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Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for starting your day with me.
In our late-stage capitalist dystopian hellscape, there’s always plenty of bad news to go around. However, rather than delving into all the ugliness at the top of the newsletter, let’s discuss something that is turning out to be much more hilarious than I ever thought possible: America’s 250th Celebration.
If you’ve spent any time online in the last week, you’ve no doubt seen the Trump administration graphic touting all the popular artists who are slated to play The Great American State Fair on the National Mall, between June 25 and July 10, to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. You know, the kinds of artists all the kids are listening to, like (checks notes)… The Commodores, Half of Milli Vanilli, Young MC, C+C Music Factory, and Vanilla Ice!
Let’s take a moment to consider the claim that Donald Trump is perpetually stuck in 1987 by looking at the last time any of the artists involved had a major hit recognizable by a good chunk of Americans.
(*We all know what happened) (**With Poison — and allow me to tell you how absolutely cursed Poison’s Wiki Page is. It’s like reading War & Peace.)
Anyway, I’ve made my point. In 1991, I would have been excited to see this lineup at my town’s On the Riverfront Fourth of July Extravaganza brought to you by Cub Foods and my local Lions Club. Now, not so much.
But! Because the Trump administration is incapable of doing anything right, it appears someone at the White House jumped the gun on the graphic, because 80 percent of this lineup has now pulled out of the event. Imagine the shame of not being able to get Milli Vanilli to perform at your event in the Year of Our Lord 2026.
Morris Day & The Time were the first to pull out. And they did so publicly.
In short order, Milli Vanilli, The Commodores, Young MC, and Martina McBride also decommitted from the show. Here’s where we stand this morning.
You may notice that I have half an “X” through C+C Music Factory. That’s because one of the group members posted a statement saying Freedom Williams (the guy with the abs) has been trading on the group’s name without his permission for years…
… and then Freedom Williams, after saying he doesn’t like Trump, posted a seven-minute rant from the toilet, in which he yells that no one can tell him what to do.
So that’s a “maybe” from C+C Music Factory/Freedom Williams.
But here is my question: Who made the decision to release the graphic of the performers before they’d all been locked down? And don’t tell me “Well, Trump lies all the time.” I mean, YES, but I doubt that he had much to do with signing the talent, as staff can barely get him to stay awake for high-level peace talks with Iran. Anyway, Trump has no idea who Flo Rida is.
I imagine that, at some point, someone asked the question, “Okay, so who do we have lined up to perform?” And that, friends, is where all of this went wrong. Because either someone said, “Don’t worry if the contracts are finalized, we need to get this thing out,” OR someone completely lied and pretended all these contracts were signed when they weren’t. Or some third scenario that’s probably even worse than either of those two. Who made the representation that these were the performers? Was it Eric Trump? I need a name!
Some of the acts didn’t even seem to know they’d been drafted into this thing. Part (?) of Milli Vanilli said she was shocked to see their name on the bill. Young MC and Martina McBride both said the event was pitched to them as a non-partisan celebration of America 250, which it decidedly is not.
“The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” (Young MC) wrote, adding that he hoped to “perform in D.C. in the near future at an event that is not so politically charged.”
The sigh of relief I sighed when Martina pulled out, because if the woman who wrote the anthem for domestic violence performed for Trump, I would have walked out my front door and into the sea.
How can such a high-profile event whiff so badly? America is now left with the prospect of celebrating its semiquincentennial with performances by Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida, and Bret Michaels. Couldn’t they even get Kid Rock? At least he’s had a hit this century.
I went on a search to find out who, exactly, is in charge of this shitshow, and immediately came upon this America 250 website, which features Chair Rosie Rios, appointed by Joe Biden in 2022, and a host of other household names, including Pete Hegseth, Todd Blanche, and Marco Rubio. That explains a lot. But then someone directed me to this America 250 website, and the pieces started to fall into place.
First, you can’t have two separate America 250 websites; no wonder the acts are confused. I quickly figured out which site was Trump's, though, because the second site tried to sell me merch almost immediately. Inexplicably, the Trump site still has all the performers who pulled out listed as acts. We’re also getting something called a “freedom truck,” which will reportedly “roll soon.”
