(Salon) Legal experts compared former President Donald Trump to Richard Nixon after the special counsel team investigating his removal of classified documents from the White House obtained an audio recording in which he admits to have a secret document that he cannot show to others because of its classification.

Special counsel Jack Smith's office in March obtained a recording of Trump speaking to former chief of staff Mark Meadows' autobiography ghostwriters about a secret document he has about Iran war plans and complaining that he should have declassified the material when he was president, according to CNN and other outlets.

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman called the recording "smoking gun" evidence.

"The new tape is potentially killer evidence of Trump's guilty state of mind—he knows he hasn't declassified everything and he knows there are rules," he tweeted.

The existence of the recording reminded some former prosecutors of Nixon's penchant for recording his conversations — which ultimately led to his downfall during the Watergate scandal. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/06/02/legal-experts-compare-to-nixon-over-secret-tapes--and-key-aide-gave-doj-even-more-evidence/

Trump's Big Lie is ruining it for the rest of the Republican field
Republican voters still believe that Trump won the last election in a landslide and the Democrats stole it from him

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
Columnist
PUBLISHED JUNE 2, 2023 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Well, it appears that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has survived the tantrum from the right-wing Freedom Caucus members after he made a deal with Joe Biden that essentially won none of their priorities and pushed off their next hostage opportunity until 2025. They weren't happy but they were anxious to get back to screeching about "wokeness," attacking the "Deep State" and pretending to do investigations into Joe Biden so they let it slide.

With that saga ending with a whimper, not a bang, it's time to rejoin the Republican presidential primary clown car. Both front-runner former President Donald Trump and his chief rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were in Iowa this week wooing the midwestern white conservatives who are the supposed avatars of Real America. Appearing before small intimate crowds isn't either man's strong suit but it's an important rite of passage that even Donald Trump can't entirely escape.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1664231759297257475

....(snip)....

People are wondering why he pronounces his last name in two different ways (sometimes it's Dee-Santis and sometimes it's Duh-Santis) and that makes him testy as well:

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1664429167444631558

That's very cute but it doesn't address the question as to why he would do something so odd. The man's reputation for being just plain weird grows stronger by the day.

....(snip)....

For his part, DeSantis seems to think he has the slam dunk electability argument with his exhortations to put an end to the "culture of losing," suggesting in so many words that Trump is a loser who has run the GOP into the ground. He's right about that but he doesn't seem to realize that Republican voters are convinced otherwise. On Tuesday, Monmouth released a poll showing that almost two-thirds of Republicans think Trump is best positioned to beat Biden.

And why wouldn't they? They believe that Trump won the last election in a landslide and the Democrats stole it from him! Until Ron DeSantis and the rest of the field are willing to admit that Trump's contention that he actually won the election was a big lie, this attack is going to not only fall flat, it's going to offend the very voters to whom they are trying to appeal. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/06/02/big-lie-is-ruining-it-for-the-rest-of-the-field/

(Detroit Free Press) The 2023 Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear is returning to the streets of downtown this weekend. After decades on Belle Isle, the race is heading back to its roots as a downtown race for the first time since 1991.

Drivers and racing fans alike will need to adjust to the race's new location and track. Here's everything you need to know about this weekend's event:

2023 Chevrolet Grand Prix Presented by Lear

When: Friday-Sunday

Where: Downtown Detroit.

How to watch: The 2023 IndyCar Grand Prix will be streamed on NBC/ WDIV Local 4.

Weather forecast: Friday, sunny, 90 degrees; Saturday, mostly sunny, 86 degrees; Sunday, sunny, 81 degrees.

Detroit Grand Prix tickets

Tickets are still available on the Grand Prix website. Friday is "Free Prix Day" meaning that Grandstands 1 and 9 are free to the public on a first-come first-serve basis. Reserved seating is sold out for Sunday, but general admission tickets are still available. ................................(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/motor/2023/06/01/detroit-grand-prix-2023-course-map-road-closures-traffic-tickets/70272803007/

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming -- A visitor to Yellowstone National Park was caught on camera in an incredibly dangerous stunt.

Park officials warn the public to not approach bison and other wildlife in the park.

But a woman was seen recently standing just a foot or two away from a bison laying on the ground.

Just so she could take some selfies.

Experts say the woman could easily have been gored. And the animal would then have to be euthanized, through no fault of its own. ................(more)

https://abc7ny.com/bison-yellowstone-park-national-service-wildlife/13325823/

(Salon) An employee at Mar-a-Lago who assisted with moving boxes of documents last June was questioned regarding his behavior in relation to a government request for surveillance footage from former President Donald Trump's property, according to The Washington Post.

