A Morning Reid: December follies
Donald Trump won't acknowledge World AIDS Day, but he's good with murder at sea
UPDATED: Happy December 1st, everybody! It’s kind of wild how quickly this year has gone. And slightly unnerving. Still, it feels like we’ve been in the Second Trump Regime for about a decade. In fact, maybe we’ve always been in the Second Trump Regime… So this is what I’m reading this morning.
Today is World AIDS Day, not just in the U.S., but around the world; though you wouldn’t know it from the regime. They’re declining to commemorate the day, even as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. guts our national health infrastructure, and the only thing standing between us and a slew of reborn, once-defeated pandemics wiping us off the face of the earth is Dr. Oz; the TV doctor from Oprah’s former show. Did I mention this year has been both agonizingly brief and endless???
From Emily Bass at To End a Plague … Again, who reached out to the relevant federal agencies three weeks ago to find out whether the longtime commemoration would continue in Trumpmerica:
“The US government will not be commemorating World AIDS Day this year” is the official instruction US agencies and country-based programs received in a recent email.
In case of confusion, the instructions clarify what compliance with the directive entails:
USG funds should not be used for any World AIDS Day events or commemorative activities.
Please refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging.
USG personnel may attend external, locally organized World AIDS Day events but may not speak at these events or promote their attendance via social media or media channels.
Among her conclusions:
World AIDS Day is the day when the US government’s global HIV program shares public-facing data about cumulative and annual progress. I have a couple of data sources (post reads, interest from other outlets) that my, ahem, preoccupation with whether or not the US government shares data on World AIDS Day isn’t a front burner issue for others. I feel you. US reporting on other countries’ epidemics is handsy and a little neocolonial. And: Not reporting on the year when the US government upended its funding in countries where it has spent decades investing and building partnerships isn’t decolonizing. It’s keeping the lights dim on lives lost, suffering babies, sick adults and fearful people at risk of HIV who no longer have the safety to access pre exposure prophylaxis or other HIV prevention. And we know, to our bones: Silence=Death.
Yet another shameful thing.
The age of the teenage gerrymander
Guess who wrote the redistricting plan for Alabama? A teenager using something called Dave’s Redistricting App. You can’t make it up.
Maybe before he heads out to winter break he can explain to John Roberts why we still need the Voting Rights Act, including in Texas.
Over the weekend, numerous protests erupted nationwide over ICE, including 200 New Yorkers absolutely shutting the masked federal goons down in the city.
Someone please tell Karoline Leavitt, since she seems blissfully unaware of the horrors occurring around her, even when they’re happening to her own family…
This while our sundowning president pardoned yet another crook — this time, a guy who defrauded ordinary Americans of their life savings. It’s like he’s building a criminal army to guard his far too gargantuan, repulsive, Epstein Ballroom (and fuhrer bunker…) From The Daily Beast:
President Donald Trump sprung a fellow convicted fraudster from prison this week after the man had served less than two weeks of a seven-year sentence for a $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme.
David Gentile first reported to prison on Nov. 14 following his sentencing in May for using funds controlled by his company GPB Capital to scam around 10,000 investors over a period of several years, the New York Times reports.
He was freed Wednesday, after just 12 days behind bars.
In securing Gentile’s conviction last August, prosecutors had cited victim statements from more than 1,000 “hardworking, everyday people”—among them veterans, farmers, teachers and nurses—who’d lost money as a result of his crimes.
“I lost my whole life savings,” one person claimed, adding they’d now found themselves “living from check to check.”
Trump’s move on Gentile’s case only commutes the former businessman’s sentence, meaning the conviction will remain on his record.
… much like Trump’s felony fraud conviction.
And speaking of criminals …
This guy appears to be a war criminal.
His “kill them all, leave no survivors” order seems to explain why this admiral abruptly resigned in October, and could land this admiral in hot, hot water.
Even Republicans aren’t standing by Whiskey Pete on this one. From The Independent:
Senators from both sides of the political aisle will join forces to investigate allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered there to be no survivors in U.S. airstrikes on alleged drug-running boats.
GOP Senator Roger Wicker, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Democratic Senator Jack Reed announced the decision in a joint statement Saturday.
“The Committee is aware of recent news reports and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” the statement read.
“The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
It comes following a report from The Washington Post, which alleged that Hegseth had ordered military personnel to “kill everybody” on board a vessel in the Caribbean, suspected of carrying drugs, on September 2.