While the Trump site doesn’t tell me who’s in charge of planning this wretched event, it does give us a list of “sponsors,” not to be confused with “partners.” The sponsors include Deloitte, ExxonMobil, Oracle, Palantir, and UFC. “Partners” include America First Policy Institute (founded by Brooke Rollins and Larry Kudlow), PragerU, The American Principles Project (exactly what it sounds like), Moms for Liberty, the Museum of the Bible, and Purdue University. (As an IU grad, there was no way I was leaving Purdue out of this mess.)
Yeah, I think I know what the problem is here. The people running America 250 are the same people running the country. What could go wrong?
In other news: Bari Weiss brings chaos to 60 Minutes; the DOJ wants to know who is criticizing ICE on social media; Nepo Babies take Washington; and The High Note.
Here we go.
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Let’s go.
‘60 Minutes’ descends into chaos
Welcome to yet another addition of The Bari Weiss Effect. When we last checked in with Bari, she had chased off Anderson Cooper, Scott McFarlane, and John Dickerson, and CBS Evening News’ ratings were in the tank. Let’s see what she’s been up to!
In a bid to remake the country’s top-rated news program, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, on Thursday unveiled an overhaul of “60 Minutes,” replacing the show’s executive producer with a tech journalist and firing two of its on-air correspondents.
Ms. Weiss named Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist and a filmmaker who has directed and produced documentaries for HBO and Netflix, as her pick to lead the 58-year-old Sunday show. Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news, will replace Tanya Simon, who had been at the show for more than three decades.
CBS News also fired Cecilia Vega, the program’s first Latina correspondent, and Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment on torture in Salvadoran prisons was pulled off the air abruptly last year by Ms. Weiss, who requested more reporting. It aired in full at a later date. Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of “60 Minutes,” was also fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.
Nick Bilton, like Bari, has zero relevent news experience, so this is going to go great. Bari already has a bunch of new ideas!
Among her ideas are introducing a raft of new contributing journalists, adding shorter digital segments and developing “60 Minutes”-themed live events, akin to The New Yorker Festival, where viewers could meet star correspondents like Lesley Stahl, according to two people with knowledge of her thinking.
Super-excited for 60 Minutes correspondent Tim Pool, with his five-minute segment on why tradwives “rule.”
The DOJ wants to know who’s criticizing ICE
Well, this is straight out of an Octavia Butler novel:
The Justice Department is trying to obtain the names, addresses, financial data, and other personal information of Reddit and X users who criticize ICE’s violent immigration tactics.
***
The Trump administration is paying close attention to every Reddit thread and Instagram comment that opposes its massively unpopular deportation units—and is trying to take legal action against them. This insecure authoritarianism is a real low, even for this administration, especially as Trump moves to pay his own supporters who actually committed real crimes from a $1.8 billion slush fund.
Given DHS has already used ICE protests as an excuse for revoking TSA Pre and Global Entry, now’s a good time to make sure your digital footprint is on lockdown. Get off of X (it’s full of Nazis) and don’t use your real name on Reddit.
Nepo babies take over Washington
In some regard, I’m sure it’s always been this way. In another, more accurate way, I want to trash the Oval Office. First, we learned yesterday that Justice Samuel Alito’s son has been quietly working for Trump’s Treasury Department for a while.
Philip Alito has been working in the department’s office of the general counsel since early last year, NOTUS reports, raising questions of conflicts of interest as the court hears cases concerning the Treasury, including President Trump’s deal to avoid tax audits of himself and his family, as well as his $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Oh. That’s nice. I don’t seem to recall Alito Père recusing himself from any cases based on his son’s employment, though.
Alito’s office provides legal and policy advice to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and his employment seems to have been deliberately kept secret. Alito doesn’t have a public résumé or a LinkedIn account, and he isn’t mentioned anywhere on the Treasury Department’s website. His three professional bar listings have incorrect information regarding his previous employers and appear to be out of date, according to NOTUS.
Not to be outdone, and likely because he can’t achieve anything on his own, the President of the United States intervened to get a business tied to Don Jr. a $620 million loan from the Pentagon.
When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.
The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism.
But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.
Everything is awesome.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
This young CBS News scholarship winner has more courage than 90 percent of Congress.
He trashed Bari and kept the check. Icon behavior.
Finally, in the feel-good story of the week:
But it gets better:
Zohran from the top rope with the petty RT.
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Have a great weekend!
