The Daily Reid: Trump's Soviet-era dream...

Donald Trump envies dictators like the ones in North Korea, Russia and China, so he's going to cosplay as one on his birthday

On June 14, 2025, America will celebrate … checks notes … its portly, red-faced, 19th century loving, tariff obsessed, balding, elderly president’s 79th birthday, in a ceremony demanded by absolutely nobody except Donald Trump.

In the midst of the economic catastrophe Trump and his buddy Elon have unleashed on average Americans between Trump’s disastrous tariffs and the budget slashing hacker kids of doge, the Trump Birthday Military Parade will be reminiscent of the lavish nationalist-militaristic displays in otherwise impoverished North Korea:

…the Communist Party-ruled People’s Republic of China:

…the over-the-top phallic compensations of Trump’s Russian idol, Vladimir Putin, whose seminal goal seems to be to recreate the “glory” of the old Soviet Union, by grabbing the old republics one by one, starting with Ukraine… and weirdly enough, Trump appears to be on his side…

…and the Bastille Day military parade Trump attended as a newly elected president in 2017, apparently green with envy that Emanuel Macron got to preside over rolling tanks and saluting, red capped troops.

At the time, Trump apparently went back to Washington and demanded a military parade of his own, timed for Veterans Day, 2018, but was rebuffed when it became clear how much it would cost. The New York Times reported at the time that, “[s]everal administration officials described a sort of sticker shock after seeing a Pentagon estimate that soared as high as $92 million to pay for the troops, fighter jets, armored vehicles and other military hardware that would be mustered to satisfy the president’s dream of displaying American might.” And of course there was also the minor fact that this is the United States of America, where presidents don’t do Soviet-style military parades.

Well, there are no naysayers around Trump now, and no budget hawks, either! Just a quaddle of yes-men and yes-women surrounding King Donald and pampering him like he’s a screamy toddler. So the Pentagon, whose mediocrity of a TV host “leader” is busy slashing costs, laying off more than a thousand staff, gutting the Veterans Administration and cueing up cuts to military service members’ health benefits to make way for massive tax cuts for the super rich (when he’s not sharing war plans on Signal threads with his wife and brother-in-law on them and with journalists tuning in), is going to throw the boss the massive, Red America Military ComicCon parade of his dreams. I guess the “suckers and losers” that day will be the 6,000 men and women in uniform who will be forced to goose step for their American fuhrer, who won’t even have to fake it and pretend he actually respects them anymore, since in his mind, they are little more than toy soldiers in his toy chest, that he can march around at will (maybe even to Greenland, Canada or Panama for a wee invasion!)

Welcome to Supreme Soviet Republic of Magamerica.

From the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Detailed Army plans for a potential military parade on President Donald Trump’s birthday in June call for more than 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and possibly a couple thousand civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The planning documents, obtained by the AP, are dated April 29 and 30 and have not been publicly released. They represent the Army’s most recent blueprint for its long-planned 250th anniversary festival on the National Mall and the newly added element — a large military parade that Trump has long wanted but is still being discussed.

The Army anniversary just happens to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday on June 14.

While the slides do not include any price estimates, it would likely cost tens of millions of dollars to put on a parade of that size. Costs would include the movement of military vehicles, equipment, aircraft and troops from across the country to Washington and the need to feed and house thousands of service members.

The dismantling of the National Parks Service has begun

Sources in the National Parks Service tell me the dismantling of the National Parks Service and its 20,000 or so permanent, temporary and seasonal employees has begun. Department staff have apparently begun receiving RIFs — Reduction in Force — notices this week from the Office of Personnel Management. According to my sources, the first targets are workers in the National Resources Stewardship & Science Directorate (NRSS), which “provides scientific, technical, and administrative support to national parks for the management of natural resources .. [and] develops, utilizes, and distributes the tools of natural and social science to help the National Park Service (NPS) fulfill its core mission: the protection of park resources and values.”

All things this regime despises, including this part:

NRSS provides leadership and expertise to ensure understanding, awareness, representation, and stewardship of the natural resources of the NPS so that they remain unimpaired for future generations.

Because the regime doesn’t intend for our national parks to “be there for future generations.” They mean to strip mine, sell off and throw them open for fracking and developers. Science and preservation just get in the way, as do those inconvenient workers. I’m told the layoffs will begin in the “Inter Mountain” division, which covers Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and that the primary target will be “cultural resources.” Surprise, surprise…

The Parks Service falls under the Department of the Interior, which holds in trust some 500 million acres of federal land. That agency is currently “led” by billionaire-in-training former North Dakota governor and onetime Republican presidential candidate Doug Burgum, who once said this about Donald Trump:

Welp, that was then. Now, Burgum is busy signing over the land legacy Europeans stole from native Americans and put in trust to the Interior Department to his billionaire friend:

A former oil executive and representative of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been given wide authority to make significant changes to the Department of Interior, the agency tasked with overseeing national parks and more than 500 million acres of federal land.

