The shutdown of the US government is going to end*, after eight Democratic senators broke with their party’s blockade to make a deal.
*For now. Most of the government is funded only until the end of January.
It seems to me the Democrats should have let the Republicans own the Republican shutdown.
A lot of people are being hurt right now with the shutdown, though. Of the eight senators that supported the deal with the Republicans, two are retiring, and the rest are not up for reelection in 2026.
Good morning.
It’s not a happy Friday here in the United States.
We are 37 days into this stupid shutdown of the US government.
A sample:
CNBC: Jobs Friday won’t be happening again this week as the record-long government shutdown has resulted in a lack of official data on the labor market as well as a host of other important indicators.
CBS: The American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union that represents more than 800,000 federal and D.C. workers, is urging senators to back Johnson’s legislation that would provide funding to pay members of the military and federal workers during the shutdown.
CBS: A Rhode Island judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to provide full federal food benefits to states by Friday and admonished the government for what he said is its defiance of an earlier order.
The Seattle Times: The Federal Aviation Administration’s order to reduce up to 10% of flights to bring relief to air traffic controllers at the country’s busiest airports takes effect Friday.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that flights will be reduced until the government shutdown ends.
Chris Hayes, host of political talkshow ‘All In’ on MSNBC, showed this picture yesterday on his show. It’s of a radioactive George W. Bush, videoconferencing in to the 2008 Republican National Committee (instead of attending in person). The outcome of the 2008 election in favor of the Democrats was actually a forgone conclusion (looking back now with the benefit of hindsight). It sure seems that we are headed that way with the 2028 election, even though it is still three long years away.
It’s official: Zohran Mamdani (34 years old) is New York City’s new mayor.
From the New York Times: Zohran Mamdani, after a triumphant campaign built on progressive ideas and a relentless focus on affordability, will become the city’s first Muslim mayor, and its youngest in more than a century.
Elsewhere, Democrats won races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and Californians approved a redistricting initiative designed to add Democratic seats in the House of Representatives for next year’s midterm elections.
We have a mayor’s race here in Seattle as well, with incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell leading progressive activist Katie Wilson by some 7%, but it’s still very early in the ballot counting.
Headlines and reporting from the online New York Times. And here’s the headline from Fox News: “Socialist shockwave: Zohran Mamdani stuns NYC as voters hand power to Democrats’ far-left flank”.
It sounds like at least fentanyl, rare earth metals and soybeans were discussed at the Trump-Xi summit today. Beijing will ease the restrictions on rare earth exports and start buying soybeans from American farmers again.
According to Trump, the relaxing of export restrictions on Nvidia’s latest chips was not discussed.
Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had beer and fried chicken with the CEOs of Samsung and Hyundai in Seoul, South Korea*.
It was clearly a marketing stunt, because there was a throng of journalists and photographers present as well.
*Samsung has a multi-faceted relationship with Nvidia, serving both as a supplier of memory and a foundry partner for specialized chips. Hyundai will presumably use Nvidia’s chips for its self-driving cars of the future. Does Tesla use Nvidia chips for its self-driving cars? No, Tesla does not use Nvidia chips for its vehicle’s self-driving computers, having switched to its own custom-designed chips in 2019. However, Tesla still uses Nvidia GPUs in large clusters for training its AI models, and has also recently purchased Nvidia chips for its new AI5 inference platform, which will be used in its new Cortex 2 AI data center alongside Tesla’s custom AI5 chips. – Google AI Overview.
Reporting from The Star (더스타 in Korean) magazine’s website.I looked up the Google Streetview image of Kkanbu Chicken in Seoul’s Gangnam district. This is an image from 2018 but presumably not too much of the buildings and surroundings have changed.
“It’s incredible. Did you ever think in our lifetime we’d see a $5 trillion company?”
– David Faber, a host on the CNBC show “Squawk on the Street”, this morning
Artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia (ticker symbol: NVDA) is now worth 5 trillion US dollars.
The company’s latest AI superchip (the Blackwell Ultra) carry 200 billion transistors. Nine out of ten AI chips that are sold in the world, are made by Nvidia.
Tripp Mickle, writing for the New York Times: Nvidia’s milestone, making it the first publicly traded company to top $5 trillion in market value, is indicative not only of the astonishing levels of wealth consolidating among a handful of Silicon Valley companies but also the strategic importance of this company, which added $1 trillion in market value in just the past four months.
Meanwhile, President Trump indicated that he would discuss the sale of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips with China in the summit on Thursday. Some US officials say that would be “massive” national security mistake.
