Acting AG Blanche: Just to be clear, people who hurt police get money all the time.

 

+ NPR interviewed a Trump voter in Georgia who said he thought the President was doing “an A+ job.” When asked how his family was dealing with rising food prices, the man replied, “My wife and I fast.” What’s the cure for this mass mesmerism that induces people to be willing to suffer extreme deprivations in order to enhance the fortunes, political and financial, of their billionaire leader?

+ A new study from the Economic Policy Institute and LaborLab shows that US businesses spend around $1.7 billion every year to avoid, suppress and file legal challenges against unionization by their employees.

But they don’t win them all…

+ A new contract between the union representing New York City’s hotel housekeepers and the city’s 250 hotels will guarantee the 27,000 full-time union workers at least $100,000 a year (still not enough to comfortably live in the city). Don’t shed any tears for the hotel companies; they’re still doing well enough to pay their chief executives comfortable salaries:

Christopher J. Nassetta, Hilton CEO: $27.6 million
Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt CEO: $26.7 million
Anthony Capuano, Marriott: $22.97 million
Geoff Ballotti, Wyndham CEO: $13.55 million
Pat Pacious, Choice Hotels: $8 million

+ Oxfam: “In the US, CEO pay grew 20 times faster than workers’ wages last year.”

+++

+ According to an investigation by Yahoo Finance, Donald Trump made 3,642 securities trades during the first quarter of 2026, averaging nearly 58 transactions for every U.S. trading day or about nine trades every hour in the day or around one trade every seven minutes while the markets were open. Trump made 94 different trades of “Magnificent Seven” stocks (64 buy orders and 30 stock sales) in the first quarter, valued at between $50 million and $70 million.

+ Reporter: How can you argue to Americans that you’re cleaning up corruption when the president seems to be talking up stocks that he owns, selling them and enriching himself?

JD Vance: Come on, man, have a little bit of objectivity in the way that you ask these questions. The president doesn’t sit at the Oval Office on his computer, on his Robinhood account, buying and selling stocks. That’s absurd. He’s not making the stock trades himself.

Vance went on to laughably allege that Trump is “so wealthy he doesn’t trade stocks himself.” 

+ Pam Zoslof: “Trump has his own Robin Hood account, stealing from the poor and giving to the rich (himself).”

+ Aaron Fritschner: “Trump traded up to ~$700 million in stock in Q1 of 2026. The 535 Members of Congress made ~$635 million in trades in 2025. Trump bought and sold more stock in 3 months than all of Congress put together did in a year.”

+ Since the start of his second term, Trump has introduced 622 new products in his Trump Store. In 2024 alone, the store brought in $8.8 million. But I’m sure he doesn’t make them himself, JD…(Likely, most are made in China.)

+ This week, the Trump DoJ told the  Trump IRS that it can’t audit any Trumps, ever, for whatever reason…In addition, the taxpayers are going to fork over a $1.7 billion slush fund for Trump to dole out to the likes of the Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Oath Keepers and other right-wing paramilitaries that raided the capital on January 6.

+ Acting AG Todd Blanche on Trump’s $1.776 billion “weaponization” slush fund: “I do not think the American people have issues with that. To the contrary, I think they do want their tax dollars spent on things like that.”

Reporter: You’re the nation’s top law enforcement official. Would you be okay with people who were convicted of hurting police getting taxpayer money?

Blanche: Just to be clear, people who hurt police get money all the time.

+ No civil rights lawyer that I’ve talked to has ever heard of someone who beat up a police officer getting money. It’s hard enough to get any money after being beaten up by a police officer for no reason.

Alex Pritti and Renee Good didn’t get checks. They got killed. Maybe they should’ve really attacked the cops.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/22/roaming-charges-130/