ANTI ISRAELI MURDER: Two young Israeli Embassy aides were shot dead outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington last night by a man shouting pro-Palestinian slogans before he was grabbed by police officers. 

  The shooting happened in the heart of Washington in an area of federal buildings, embassies, and museums not far from the Capitol and Justice Department. 

  Police said the suspect, 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago shouted, “Free, free Palestine!” after he was in custody.

  One witness said the man stated, that the man said, “I did this, I did this for Palestine.”

  The victims were identified as a 30-year-old man and 26-year-old woman who worked at the Israeli Embassy. The Israeli ambassador said the two were a couple. “The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem,” he said.

JUST BEAUTIFUL: The House by a margin of one vote passed Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” his tax and spending plan that puts the Trump agenda into law.

  The legislation would cut taxes, and spend more money on the military and border security while cutting Medicaid, food assistance, education ,and clean energy programs … all of it adding  significantly to the federal deficit Republicans complain about when they are not in the majority.

  The bill also would deposit $1,000 for every newborn baby into what would be called a “Trump Account.”

RHETORICAL GENOCIDE: In yet another confrontation with a world leader in front of news cameras, President Donald Trump peppered President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa with false claims about a genocide against white Afrikaner farmers, even showing what he said was video evidence of their persecution.

  Trump appeared to have been  prepared to sandbag Ramaphosa. When a reporter asked what it would take for the President to see there was no “white genocide” in South Africa, he quickly produced the video and other purported “evidence.”

  The video included people calling for violence against white farmers and  a picture of white crosses stretching for a distance along a rural road that Trump said were part of a burial site for murdered white farmers. The crosses were planted by activists protesting murders of farmers that actually have occurred.  

   Trump then flipped through a stack of papers he claimed were reports of white farmer murders repeating “death, death, horrible death.”

  Earlier this month Trump granted refugee status to 59 white South Africans. Police statistics from South Africa show that white that framers are no more the victims of violence in that violent country than anyone else. Yet Trump claims they are the targets of “genocide,” an effort to eradicate them.

  Ramaphosa tried to keep things light, saying he regretted that his country did not have a jet to give Trump like Qatar. “I wish you did,” Trump replied. “I’d take it. If your country offered the US Air Force a plane, I would take it.”

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

— The Trump Administration has accepted as a gift that $400 million 747 jet from Qatar to be used as Air Force One. Accepting the plane is the subject of a lot of criticism by both Democrat and Republican politicians, but Trump ignored it. The current presidential planes are not sufficiently luxurious for him.

  The plane will require considerable modification before Trump flies in it. A Pentagon spokesman said in a statement, “The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the president of the United States.”

— Under the new vaccine-skeptical regime, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it is restricting access to the Covid booster shot to people 65 and older and others with health risks.

  During the Covid pandemic Dr. Vinay Prasad, now the FDA’s vaccine division chief, published a blog post comparing government vaccine and social isolation mandates to the beginnings of Adolph Hitler’s reign. Dr. Martin Makary, the agency’s commissioner, has claimed that pesticides, fluoride in public water,  and overuse of antibiotics may be the cause of rising rates of infertility, attention deficit disorder, and other health problems..

— A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled  the Trump administration’s deportation of several immigrants to conflict-ridden South Sudan violated his order to give them the chance to challenge their removal to a country where they are not citizens.  They were from Mexico, Cuba, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.  The question is what happens as a result, if anything. Trump administration officials and lawyers have been defying court orders with no consequence.

THE SPIN RACK:  Many of the 12,000 graduates at Columbia University booed their acting president, Claire Shipman, at commencement yesterday after a tumultuous spring with the school targeted by the Trump administration. Shipman, a former network news correspondent, has not been in office long enough to be either praised or condemned for her performance. — The national Football League voted to keep the play known as the “tush push” legal. That’s a short yardage or goal line play in which offensive players cluster to push the player with the ball over the line. In Philadelphia is known as “the brotherly shove.” 

BELOW THE FOLD:  The Daily Show host Jon Stewart blasted CNN for promoting host Jake Tapper’s book “Original Sin” that reports a coverup of President Joe Biden’s declining mental acuity while he was in office. Stewart remarked on “How fucking weird it is that the news is selling you a book about news they should’ve told you was news a year ago for free.”

  Stewart then went on about how CNN suddenly began balancing its book promotion with the news that Biden has an aggressive cancer. He said, “It’s just fun to watch them not only continue to push the book in light of this difficult news, but to actually frame this difficult news as perhaps even more of a reason to buy this book.”

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