelined, sued to stop the renaming and won. Cooper ordered Trump’s name to be taken off the building, all signage, stationery, merchandise, and so on, before midnight tonight.

At first, the Kennedy Center seemed willing to comply, removing Trump’s name from its website and YouTube page, but that cooperation changed yesterday, when the board voted to launch a last-minute appeal to the removal order. Hours later, the lawyers from the Justice Department filed a notice of appeal. They asked for a stay on the judge’s order to remove Trump’s name from the building, saying the board would be “forced to squander time and money” if the appeals court decides in its favor and that it “would be incredibly confusing for the public” if, in the end, Trump’s name went back up after coming down.

Cooper decided against them, saying they had not shown they would win their appeal on its merits. He said staying the order “would not be in the public interest, which is rarely served by the ‘perpetuation’ of ‘unlawful’ governmental action.”

Late this afternoon, the board of the Kennedy Center filed an emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court, asking for a stay in the order to remove Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center. It was, perhaps, hasty work. Legal analyst Liz Dye called it “bonkity-bonkers, while lawyer Norm Eisen of The Contrarian went for “batsh** crazy” and noted that Trump “clearly wrote big pieces himself.”

For the first time, the board alleged that “The Bylaws of The Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation state, unequivocally,” that the board must strip all funding from the Kennedy Center unless Trump’s name stays on it. Dye notes: “If the bylaws were amended, they were amended since Judge Cooper issued his order—prob[ably] yesterday. This is the Board choking off funds and saying ‘you have to let us break the law, or we’ll lose all the funds.’”

According to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the Washington National Opera, about $17 million of the money Trump appears to be claiming from the Kennedy Center belongs to the Washington National Opera. For fifteen years, the suit says, the opera and the Kennedy Center had a contractual relationship, in which the center managed donations to the Washington National Opera for the opera’s benefit.

“By the second half of 2025, the Kennedy Center stopped performing many of its obligations under the governing affiliation agreement, including marketing, fundraising, and administrative support, as well as timely reporting on the growth of WNO’s funds,” the suit says. “Despite repeated requests from WNO, the Kennedy Center did not remedy its non-performance. Instead, it proposed that the parties end their long-standing affiliation. That affiliation came to an end in January 2026.”

And then the Kennedy Center refused to return the WNO’s money, instead using it as collateral for its own line of credit.

Yesterday Toni Aguilar Rosenthal of the Revolving Door Project and Alan Zibel of Public Citizen did a deep dive into Trump’s determination to turn other people’s money to his own service.

They note that Trump and his allies seized the funds Congress appropriated for celebrations to honor the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and have “awarded nearly $103 million in federal contracts and grants…to politicized entities under the control of Trump administration officials and political allies”—nearly 80% of the $126 million of funding for the semiquincentenary celebrations. Private funding, including from corporations with issues in front of the administration, have also poured money into Trump’s events.

Dan Diamond of the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the administration is hoping to complete Trump’s 250-foot-tall triumphal arch before he leaves office. To do so, they are anticipating keeping work going 20 hours a day. They say they do not need congressional approval. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) has asked officials from the National Park Service to explain and to justify why they are ignoring normal rules for federal contracting and instead handing out no-bid contracts, saying the project is “urgent.”

Yesterday Ashleigh Fields of The Hill reported that federal agencies and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) are putting at least $60 million toward the White House cage fight on Trump’s 80th birthday Sunday. That money has paid for the fighting arena on the South Lawn of the White House, as well as paying up to 900 workers since May 20.

A political activist and military veteran from Virginia tried to stop the event from proceeding, calling it a “deeply corrupt” event that uses national monuments to shill for private businesses, in at least one of which—UFC’s parent company TKO Holding Group—Trump owns significant amounts of stock. They noted that although Trump used the 250th anniversary to justify ignoring environmental review and congressional approval, the event is clearly designed not for the nation’s birthday, but for his own.

Today Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the lawsuit, saying that the Virginians did not have standing to challenge the UFC fight and that the time and money invested in the event outweighed any temporary harm they suffered.

On social media today, Trump posted images of the horses statues behind the Lincoln Memorial being freshly gilded, and wrote: “Re-gilding of the massive Arts of War sculptures, located between The Lincoln Memorial and site of The Triumphal Arch, rapidly continues. The sculptures will be fully regilded by July 3. The photos were taken yesterday. The Gilders’ Studio has flown in Gilders from around the Country to perform this work!”

Yesterday Edwin Heathcote of the Financial Times reported on how former prime minister of Hungary Victor Orbán used architecture to reinforce the idea that his government was rebuilding former glories, while new prime minister, Péter Magyar is contrasting the palaces Orbán built to the crumbling hospitals and children’s homes around the country, where there was no money for toilet paper. The contrast between the gilded palaces of Orbán and his cronies and the poverty in which everyday Hungarians lived was key to the popular uprising that toppled Orbán’s government and put Magyar’s in place.