The move has alarmed conservation groups, including some that have accused Interior Secretary Doug Burgum of stepping aside to give Musk and his team “carte blanche” to possibly fire park rangers, public land managers and wildfire specialists across the country.

The order was signed Thursday by Burgum, giving Tyler Hassen sweeping authority to “effectuate the consolidation, unification and optimization of administrative functions” in the Department of Interior.

The order gives Hassen authority to make changes to the department’s funding and directives.

Hassen was recently named assistant secretary of policy, management and budget in the Department of Interior.

Before this post, Hassen was chief executive at Basin Energy. In its website, the company describes itself as “a green energy metals exploration and development company.” Hassen was previously chief finance officer for Basin Holdings, “a global diversified oilfield/industrial supply and services company,” according to his LinkedIn page.

But most recently, Hassen was pictured in a social media post from DOGE about the organization’s effort to increase the the amount of federally pumped water to flow toward Southern California in January.

And speaking of the company you keep, here are a few things that are important to know about Doug Burgum, and here they are:

Burgum, a former software executive and governor of North Dakota, is a multi-millionaire, but hardly the richest person in Trump’s orbit. Burgum, like Trump, is closely connected with people who are far richer than him — and he has a track record of going to great lengths to help his billionaire benefactor, Harold Hamm. …

Burgum and Hamm: Rich and richer

What we do know about Burgum so far raises major concerns about his ability to lead the Interior department in a way that does not result in Burgum further enriching himself — he’s worth at least $100 million today, according to Forbes.

When he was governor of North Dakota, Burgum disclosed that he has a land deal with Continental Resources, an oil and gas company founded by an even wealthier man, Harold Hamm. Hamm is several times richer than Burgum — an estimated $18.5 billion as of 2022, making him the 63rd wealthiest person in the world. This is a trend across the Trump administration — millionaires like Burgum doing work for billionaires rather than the American people and the public lands and resources that belong to all taxpayers.

(This is true all the way up to the White House, where President-elect Trump, who is only a billionaire on paper thanks to his meme stock, couldn’t post a bond large enough to appeal the $454 million fraud judgment against him. Thirty companies that underwrite appeal bonds didn’t think Trump’s assets could cover a verdict that large. In practice, Trump is a multi-millionaire at best. This helps to explain Trump’s willingness to do favors for actual billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.)

But wait, there’s more:

Burgum’s staff refused to answer questions from CNBC about the governor’s deal with Continental Resources, which started in 2009. Continental’s oil wells on 200 acres of Burgum’s land started producing in 2011, with Burgum’s family getting 19 percent of the revenue from oil drilled on his land. In March 2024 alone, the wells produced over 5,000 barrels of oil and thousands of cubic feet of natural gas. Burgum has so far refused to reveal how much money Continental paid up front for the lease, or how much he’s made in royalties since the wells started producing.

We do know that in just one year from late 2022 into 2023, more than a decade into the deal, he made up to $50,000 in royalties — and oil wells are most productive early in their lifespan.

Burgum’s relationship with Hamm goes far beyond the land deal. After ending his own short-lived presidential campaign, Burgum partnered with Hamm to hold an oil-and-gas fundraiser for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The Washington Post and New York Times reported that Trump asked the oil executives gathered by Burgum and Hamm to raise $1 billion for his campaign, and if they did, he would roll back environmental protections at the behest of the oil industry. Representatives from ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute were reportedly in the room. The Post reported that Trump said giving him $1 billion would be a “deal,” because of the money the oil industry would save if he returned to the White House. The Guardian reported that the “deal” Trump offered would likely be worth $110 billion, mostly from tax loopholes that President Joe Biden pledged to close in his second term, and that Trump wants to keep.

Burgum admitted he was in the room at Mar-a-Lago, but denied that Trump offered a quid-pro-quo to the oil executives.

“What would be the No. 1 thing that President Trump could do on Day 1? It’s stop the hostile attack against all American energy, and I mean all,” Burgum told the executives, according to the Post. “Whether it’s baseload electricity, whether it’s oil, whether it’s gas, whether it’s ethanol, there is an attack on liquid fuels.”

So what do YOU think these people are going to do with all that juicy federal land, once they lay off all of the stewards? Here’s a good guess:

Without a full look at Doug Burgum’s financial situation, it’s impossible to know how many ways Burgum could enrich himself, Hamm, or any of the oil and gas executives they invited to Mar-a-Lago last year. Without Burgum’s disclosures, it’s impossible to know whether he could enrich himself or his fellow housing developers by trying to sell off pristine national public land for development and trophy homes, which is a priority of Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Mike Lee.