The employee has been questioned several times by authorities after video footage revealed their involvement in assisting Walt Nauta, a Trump aide, in moving boxes into a storage room at Mar-a-Lago a day before Justice Department officials came with FBI agents to collect classified material in response to the subpoena, the Post reported last week.

"If true that the President Trump's employees moved classified documents ahead of a DOJ visit to Mar-a-lago, those actions, if linked to President Trump, could be demonstrative of his intent to unlawfully prevent the retrieval of the documents," Temidayo Aganga-Williams, partner at Selendy Gay Elsberg and former senior investigative counsel for the House Jan. 6 committee, told Salon.

Special counsel Jack Smith's investigators are trying to determine whether Trump or people close to him attempted to obstruct justice in response to a grand jury subpoena requiring the return of classified documents, or if they lied about what happened, people familiar with the matter told the Post. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/05/31/legal-expert-trumps-trusted-mar-a-lago-aides-may-soon-be-testifying-witnesses-against-him/

Trials and triggers: Psychiatrists warn Trump's psychosis will grow "as he becomes more desperate"
"Trump's behavior is worse now but that's only because we're seeing a peeling away of his façade"

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED JUNE 1, 2023 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Donald Trump, the traitor ex-president who attempted a coup on Jan. 6, a confirmed sex predator, an indicted felon who has been arrested for his alleged crimes, a white supremacist, an enemy of democracy and the humane society, a man who behaves as though he is a sociopath if not a full-on psychopath, a criminal mastermind, and presumed Republican 2024 presidential nominee made the following pronouncement via his Truth Social disinformation platform in "honor" of Memorial Day on Monday:



While too many among the American news media have convinced themselves – incorrectly – that repeatedly listing Trump's many crimes and other horrible behavior is "counter-productive" and "unnecessary" because "everyone knows it already," it remains critically important to continue to do so. Why? One of the main ways that fascism and authoritarianism and other anti-democracy movements take hold in a society is through normalization.

In total, the mainstream news media, political class, and the American people have, for various reasons, become largely numb to the aberrant, anti-human and generally pathological behavior of Donald Trump and the larger Republican fascist and MAGA movement. Moreover, in the case of the mainstream news media (see CNN's recent Trump "town hall" special), as an institution it has largely decided that Donald Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign and legions of MAGAites are too good for business to be condemned and then subsequently treated as the existential threat to American democracy they actually are.

....(snip)....

Trumpism, like other forms of fascism, is first and foremost an example of collective pathology and other maladaptive behavior on a societal scale. Mental health professionals have the training to explain and diagnose such behavior, as manifest by both individuals and on the collective level.

....(snip)....

Dr. Justin Frank, who is the author of the book "Trump on the Couch", said this:



....(snip)....

The picture is clear: As the 2024 presidential campaign begins in earnest, Donald Trump will become more dangerous, violent, threatening, unhinged, and his true horrible self, further unmasked and unleashed if such a thing is even possible. .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/06/01/trials-and-triggers-psychiatrists-warn-psychosis-will-grow-as-he-becomes-more-desperate/

The Women of Sierra Leone Have New Land-Ownership Rights
For years, women in Sierra Leone have been stripped or deprived of property that is rightfully theirs. Recent changes in the law are creating a seismic shift that could create greater equality in the country.

By Heiner Hoffmann und Carmen Abd Ali (photos) in Sierra Leone
24.05.2023, 14.46 Uhr


(Der Spiegel) The situation escalates in the office of the lead district officer in Magburaka, located in the sparsely populated region of central Sierra Leone. A man, who had only a moment ago been sitting relaxed in his chair, suddenly jumps up and runs to the other end of the room, where several men are quarreling. They get closer and closer to each other, voices raised. A fight seems inevitable.

Then Susan Conteh begins yelling, her voice rising over those of others. "Enough!" She repeats the exhortation once, and then again. The district officer, a man with a soft voice and gentle gaze, seems overwhelmed. He had just left the room to make a phone call, and now this. Conteh shouts one last time and silence is restored. She begins handing out fines: five euros for the man on the left, another five euros for a man on the right. No one dares protest, not even the district officer, although it's actually his responsibility to issue monetary penalties.

The proceedings are remarkable in several respects: First, Conteh isn't here as a representative of the district government, but as an employee of Legal Aid Board, a government organization that advocates for the rights of disadvantaged populations in Sierra Leone and organizes legal assistance. Second, Conteh is a woman. Until recently, women were excluded from almost all decisions relating to property issues. Not only did they not hold positions on the relevant committees, they frequently weren't even invited to important meetings.

Here, though, in this crisis meeting between two feuding branches of a family at the district officer's headquarters, the men listen to Conteh and fall into line. The feud, as is so often the case in Sierra Leone and many other African countries, is over a plot of land. Those who own land have power, and economic security. Even the devastating civil war from 1991 to 2002 was, at its core, over land control and the resources associated with it.