Nvidia now makes up more than 8% of the S&P 500. Apple and Microsoft themselves sit at $4 trillion. Combined with Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla (these are called the ‘Magnificent Seven’) they make up ONE THIRD of the S&P 500’s market valuation. So there is the answer to the question as to why the stock market indexes keep going up while the economy is barely growing. It’s the tech companies that are pulling them up. Jason Furman, a professor of economic policy at Harvard, calculates that spending on data center construction accounted for 92% of the GDP growth in the US in the first half of the year. Take all of that out, and the US economy would have grown at a measly 0.1%. [Graphic and headlines from the New York Times]
The Halloween decoration in the window of the Pacific Supply hardware store on Capitol Hill’s 12th Avenue is nicely done.
Newspaper headlines of world news and the scandals and corruption of the Trump administration adorn the white folds of the mantle on the ghost’s arms. Today’s corruption scandal (it seems there is one every day), as reported by Associate Press: President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who created the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and served prison time for failing to stop criminals from using the platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism. The pardon caps a monthslong effort by Zhao, a billionaire commonly known as CZ in the crypto world and one of the biggest names in the industry. He and Binance have been key supporters of some of the Trump family’s crypto enterprises.
I got these ‘USA forever’ stamps on Friday.
It never costs me just one stamp when I take something to the post office, because I always buy a whole sheet of stamps! 🤗
From Wikipedia:
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war’s outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war. But Washington and the Continental Army’s decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war in the Treaty of Paris two years later, in 1783, in which the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.
Battlefields of the American Revolution (1775-1783) Issued Apr. 16, 2025 Perf. 11 serpentine die-cut |Self-adhesive |Design: Derry Noyes (from watercolor paintings by Greg Harlin) |Sheet size: 15 stamps |First-Class Mail® ‘FOREVER’ stamps (75c) | Engraving: Banknote Corporation of America | No watermark [Source: stampworld.com]
Four amigos attended the No Kings* march in Seattle today.
We walked alongside the monorail on Fifth Avenue, and the train would honk at us with a whoop! whoop! every time it passed overhead.
From local TV broadcaster King5 news:
Organizers with Seattle Indivisible reported preliminary counts of nearly 90,000 people taking part.
The demonstration began beneath the Space Needle and poured into downtown streets, part of what organizers call the largest coordinated protest in U.S. history.
*The No Kings protests is a series of demonstrations, largely in the United States, against what the organizers describe as authoritarian policies of Donald Trump and corruption in his administration.
At this point there are no signs of an imminent resolution of the partial US government shutdown.
The BBC reports on its website that “some, but not all, US government services are temporarily suspended, and 40% of the federal workforce – about 750,000 people – are expected to be put on unpaid leave”.
From the Washington Post:
How concerned are Americans about the partial shutdown of the federal government and whom do they blame for causing it? The Washington Post texted a nationally representative sample of 1,010 people on Wednesday to ask.
The Post’s poll finds significantly more Americans blame President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats, though many say they are not sure. People express moderate concern about the shutdown’s impact at this early stage, with “somewhat concerned” the most common answer. A large majority support Democrats’ call to extend federal health insurance subsidies in general, though just under half support the party demanding this if it extends the government shutdown.
I made it to Expo 2025 Osaka!
It’s hot and it’s crowded with very, very long lines at most pavilions— the ones that allow you in without a reservation, that is.
Entrance to the top-rated pavilions are pre-allocated by a lottery system. I struck out despite diligently applying, as far out as three months before my visit today.
No matter, once you have made it into the entrance gate (with 180,000 others), you are in a world onto its own, inside the Grand Ring. The Ring is the world’s largest wooden structure, constructed on Yumeshima (夢洲), the artificial island located in Osaka Bay.
The USA pavilion is a structure designed by Trahan Architects with two triangular wings and a raised translucent cube flanking a central plaza. It features video imagery that features the Plains, the mountains and the cities in the US— and hey! Seattle’s Pike Place market made an appearance as well.
I was mesmerized by the installation of shiny cubes called null². The sun bounced off the surfaces, and a low sound was emitted from the structure.
Developed by Yoichi Ochiai, the pavilion’s structure is based on a cubic grid of voxels measuring 2 to 8 m (6 ft to 26 ft) wide. The facade is covered with a membrane that resembles a mirror. [Source: Wikipedia]
Look for a few images (towards the end) beamed out from the enormous high-resolution screen outside the Korea pavilion. The three-story pavilion has a high-resolution screen on its facade that is 27 m (89 ft) wide. The screen displays on a spectacular series of animated images and videos.
South Africa withdrew from Expo 2025 Osaka in late 2024 despite repeated invitations from the Japanese government, citing the country’s ‘financial constraints’.
The European leaders in the State Dining Room were there to manage a global crisis. Which meant they also had to manage the mood of one famously mercurial man. The subject of this high-level diplomatic summit was diplomacy mixed with psychology.
