TRUMP KEEPS ROBBING US

Plus Sheep Detectives, two books, an Emmy winning show, and a funeral

Just when we thought the grifting and corruption couldn’t get more blatant, Trump is apparently now negotiating with his own Department of Justice to be paid $10 billion of our tax dollars to settle a lawsuit he brought against the IRS for leaking his tax returns (even though the contractor who leaked them stole the tax data of 400,000 Americans and is already in prison serving the maximum sentence). A judge noted that because Trump has no opposing side to sue (as he is suing a department he controls), his lawsuit likely isn’t legal; the judge gave “both sides”--which are the same sides!!--until May 20^th to prove the case should go on. So now the DOJ and IRS are trying to settle before Trump has to prove he even has a right to sue. This is so crazy-making!!

Trump has boasted that he doesn’t take his presidential salary of $400,000—but the $10 billion he is asking us to pay him is TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND TIMES AS MUCH. He is a crook of the worst order. He is also asking that the IRS permanently drop all audits of him and his family.

As I started writing this a few days ago, Trump was in China with many billionaire, tech-bro CEOs, all fighting to increase their own profits via trade between the two countries. No one is over there fighting for the American people nor for any political prisoners held in Chinese detention. The companies represented on the trip include: BlackRock, Blackstone, Boeing, Cargill, Cisco, Citibank, Coherent, GE ⁠Aerospace, Illumina, Mastercard, Meta, Micron, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Tesla, and Visa. China controls most global mining of the rare earth minerals needed to produce many tech items, from smartphones to fighter jets, and over the past year, China has limited exports of these rare minerals. Trump’s tariff war made everything worse, and China doesn’t like our war in Iran, either. Trump accomplished exactly nothing, and because he worships dictators, he even seems to be agreeing he won’t give Taiwan the weapons it needs to maintain independence. So much winning.

But none of that matters to Trump, because he’s still getting his, having made a big investment in Nvidia stocks the day before he stopped in Alaska to pick the Nvidia CEO up to bring him to China to make his chips deal, so he got a big windfall from that. He and his family have used insider trading to make huge gains in the stock market more than 3,000 times since he took office this last time, because there are NO BRAKES on his corruption machine. How enraging is it that we have to keep paying taxes to these corrupt motherfuckers?

According to this article, “presidents are exempt from conflict-of-interest rules that prohibit federal officials from having a role in government matters in which they have a financial stake. But Trump’s predecessors have relied on blind trusts, divestments or investments in vanilla assets to limit ethical concerns.” Clearly Trump does not care about limiting our ethical concerns; he wants us to know he is fucking us all. How the hell else would he get his net worth get to be 6.5 billion?? Among his shady dealings, the President purchased millions of dollars of Oracle in early 2026, around the same time his administration was helping the company secure a deal to continue operating social-media platform TikTok in the U.S.

And then there’s what is supposed to be our last hope of regaining our democracy: the mid-terms. But Republicans may have permanently fixed those. Amid the insane gerrymandering taking place in many Southern States now since the corrupt Supreme Court said we no longer have to divide districts to allow minority representation, we did have one win (so far): South Carolina has opted not to redraw its districts before the upcoming election. Hooray! You can read more about the history of gerrymandering as explained by Heather Cox Richardson here. But have they fixed the game past the point where we can fight back now? How will we stop this steamroller?

Meanwhile, I listened to a fun audiobook, Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. I say fun even though the book involves murder and violence against women because it features a podcast, segments of which air sound like an actual true-crime podcast in the audiobook. The novel features a good, solid story and the audiobook is better than most (and I’m already a fan of audiobooks).

And I finished the very good novel The Ten-Year Affair, a domestic drama about two couples whose lives become entangled over the decades when they are raising their children from babyhood to late adolescence. My ex-husband and I had a friendship like the one at the center of this story, complete with some harmless (?) flirtations, and I imagine lines must become fuzzy for many couples whose children grow up together. I appreciated the protagonist sharing her imagined life vs. her real one (“in that life, the life where we had an affair… x happened, while in this one…”

I give both novels a solid 4, which means I think you’ll all enjoy them, even if they won’t change your life.

Renee and I finished season four of Hacks, brilliantly reviewed here in The Guardian (and are now on to season five) and I continue to love the show and Jean Smart’s amazing performance. Hannah Einbeinder also does a great job, but her character is less splashy and her performance more understated. At the end of season four, Smart’s character responds surprisingly to a loyalty challenge in a way that shows her character’s growth over the passing seasons. I’m excited we now have season five to enjoy.

Renee holds Lola while Jim and I flank Jim’s great love, Sonia. They were among our most welcoming neighbors and lived in the house across the street from us. Sonia died of brain cancer in 2017, and Jim died last week.

Renee and I enjoy a warm relationship with many of our neighbors, and this week, one of our closest neighbors, Jim Armstrong, died; his funeral was Friday. Jim was a commercial photographer and served as the photographer at our backyard wedding; he climbed out one of our upstairs windows and onto our sunroom roof to take this group photo we wanted.

Jim and Sonia saw us through the death of my son two weeks after the wedding, and we then saw him through the death of his beloved wife Sonia of brain cancer the next year. We also watched one another’s cats and saw him through the death of his last cat Sweetie, advised him as he launched himself on the dating sites, and entertained him and his girlfriend Wendy, who makes a mean apple cake. We had one another over for meals and parties, met one another’s families, and shared book recommendations and discussions. (I am proud to have given him his first copy of one of the greatest novels of all time, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.) After his wife died, he gave us their kayaks, a very generous gift we’ve enjoyed for years. In the warmer months, he and Renee often enjoyed beer thirty in his driveway until recent health problems made him have to cut way back on his drinking. Our neighbor Nancy says he wrote his own obituary about three weeks ago. We will miss him and are still adjusting to the house across the street standing empty.

And finally, in a kind of tribute to Jim, Renee and I took two of our neighbors to see a movie at our local theater, the Pixar film The Sheep Detectives. This was a brilliant movie with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating that turned out to be a profound, moving reflection on death and mourning. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough! Yes, there are talking sheep in this movie, but the sentiments they explore are smart and thought-provoking. Three out of four of us cried several times while watching this film, and we all laughed heartily throughout. Such a good movie! Before the world ends, get out there and see it. (This movie is great for adults, but would also be a great movie for exploring the concept of death with children, should you be looking for a way to have that conversation.)

Because the Sheep Detectives movie is apparently based on an Agatha Christie novel, one of the neighbors attending the movie with us recommended I read Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict, a fictionalized version of a true story about several crime novelists (including Christie) who worked together to solve a real crime. I put my library order in immediately!

And what are all of you doing, reading, creating, and consuming these days—besides all the bad news? Thanks for Paying Attention with me!