A first missile strike left two survivors, but a Special Operations commander overseeing the attack ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions to “kill everybody,” according to the Post, which cited officials with direct knowledge of the operation.
The two men were then “blown apart in the water,” according to the report.
Wicker and Reed’s statement is a significant development following weeks and now months of intense scrutiny around the administration’s siege of what it describes as “narco-terrorists.”
The attack on September 2 was the first of more than a dozen attacks on alleged drug-running boats that have killed more than 80 people over the last three months.
International investigators and members of Congress have since questioned the legality of the operations, alleging that the Trump administration’s deadly campaign amounts to extrajudicial killings. Other experts, speaking to The Independent, have labeled the actions as outright murder and a war crime.
Meanwhile, Trump has paused all asylum applications including any from so-called “third world countries” — despite his own regime being the one that admitted the suspect in the shooting of two West Virginia National Guard members — one of whom died over the weekend — that that’s state’s governor deployed to DC at Trump’s command. Notably, there is literally no reason for those guardsmen to have been in D.C., patrolling a metro station blocks from the White House.
By the way, a White House visit is what Trump has offered the families of the fallen troops — even after whiffing on whether he would attend U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom’s funeral.
Oh, and we’re edging closer and closer to war with Venezuela. So there’s that… Trump has reportedly given Maduro an ultimatum: give up power (and the oil) or else…
I’ll have much more to say on all of this tonight on The Joy Reid Show (6-8 p.m. ET at thejoyreidshow.com)
Meanwhile Trump is spiraling further and further.
His approval rating is stuck in the 30s (though it seems as if no one around him is telling him the truth about his polling … or what his MRIs are for…)
Another Republican has announced he’s not running for re-election. Troy Nehls of Texas is hitting the exits. Unlike Marjorie Taylor Greene, he doesn’t appear to have cracked open the stock vault whilst in office. Instead, he appears to be a Republican victim of his governor’s Trump-ordered gerrymander, which would have had him running against fellow Republican Pete Olson in the 22nd Congressional District.
The regime now has a “media bias tracker” to call out those in the press who displease Dear Leader. Will that include any female reporter who objects to being called “stupid” or “ugly” or “piggy?” Only time will tell.
Other notes: Senator Cory Booker weds (which likely means he’s running for president, so the speculation goes…)
And we’ll have updates on the Target and Home Depot boycotts and the We Ain’t Having It campaign on TJRS later tonight.
UPDATE: And if you read one thing today… make it this piece by Delano Massey at Axios — on the Black erasure that has become an epidemic in Trumpmerica.
And look who’s begging for a pardon…
It’s Cyber Monday … and don’t let the spin fool you. Sales dollars are up because tariffs are making things cost more; and only those with a lot of money are spending. We’ll also update this tonight on TJRS, but in the meantime, here’s CNN’s reporting:
US retail sales on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, climbed 4.1% compared with last year, according to data released Saturday by Mastercard SpendingPulse. Online shoppers alone spent $11.8 billion, up 9.1% from 2024, according to data collection platform Adobe Analytics.
But those gains don’t account for higher prices due to inflation, so actual spending could be flat.
“We have 3% inflation, so maybe (the 4.1% increase in spending) is a real increase of just 1% or so, which is not that much of an increase,” Rick Newman, who writes The Pinpoint Press, a newsletter on the US economy, told CNN on Friday.
There’s also a bifurcation in who’s spending. The Federal Reserve’s most recent Beige Book, a collection of anecdotes about the economy, showed consumer spending among low- and middle-income consumers is on the decline. Meanwhile, the Fed found high-end consumers are continuing to spend — including on luxury items and travel.
Consumers have bought fewer items this holiday season, but the average selling prices are higher, according to Claudia Lombana, a national consumer expert.
“The ones that have higher income are spending at will, but those who are less affluent are budgeting,” Lombana told CNN’s Omar Jimenez on Saturday.
It’s part of the so-called K-shaped economy, in which higher earners get a boost from their stock market investments and home valuations and use their fatter paychecks to spend. But lower earners increasingly live paycheck to paycheck and look for discounts — or curtail their spending to cope with rising prices.
Home Depot feeling the heat:
Target also feeling the heat.
If you want to support small Black businesses, consider downloading Blapp.
If you want to find DEI-related alternatives to Target, consider going to ShopRedBag.com.
If you want to stand up to the billionaire corporations who are standing with Trump, sign up to join the We Ain’t Buying It campaign.
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