Adding to the surreal nature of the thing was the way that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia hovered over it all, just out of sight, like a character offstage. Mr. Trump kept bringing up Mr. Putin’s perspective. “Vladimir Putin wants it to end,” he claimed. He repeatedly mentioned that he needed to call Mr. Putin to update him on how the meetings were shaping up.
The Europeans looked stoic at every mention of Mr. Putin, as though they hardly needed to be reminded of the Russian leader’s viewpoint.
-Shawn McCreesh, a White House correspondent for the New York Times. He reported from Washington.
There is a scene in The Graduate* where one of his of his parents’ well-meaning friends— Mr. McGuire— corners Benjamin for a brief, earnest bit of unsolicited career advice. He pulls him aside and says:
“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word… Plastics.”
*1967 movie with Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, a recent college graduate who is seduced by an older married woman, Mrs. Robinson played by Anne Bancroft).
And here we are 58 years later, and it’s 100% clear that we are poisoning the environment and ourselves.
And that it is unfortunately a very bad time for the European Union and other countries to get support from the United States for their efforts to curb the production of plastic.
From The Japan Times: GENEVA – Hopes for a “last-chance” ambitious global treaty to curb plastic pollution have dimmed as delegates gather this week at the United Nations in Geneva for what was intended to be the final round of negotiations. Diplomats and climate advocates warn that efforts by the European Union and small island states to cap virgin plastic production — fueled by petroleum, coal and gas — are threatened by opposition from petrochemical-producing countries and the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump. Plastic production is set to triple by 2060 without intervention, choking oceans, harming human health and accelerating climate change, according to the OECD.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell posted this picture on X today, of new US citizens and Seattle officials who attended the 40th annual Independence Day (July 4) Naturalization Ceremony held at Seattle Center.
Over 500 new US citizens were sworn in.
The officials in the picture are: –David G. Estudillo (fourth from the left), Chief US District Judge for the Western District of Washington: Judge Estudillo presided over the ceremony and administered the oath of allegiance to the new citizens. –Maria Cantwell, US Senator for Washington State (to his right): Senator Cantwell gave the congratulatory address to the new citizens. –Miss Washington is Hermona Girmay, who was crowned in July 2024. She is also a University of Washington School of Public Health alumna and is using her platform as Miss Washington to champion health equity. –Bruce Harrell, Mayor of Seattle: Bruce Harrell delivered welcome remarks at the ceremony.
Alma Franulović Plancich, the ceremony’s long-time coordinator, was recognized for her 40 years of dedication to the event.
Posted on X by Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell— “While the other Washington challenges basic principles, we forge a different path. It was an honor to celebrate Independence Day at the Naturalization Ceremony, welcoming 501 new U.S. citizens and honoring Alma Franulovic Plancich for her decades of leadership”.
I feel so downcast about this bill passing, and yet I’m not someone who is likely to suffer directly from it. The tax cuts benefit my family. Oh well. Rural Americans have only themselves and their Congressional representatives to blame.
– ‘Dean from USA’ commenting in the New York Times about Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ with its tax cuts and cuts to health care
If the headline says ‘Victory for Trump’, you just know it is bad.
America’s national debt is 36,200,000,000,000 (36.2 trillion) US dollars.
That’s 123% of the US Gross Domestic Product.
Our Congress is adding another 4 trillion to it.
Where does the 4 trillion that we cannot afford come from?
Tax cuts for the rich and the mega-rich, and shredding healthcare and social safety net programs for poor people.
From the New York Times:
The House on Thursday narrowly passed a sweeping bill to extend tax cuts and slash social safety net programs, capping Republicans’ chaotic monthslong slog to overcome deep rifts within their party and deliver President Trump’s domestic agenda.
The final vote, 218 to 214, was mostly along party lines and came after Speaker Mike Johnson spent a frenzied day and night toiling to quell resistance in his ranks that threatened until the very end to derail the president’s marquee legislation. With all but two Republicans in favor and Democrats uniformly opposed, the action cleared the bill for Mr. Trump’s signature, meeting the July 4 deadline he had demanded.
On his 79th birthday, President Trump spent more than three hours on Saturday taking in the scene at a military parade commemorating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.
The event, which was officially billed as a tribute to service and a showcase of American military history, was hailed by the president’s supporters as a show of strength and a savvy recruitment tactic.
But his critics argued that the event was a further politicization of the military, especially after of a tense week in which Mr. Trump deployed the Marines in Los Angeles to quell protests.
– Zach Montague reporting from Washington D.C. for the New York Times
A picture is worth a thousand words. The cover of the upcoming Jun 23 The New Yorker magazine.
”If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country”
– US Senator Alex Padilla speaking at a news conference, appearing to briefly be overcome with emotion
This is not normal.
It’s really shocking, to see the video— and a next-level outrage, that United States Senator Alex Padilla was man-handled and cuffed for asking a question at a Dept. of Homeland Security news conference in Los Angeles, his home state.