Today Elon Musk, who poured more than $290 million into the 2024 election to elect Trump and other Republicans, became the world’s first trillionaire—on paper, at least—when shares of his rocket company SpaceX were offered to the public.

Tonight the appeals court denied Trump’s emergency motion. Observers waiting at the Kennedy Center noted that a rainbow broke out over the building shortly after the decision. Although the letters for Trump’s name went up in hours, attached by workers on scissor lifts, taking them down involved so much scaffolding and so many hours that the United States government missed the court-imposed deadline.

The Department of Justice said the letters would come down “in the early hours of the morning of June 13,” presumably when there would not be the huge audience that has been watching the removal all day either in person or on livestream, and asked the court for twelve more hours to comply with the court order.

For those of us who grew up in small rural towns, one of the strongest elements of the culture in small towns is that people are thoughtful and caring in their relationships regardless of any political leanings.

It was understood that children, teenagers and young adults were to always act respectfully toward older adults at all times, and as young folks we knew that we needed to pay attention and listen carefully to the older folks because they possessed great wisdom and they also knew the history of our small town.

Sadly, large numbers of our small rural communities in all 50 states are suffering and in bad shape because of many decades of neglect on the part of the so-called Republicans in Congress, and now under the direction of the Lying King Trump, they have made severe cuts of over $1.5 trillion to Medicare and Medicaid so in many small towns and rural areas the local hospitals and clinics are closing.

Democrats and Independents need to get their act together with a new nation-wide movement to restore and rebuild our small rural towns and to help the older folks who live there, especially our veterans and their families, and the younger adults who need jobs. Let's go to work to elect Democrats and Independents to the House and Senate in November so we can impeach, convict and remove the Lying King and his uncaring, brutal, racist, sexist Cabinet officers.

From the Politico website this morning:

"President Donald Trump said Thursday he will nominate Jay Clayton, the Manhattan U.S attorney, to be the next director of national intelligence."

"In a post to social media, Trump urged Congress to confirm Clayton “as soon as possible.”"

"Clayton’s nomination comes after Trump tapped housing official Bill Pulte to serve in the role in an acting capacity, triggering an uproar on Capitol Hill. Pulte is best known for pushing mortgage fraud accusations against Trump’s political foes."

***

So here we go again with a nominee who has no experience in dealing with National Intelligence, just at a time when we need very high quality and complete intelligence information relative to the Lying King's stupid war with Iran.

And the work of the Director of National Intelligence is critical to the overall mission, which is to coordinate and rapidly and effectively share intelligence information from the 18 member organizations and agencies who deal with different aspects of national intelligence.

This appointment is yet another confirmation that the Lying King's Cabinet officers are inexperienced, incompetent and clueless, and our national security is now in a position of severe risk.

It is time for Congress to take immediate action to correct this situation, starting with the impeachment, conviction and removal of Trump and his Cabinet officers.

From the New York Times website this morning:

Live Updates: Inflation Jumps as Iran War Intensifies Price Squeeze [headline]

"Consumer prices rose at a faster rate for a third-straight month in May, to 4.2 percent annually, as the energy shock put more pressure on the U.S. economy."

"The Consumer Price Index report rose 4.2 percent in May from a year earlier, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed on Wednesday. That is up from a 2.4 percent annual increase before the conflict in the Middle East started in February and is the fastest pace since April 2023. Over the course of the month, overall prices jumped 0.5 percent."

This was the highest pace of inflation, measured on a 12-month basis, since April of 2023.

***

And now it appears that the Lying King Trump is about to escalate his stupid war with Iran with more attacks, and his incompetent bully boy tactics have not impressed the Iranian negotiators.

We need immediate action by Congress to end the Lying King's war with Iran. Bring our Naval vessels and our troops home, and put the ball in Iran's court to open the Strait of Hormuz.

And we also need immediate action by Congress to impeach, convict and remove Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and to stop his heinous, sexist, white supremacist, Christian nationalist, illegal actions.

Now that the primary election results are 90% completed, we know who the two candidates for California Governor will be in November. Katie Porter did her best and ran a solid campaign and her statement below is spot on.

"Having spent time with Xavier Becerra on the campaign trail, I know he will stand strong against Donald Trump and look out for Californians across the state. Californians deserve a governor who will fight for our values and bring down costs, not bend the knee to MAGA extremism that will take our state backwards. I look forward to working with my fellow Democratic candidates to elect Xavier Becerra in November."

The last thing we need in the Golden State is a Trump bootlicker like Hilton. Please follow Katie Porter's leadership and vote for Xavier Becerra.