More than 80 percent of land in Sierra Leone is family owned, which almost always means it is controlled by a male family member. In most cases, the first-born son inherits the property and the daughters go empty-handed. If the husband dies or divorces his wife, the man's family usually seizes the property with the woman often winding up on the street. "Women have been systematically excluded from the key resource of land over the past decades," says Equality Minister Manti Tarawallie.

....(snip)....

"But now everything is different," Conteh says. Over the last year, Sierra Leone has passed several new laws designed to revolutionize the country's land-owning traditions. One of those, for example, is the Customary Land Rights Act, which clearly states that women must not be discriminated against in any way, that they must be involved in all decisions concerning land issues and that they have the same rights as men. Or the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Bill, a law that requires a quota of 30 percent for women on all important boards. The government also wants to set up regional land commissions that will be proportionately staffed by women. .................(more)

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-women-of-sierra-leone-have-new-land-ownership-rights-a-b8e21006-8228-4874-8e81-7cdd7cba20c6

(Florida Today) Eli Logan lived the first 46 years of her life in her native Florida. She probably, she said, would have "stayed 46 more."

But between the state's politics pushing hard to the right and a slew of new laws affecting Florida's LGBTQ+ community, schools and more, she's joined the ranks of those leaving Florida for places they find safer for themselves and their families.

Logan, her husband and their three daughters recently left Brevard for an area of Georgia that's a splash of political blue northeast of Atlanta. It's a place this nurse practitioner sees as a "better, healthier place" to raise the couple's children, the oldest of whom identifies as gay.

She's not alone. When Logan announced her family's move on Facebook, well wishes were punctuated with messages like "We can’t stay either. It’s not safe and it’s not headed in a healthy direction." Over the past few weeks, other goodbyes have popped up across social media, like that of Stacey and Sanjay Patel, staples of the Brevard County Democratic Party for several years. And Wendy Johnson, who explained in an impassioned Facebook post why she, her husband and their daughter would soon be moving to New York. ........................(more)

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2023/05/31/families-leave-florida-desantis-laws-lgbtq-transgender-rights-immigration/70215225007/

(Slate) The drone attack on Moscow early Tuesday morning showed that the war is real and near, not just for Ukrainians but also for Russians—a message that can’t be good for Vladimir Putin.

At least eight drones flew over Russia’s capital in the wee hours, almost certainly launched by Ukraine (or perhaps by Russian rebels sympathetic to Ukraine’s cause). The Kremlin claims that air-defense crews shot down or electronically jammed all the drones and that the damage done to a few apartment buildings was caused by metal shards of the disabled airframes as they fell from the sky.

Even if this claim is true, it doesn’t matter. The attack demonstrates that Russia’s skies are porous, that Russian civilians are vulnerable. This new reality disrupts the image that Putin has tried to fashion in Russia’s state-owned mass media—an image that paints the war as something terrible but distant.

Just last week, as pro-Ukrainian militias tore across the southwestern border and fought for two days on Russian territory, Putin pretended nothing had happened. As the New York Times reported, Putin “handed out medals, met the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, hosted friendly foreign leaders, and made televised small talk with a Russian judge about how Ukraine was not a real country. … In public, he says next to nothing about the course of the war and betrays little concern about Russia’s setbacks.”

Drone flights over Moscow—coming a few weeks after two drone strikes on the Kremlin itself—make it harder for Putin to sustain this fiction. The attacks may have done little physical damage, but explosions were heard, and windows were rattled (a few were shattered). The psychological—and potentially political—damage can’t be dismissed. ..............(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/drone-strikes-moscow-putin-narrative-ukraine-war.html

(Salon) Far-right House Republicans on Tuesday fumed over House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's, R-Calif., debt ceiling deal with President Joe Biden — and some are even threatening a motion to oust him as speaker.

House GOP leaders and the Biden administration reached a deal to suspend the debt ceiling until 2025 and cut spending while boosting the defense budget. The deal would impose work requirements for food stamps on adults between 50 and 54 by 2025 and claw back billions approved by Congress for the IRS and COVID relief.

The deal drew support from many in the Republican Party but members of the House Freedom Caucus, who impeded McCarthy's ascension as speaker before he caved to many of their demands, are threatening to introduce a motion to put his speakership to another vote, which requires a motion from just one member to go to a vote under McCarthy's speakership deal.

Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., called the deal "completely unacceptable."

"Trillions and trillions of dollars in debt, for crumbs. For a pittance," he said at a Freedom Caucus news conference. .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/05/31/betrayal-maga-rage-over-mccarthy-deal--and-threaten-his-speakership/