The Saturday Report 4/4/26 — Vance Targets Blue States as Trump’s New Fraud Czar

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— Sure is starting to smell like Vietnam… If you’re not old enough to remember the early days of the Vietnam war, ask somebody who was; the bravado, the bullshit coming from the SecDef, the president who’s afraid of being criticized as “weak” by “conservatives” if he doesn’t “win the war,” and the skepticism of the American people are all echoing so loudly it’s impossible to miss. Whiskey Pete, the wife-abusing alcoholic Fox “News” B-lister Trump put in charge of our military because he “looked strong” is proving to be every bit as incompetent and disastrous as the guy who appointed him. The most unqualified and frankly disastrous leader of our military in history — openly bragging about committing war crimes while trash-talking the Geneva Convention with his insane riffs about about “no quarter” and “no woke rules of engagement” — just purged the top ranks of our military again. He just canned Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, four-star general David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain. Nobody’s sure exactly why (or if the timing of Bondi’s firing was designed to distract us from this) but speculation largely falls to two explanations. First, these are competent professional military men who most likely told Whiskey Pete and Trump the truth about what a disaster attacking Iran would be, and how it would be illegal to do it without congressional authorization, so they had to be removed. As Senator Chris Murphy noted, “It’s likely that experienced generals are telling Hegseth his Iran war plans are unworkable, disastrous, and deadly.” Only toadies, lickspittles, and sycophants allowed here. The other possibility is that they objected to Petey inserting himself into the promotion process explicitly to stop women and Black men from rising into the most senior ranks. Or both. Whatever it is, following on his gutting the JAG corps (which advises officers about what are and are not war crimes) and his previous attacks on Blacks and women, this is the lowest point for our military in my lifetime, and probably yours, too.

— Who was General George, who Whiskey Pete just fired? General Randy A. George enlisted in the Army in 1982, fought his way into West Point, and then spent a career in the active duty infantry from platoon leader in the 101st Airborne in Desert Storm to multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanding battalions, brigades, a division, and I Corps before becoming the 41st Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. Along the way he earned a Bronze Star with three oak leaf clusters, a Purple Heart, a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Ranger tab, and a senior parachutist badge with a combat jump; the résumé of someone who has led from the front and bled with his soldiers. Whiskey Pete, on the other hand, essentially bankrupted two small veterans charities that he was supposed to be running while he was busy getting drunk and cheating on his wife.

— Is the Supreme Court about to become even more bizarre and corrupt than it already is? Speculation is rife in DC that Sam Alito and possibly Clarence Thomas — the two most extreme neo-fascists and on-the-take betrayers of the rule of law — are planning to retire this summer, giving Trump the opportunity to turn the Court into a 5-4 Trump-appointed majority. Alito has apparently penned a book, which some see as a sign he’s paving the way for his departure. Since Mango Mussolini is furious right now with his own appointees because they didn’t appear to roll over for his Birthright Citizenship scam attempt, odds are anybody he puts forward will be even more extreme than anybody currently there. Aileen Cannon, anyone? Or Matthew Kacsmaryk? The former helped Trump avoid prosecution in Florida for stealing and disseminating Top Secret documents essential to national security, and the latter tried to outlaw abortion pills nationwide. And there’s always John Eastman, even though he’s already been disbarred; with Trump, anything is possible. Get ready.

— Gas prices got you down? A new report by Democratic members of the Joint Economic Committee finds that just during the first month of Trump’s criminal war against Iran American drivers paid fully $8.4 billion more at the pump for gas than they would have had the war not driven up the price of oil. While he’s borrowed over $7 trillion in our names and given it to his billionaire buddies as tax cuts and run up our national debt higher and faster than any president in American history, Trump appears determined to drain every last cent he and his greedy buddies in the fossil fuel industry can get from average working people. He took billions from us in tariffs, and now they’re screwing us on the price of gas and diesel, since their costs haven’t gone up a penny but they’re sure happy to use the war as an excuse to jack up prices. This after killing off the VA program that kept over 10,000 veterans in their homes (with another 90,000 facing foreclosure in the coming month or two), gutting food aid, decimating Medicaid, and telling us all this past week that he really doesn’t have the time and America doesn’t have the budget for Medicare. When billionaires first declared war on the American working class with the Reagan Revolution in 1981, most people just thought it was a labor dispute with the air traffic controllers and an “adjustment” to tax rates; now the naked attack the morbidly rich have spearheaded against our middle class is impossible to ignore.

— JD Vance (or whatever his name is this week) is now in charge of Project Screw Blue States. Trump named him the “fraud czar” yesterday and told him to go after Democratic-run states, specifically “California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine, and New York.” In an announcement unconsciously rich with irony and double entendre, Trump began the announcement on his failing, Nazi-infested social media site with this line for the ages: “Vice President JD Vance is now in charge of ‘FRAUD’ in the United States.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

— Is Vance now the Vice President of Hungary? JD Vance flies to Budapest April 7th and 8th, four days before Hungary’s election. His mission is clear: boost Trump ally and fellow neofascist Viktor Orbán, whose Fidesz party is trailing in the polls for the first time in sixteen years. Trump has already endorsed Orbán on social media, calling him a “truly strong and powerful leader.” Secretary of State Rubio visited Budapest in February. Now Vance goes in for the close. Political analysts say the American intervention won’t shift the outcome since Hungarians are focused on kitchen-table issues. But the principle matters. For generations, American presidents stayed out of foreign elections. Orbán has gutted Hungary’s democratic institutions, had his friendly oligarchs take over all of the nation’s media (just like Putin did in Russian), packed the courts with sniveling toadies, and earned repeated EU sanctions for acting like a dictator and throwing in with Putin (he’s currently blocking EU loans to Ukraine). When the United States campaigns for a foreign autocrat, we’re not spreading democracy. We’re exporting its opposite.