A post from Annie Grayer (CNN Senior Reporter covering Congress) on X
It’s the 81st D-Day Anniversary today.
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are dragging on.
And we are left with the smoldering wreckage of the Trump-Musk bromance.
‘I HATE MY X!‘ ‘says’ Trump of Musk on the cover of today’s New York Post .. and ‘Big, beautiful break-up—Trump-Elon bromance explodes into insults, threats*.
*X is formerly Twitter, now owned by Musk, from where he flung insults and allegations. (Trump fired back on his social media platform, called Truth Social). The big, beautiful is a reference to the The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’, the massive and garbage federal bill proposed by Trump and his Republicans that includes tax cuts for the rich, debt ceiling increases, and changes to social programs. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that by Fiscal Year (FY) 2034 the bill would increase America’s debt by nearly $3 trillion.
Reporting from the New York Times. One wonders if Trump took even one turn at the wheel of this Tesla Model S. (Definitely not on a public road, but presidents ARE permitted to drive on private property, such as golf courses or within controlled estates.)
Here’s a cartoon from Friday’s South African daily newspaper Die Burger (‘The Citizen’).
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to Trump: ‘Would you mind if one of my caddies tried?’ (The caddies are Ernie Els and Retief Goosen— professional South African golfers who were part of the delegation to the White House. ) The sidebar comment in the corner is: ‘It looks as if Cyril stayed out of the rough’.
AGOA stands for the African Growth and Opportunity Act agreement, signed in 2000, which allowed tariff-free exports to the United States for 32 African countries. On April 2, Trump had slapped a 31 % reciprocal tariff on South Africa (now on the 90-day pause). The USA’s universal 10 % tariff on overseas goods remains in place, also for South Africa. From aljazeera.com: While the two countries did not confirm a trade agreement at Wednesday’s meeting, Ramaphosa told reporters afterwards that the discussion was “a great success”. He added that he presented a framework for a trade deal to Trump, and the two agreed to continue having discussions to figure out the specifics of this deal.
South African daily newspaper ‘Die Burger’ (‘The Citizen’) reporting about the meeting in the White House between the South African delegation, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa. I added in some translations for the Afrikaans. This newspaper, and the BBC’s reporting, says that Ramaphosa ‘survived’ the attacks against him by not fighting it too vociferously, and by staying calm and by making a joke about offering a plane to the US. P.S. Trump formally (openly, brazenly) accepted the $400 million dollar jet gifted to him from Qatar today*. Does that make it official that he is the most corrupt president in America’s history— or was he that already, long before this? *The Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8) states: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
Here are the other South Africans that came with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the White House today.
John Steenhuisen: South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture, who clarified political affiliations of individuals featured in a video presented by President Trump. Ernie Els (nickname “The Big Easy”) and Retief Goosen: Professional South African golfers who were part of the delegation and contributed to the discussion during the meeting. Johann Rupert: A prominent South African businessman who emphasized the broader issue of violence affecting all South Africans and proposed technological solutions to improve safety. Zingiswa Losi: A trade union leader who stressed that crime in South Africa affects all demographic groups, not just whites.
Here’s Erica L. Green and Zolan Kanno-Youngs writing for the New York Times: The encounter in some ways echoed the February visit to the Oval Office by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Mr. Zelensky in front of TV cameras, cutting short a visit meant to coordinate a plan for peace.
The meeting with Mr. Ramaphosa on Wednesday was also striking because of the ways in which Mr. Trump dismissed attempts to push back on his fringe claims by those who knew most about them.
Mr. Trump scowled and dismissed Mr. Ramaphosa and his delegates during the meeting, including a Black woman who tried to explain that brutal crimes happen to Black people in the country as well.
By contrast, Mr. Trump joked around and listened attentively as Mr. Els, Mr. Goosen and Johann Rupert, a white South African billionaire, said crime was prevalent across the board in the nation, not just against white farmers.
Mr. Ramaphosa entered the meeting seemingly optimistic about maintaining a cordial conversation with Mr. Trump. He offered olive branches to Mr. Trump, including a book about golf. He complimented Mr. Trump’s décor in the Oval Office.
He even tried to joke with the president, who had become irate when a reporter asked him about a free plane from the Qatari government.
“I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Mr. Ramaphosa said to Mr. Trump.
“I wish you did,” Mr. Trump replied. “I’d take it. If your country offered the U.S. Air Force a plane, I would take it.”
Mr. Trump seemed more intent on relaying the talking points from leaders of Afrikaner lobbying groups, who have traveled to the United States repeatedly over the years to gather support for their claims of persecution. When one of those groups met with Mr. Trump’s top aides this year, the White House identified them as “civil rights leaders.”
