It’s interesting that the far-right party in Brazil calls itself the ‘Liberal Party’.
As if you didn’t already have enough to be disgusted about. Here is a lot of it all in one place. (Gift link)
…
But Americans have never witnessed anything like the corruption that President Donald Trump and his inner circle have perpetrated in recent months. Its brazenness, volume, and variety defy historical comparison, even in a country with a centuries-long history of graft—including, notably, Trump’s first four years in office. Indeed, his second term makes the financial scandals of his first—foreign regimes staying at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C.; the (aborted) plan to host the G7 at Trump’s hotel in Florida—seem quaint. Trump 2.0 is just getting started, yet it already represents the high-water mark of American kleptocracy. There are good reasons to think it will get much worse.Virtually every week, the Trump family seems to find a new way to profit from the presidency. The Trump Organization has brokered a growing catalog of real-estate projects with autocratic regimes, including a Trump tower in Saudi Arabia, a Trump hotel in Oman, and a Trump golf club in Vietnam. “We’re the hottest brand in the world right now,” Eric Trump recently proclaimed.
…
“The law is totally on my side,” Trump said after his election in 2016, when he was asked about mixing his financial affairs with his new office. “The president can’t have a conflict of interest.” That statement is now alarmingly close to the truth. Thanks to last year’s Supreme Court ruling, Trump has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for any “official act.”
…
Read the rest if you can stomach it. 
I appreciate the gift link, but no thanks. I went to great lengths to avoid American news after the November election because it was too depressing, then felt a need to get back into it when Trump started threatening Canada, and now I just can’t stomach it any more. Especially since the chances of this criminal ever being impeached by Congress are now obviously nil, unless there was some astonishing change in the political climate for the mid-terms, which there will not be.
New norms of illegality are now being set almost every day. Everyone – especially Congress – seems to have forgotten, for instance, that it’s Congress, not the president, that has the power to impose tariffs, except under the special circumstances laid out in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Trump is going around arbitrarily and illegally imposing new tariffs against any country he doesn’t like on any particular day, completely on a whim, and not a peep out of anyone about this extraordinary abuse of power.
I’m reading that Brazil produces about a third of world coffee and three quarters of the orange juice.
Should I stock up on steel-canned coffee and frozen OJ?
I did a bit of panic-buying of maple syrup from Canada and shoes from Vietnam, but Donald then went TACO.
Some reports are saying that Brazil will retaliate by ignoring U.S. drug patents, I guess the theory is that Trump doesn’t care enough about big pharma to counter-retaliate on that.
You’d have been better off panic-buying copper. Canada is a major supplier of copper to the US, and the Orange Menace just today declared a 50% tariff on Canadian copper, I imagine because of some perceived grievance. Another nail in the coffin of US manufacturing and the US economy. MAGA!
I’m sure US copper factories can pick up the slack. And it’s not like copper is a critical input for any important industries.
There have been attempts at restarting copper mining in Michigan’s UP, but none have been successful.
Brian
I don’t blame you one bit. You’re a stronger person than I am. I don’t watch any TV or other live news–I only read online. I kind of fell into this one.
I snarled at my husband today. I don’t usually, but he was holding the remote and allowing the TV to show footage of the day That Man didn’t get shot. 
Maybe if Trump starts a Cornish refugee program…
I placed in the “Things put forward by the Trump administration that are actually good ideas” thread an Axios link concerning the Big Beautiful Bill gambling tax increase.
But given that we are talking Trump administration, there likely is also a compendium of horrors aspect. Who is really behind the provision seems a bit of a mystery at present, but this from the Washington Post may explain it:
Sigh.
The Justice Department has issued subpoenas demanding confidential patient information from more than 20 doctors and hospitals that provide gender-related treatments to minors, according to officials with knowledge of the move.
The action marks a new turn in the Trump administration’s efforts to limit transgender medical care. Most of the subpoenas, issued through a unit that typically investigates health care fraud, attempt to pierce powerful federal confidentiality protections for patients and their medical providers.
Officials briefed on the investigation described the action as a fact-finding mission, an effort to determine whether any laws have been broken and a spur to kick-start negotiations with the providers over transgender treatment policy.
…
My bold.
Give me a fucking break.
Well you don’t need to wait long for that to turn around.
Donald Trump flags tariffs on Australia of 200% on pharmaceuticals, 50% on copper
Last year, Australia exported $2.2 billion in pharmaceutical products to the US, the second biggest trade item after beef.
DHS tells law enforcement that skateboarding near police or livestreaming law enforcement are “threatening” acts, worthy of escalated reaction.
“Exercising those rights shouldn’t be justification for adverse action or suspicion by the government,” Eidelman says. Labeling something as harmless as skateboarding at a protest as a violent threat is “disturbing and dangerous,” she adds, and could “easily lead to excessive force against people who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.”
He STILL hasn’t figured out that the USA pays for this. I suspect the dumbass is waiting for a check in the mail.
I’ve never had a business, finance or economics class (unless you count Home’Ec in Junior High 
). I’m a programmer. I could see in about 15 seconds that him bulling countries with tarrifs will turn out very bad for us. He’s a very, very, bad man. Stupid as a bag of hammers, and as sharp as a marble.
No doubt. Ever since he started this tariff nonsense, I’ve had a feeling that “Tariffs 101” was the only class he attended at the Wharton School. And he cut out early from that one.
This is implausible to me.
He doesn’t care about what is long-term good for the U.S.A. He does want to have an answer to charges of increasing the deficit. His main answer will be that the deficits are lower because of all the money he raised with tariffs.
Or if SCOTUS finally stops these illegal tariffs (one can dream), he can blame Roberts for the recession.
I see no reason to insult his education or intelligence, only his methods and goals.
Not so much for the short term either.
90% of Australian pharmaceutical exports to the US are blood plasma products, mainly produced by CSL. $2bil isn’t a drop within a drop in the bucket for US Big Pharma. I guess they source our plasma 'cause they can’t get blood from Americans. Why ‘merkins would be more inclined to donate blood for the plasma production line of a US domiciled Aussie company than they are now for the existing Good Ol’ USA firms is a puzzle.
Also, it takes a bit longer to set-up a pharmaceutical manufacturing than a Pizza Hut franchise.
I see plenty of reasons to insult his intelligence. And his education, methods, and goals.
Trumpie’s intelligence is not at issue. We all know what it is. We see it every day in what he does, how he speaks, how he writes. I have a cantaloupe in the fridge that’s brighter than he is.