Enjoy Yellowstone Park and such while you still can, folks. It’ll be all oil fields, golf courses and trophy homes, soon.

Blacksonian update

An update, meanwhile, on the Blacksonian story I posted earlier this week. A source with knowledge of the events tells me Rev. Amos Brown has received instructions by email for “next steps” to allow the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to permanently acquire his family Bible and the George Washington Williams history of the Negro Race volume into the museum’s permanent collection. The documentation to initiate the process is now in his possession.

So it would appear that while the Blacksonian is safe, at least for now, the National Parks Service is in real jeopardy. And that doesn’t just mean our national parks being put up for a fire sale to Big Oil and Gas and big developers, but also Black and other cultural and historical sites being in jeopardy of loss, sale, or decline.

I’m keeping a close eye on all of these developments and will continue to report back.

DOJ career lawyers shaken by the campus McCarthyism of the Trump regime

This New York Times story struck a nerve today:

Orders to Investigate Columbia Protesters Raised Alarms in Justice Dept.

By Devlin Barrett

Reporting from Washington

May 1, 2025

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A top Trump appointee in the Justice Department ordered an aggressive investigation in the last several months of student protesters at Columbia University, raising anger and alarm among career prosecutors and investigators who saw the demand as politically motivated and lacking legal merit, people familiar with the episode said.

The demand for the inquiry into students who protested Israel’s conduct of the conflict in Gaza also prompted pushback from a federal magistrate judge, who believed some of the steps being sought by the official, Emil Bove III, were unjustified and might violate the First Amendment, the people said.

The breadth of the investigation, conducted by the Justice Department’s civil rights division, has not been previously reported. The ensuing clash highlights the tensions roiling the department as administration officials seek to enact President Trump’s agenda. That bid includes redirecting the civil rights division away from its traditional approach of protecting the rights of minority groups to a new mission of fulfilling a campaign promise to crack down on student protesters amid accusations of rampant antisemitism on college campuses.

Those types of demands from political appointees at the Justice Department are part of the reason there has been an exodus of lawyers from the division in recent weeks, according to current and former officials.

The federal investigation into student protesters at Columbia appears to have stalled for now, but it represents one of the most contentious episodes yet inside the Justice Department during Mr. Trump’s second term. The dispute has left lingering ill will within the department, as well as the courts and the F.B.I., the people said.

This as Republicans in the House vote to allow Trump to begin deporting U.S. citizens…

House Republicans on Wednesday killed a measure that would have stopped ICE from being able to deport or detain U.S. citizens. The measure was originally an amendment introduced by Representative Pamila Jayapal to President Trump’s massive budget bill.

“My amendment is simple, and I hope that it has bipartisan support. It simply states that none of the funds in this bill may be used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain or deport U.S. citizens,” Jayapal said. “Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, I hope we can all agree that U.S. citizens should never be detained by ICE or any agency conducting civil immigration enforcement. They certainly should not be deported.”

The Republican Party does not agree with that. The Trump administration has already deported multiple U.S.-citizens, including a four-year old with cancer. The issue came up at the very same hearing where Republicans decided to allow ICE to deport more U.S. citizens.

And Republicans won’t stop there…

WASHINGTON (AP) — As part of their big tax bill, Republicans in Congress are pumping billions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s mass deportation and border security plan with nearly 20,000 new officers, stark new $1,000 in fees on migrants seeking asylum and $46.5 billion for a long-sought border wall.

Tuesday launched the first of back-to-back public hearings as House Republicans roll out the fine print of what Trump calls his “ big, beautiful bill ” — which is focused on $5 trillion in tax breaks and up to $2 trillion in slashed domestic spending. But it also pours some $300 billion to beef up the Pentagon and border security as the Trump administration says it’s running out of money for deportations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing to have the bill wrapped up by Memorial Day and then send it to the Senate, which is drafting its own version.

Memorial Day … when we commemorate the men and women of the United States military, some of them immigrants, who died for this country.

You can’t make it up…

Meanwhile…

Donald Trump just keeps lying and lying and lying … about Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the photoshopped tattoos someone slapped onto his knuckles … about tourism to the U.S. (which is down) and prices (which are up…) This ABC News interview that journalist Terry Moran conducted with Trump is something to behold. Just a jet stream of lies and made up things…

American voters made a catastrophic mistake, and honestly, they should have known better. But hey, at least you get to transport yourself mentally to North Korea or Russia this summer on your TV, while Trump reproduces those countries’ economies every miserable day in your actual lives.