— The West is drying up and Republicans who take money from the fossil fuel industry are trying to ignore it. Scientists are sounding a full alarm about a snowpack collapse across the American West unlike anything in the historical record. The Great Basin is at just 16 percent of average snowpack. The lower Colorado River basin, which supplies water to more than 40 million people, is at 10 percent. The Rio Grande is at 8 percent. During a California survey Wednesday, officials found zero measurable snow at a Sierra Nevada site where they’d normally stand knee-deep in snowpack. March 2026 was the warmest March on record, and that heat wiped out snowpack that should have lasted well into summer. Salt Lake City is already urging water conservation. Colorado and Wyoming are moving toward outdoor watering bans. Wildfire season is arriving weeks early. As one climatologist put it, the changes we’ve set in motion are going to be catastrophic. The West is running out of water and time.

— Trump has released his budget and wants $500 billion more for the military to pay for his war against Iran. He proposes to fund it by cutting:

• $510 million - Grants for farmers and agricultural research

• $82 million - Loans for rural small businesses (Fully eliminated)

• $61 million - Support for farmers and food markets (Fully eliminated)

• $240 million - School meals and food education for children abroad (Fully eliminated)

• $659 million - Community building grants

• $47 million - Support for minority-owned businesses (Fully eliminated)

• $449 million - Economic development grants for communities

• $1.6 billion - Weather forecasting, fisheries, and coastal protection (NOAA)

• $993 million - Scientific research and technology standards

• $150 million - Support for American exports and trade

• $2.2 billion - Broadband and internet access programs

• $8.5 billion - Funding for public schools

• $1.5 billion - Vocational training and adult education (Fully eliminated)

• $2.7 billion - College access and higher education support

• $15.2 billion - Roads, bridges, and infrastructure projects

• $1.1 billion - Home energy efficiency and clean energy programs (Fully eliminated)

• $1.1 billion - Scientific research funding

• $386 million - Environmental cleanup programs

• $150 million - Cutting-edge clean energy research

• $4 billion - Help paying home heating and cooling bills for low-income families (Fully eliminated)

• $768 million - Refugee resettlement assistance

• $819 million - Care and shelter for migrant children

• $775 million - Local anti-poverty programs (Fully eliminated)

• $5 billion - Public health programs, mental health services, and disease prevention

• $5 billion - Medical research (NIH)

• $129 million - Healthcare quality and safety research

• $356 million - Emergency preparedness and disaster response

• $1.3 billion - FEMA community disaster preparedness grants

• $707 million - Cybersecurity protection for critical infrastructure

• $52 million - Airport and transportation security

• $40 million - Protection against chemical and biological weapons threats

• $53 million - Funding for homeland security operations

• $3.3 billion - Community development block grants for local neighborhoods (Fully eliminated)

• $1.3 billion - Affordable housing construction grants (Fully eliminated)

• $393 million - Programs to reduce homelessness

• $529 million - Housing assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS (Fully eliminated)

• $489 million - Housing and services for Native American communities

• $50 million - Grants to help communities build more housing (Fully eliminated)

• $60 million - Enforcement of fair housing and anti-discrimination laws

• $58 million - Homebuyer and renter counseling services (Fully eliminated)

• $45 million - Renewable energy development programs (Fully eliminated)

• $1.7 billion - Grants for local law enforcement and public safety

• $20 million - Civil rights mediation and legal access programs (Fully eliminated)

• $1.6 billion - Job training for at-risk youth (Fully eliminated)

• $395 million - Jobs program for low-income seniors (Fully eliminated)

• $234 million - Worker safety and labor protection programs

• $101 million - Enforcement of equal pay and workplace anti-discrimination laws

• $46 million - Programs to combat child labor and forced labor abroad

• $2 billion - International humanitarian aid

• $1.2 billion - Food aid for hungry families abroad (Fully eliminated)

• $4.3 billion - Global health and disease prevention programs

• $2.7 billion - Funding for the United Nations and international partnerships

• $642 million - International economic and treasury programs

• $315 million - Democracy and anti-corruption programs abroad

• $486 million - Grants for public transit projects

• $4.2 billion - Electric vehicle charging infrastructure

• $372 million - Airline service for rural and small communities

• $145 million - Grants for sustainable and equitable infrastructure

• $204 million - Loans and investment for underserved communities

• $1.4 billion - IRS taxpayer services and enforcement

• $100 million - Air pollution monitoring and reduction programs (Fully eliminated)

• $1 billion - EPA grants to states for environmental protection

• $2.5 billion - Clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure funds

• $90 million - Grants to reduce diesel pollution (Fully eliminated)

• $3.4 billion - NASA space and earth science research

• $297 million - NASA technology innovation programs

• $1.1 billion - International Space Station operations

• $143 million - STEM education programs

• $309 million - Small business development and entrepreneurship programs

• $170 million - Small Business Administration operations

• $158 million - Loans for small businesses