YOU’RE FIRED: The Supreme Court again yesterday bowed to President Trump, allowing him to proceed with mass firings of federal employees and the dismantling of agencies. They overruled a lower court order blocking the firings.

  In an unsigned decision, the court did not rule on the legality of what Trump and his administration is doing, but said in a two-paragraph order that “the government is likely to succeed on its argument” that President Trump’s executive order announcing plans to downsize the government was legal. The decision gives Trump enormous power to reorganize the government without advice and consent from Congress.

   In a 15-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the decision undercut the authority of trial court judges. “It is not this court’s role to swoop in and second-guess a lower court’s factual findings,” Justice Jackson wrote. She said, “What one person (or president) might call bureaucratic bloat is a farmer’s prospect for a healthy crop, a coal miner’s chance to breathe free from black lung, or a preschooler’s opportunity to learn in a safe environment.”

BS: President Trump told reporters yesterday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “bullshitting” him about ending the war against Ukraine. It’s as if Trump is the last to know.

  Trump told reporters before the start of a cabinet meeting that, “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

  Trump has spoken with Putin six times this year and made no progress toward ending the war he had promised to end in a day. Yesterday Russia launched its largest aerial assault of the war, 728 drones and 13 missiles.

  At various times Trump continued his rant. “We’re not happy with Putin,” he said. “I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now, because he’s killing a lot of people.”

  His remarks came just a day after Trump reversed a pause in shipment of defensive weapons to Ukraine. He refused to say whether he knew about the pause and asked by a reporter who had ordered it Trump responded, “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”

SWEPT AWAY:  At least 161 people are missing in Kerr County as the number of dead rose to 111 following the weekend flash floods, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbot said yesterday. Thirty of the dead are children.

  Sometimes the number of missing people after a disaster is inflated because some are just out of touch somewhere. But the raw number is big.

  “The primary job right now continues to be locating everybody who was affected by this flood,” Abbott said at an afternoon news conference. He said, “We will not stop until we identify, recover every single body.”

  Demands for investigations into prediction and warnings about the floods have been growing. Abbott, a Republican, said lawmakers would consider solutions during a special session and compared disaster responses to a football game: “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame.”

  Extending the football metaphor, because everyone in Texas loves football, Abbott said, “Every football team makes mistakes.”  Running for even more political yardage, the governor said, “We got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again, that we win this game.”

  At the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Many Democrat elected officials are trying to turn this into a political game; it is not.” Critics have linked the failure of advance storm warnings to Trump’s cuts at the National Weather Service. In a defense similar to those about the legality of guns after a mass shooting, Leavitt said, “I just do think those comments are depraved and despicable, especially when so many Americans are mourning the loss of their children.”

THE TRADE WAR ROOM:  Still ramping up his trade war with the world, Donald Trump yesterday said he would impose a 50% tariff on imported copper and soon introduce long-threatened levies on foreign semiconductors and even 200 percent pharmaceuticals. 

THE SPIN RACK: Ten people have been charged with attempted murder in the July 4^th shooting outside an ICE detention center in Texas that wounded a customs officer. The incident occurred in the midst of demonstrations against immigration roundups. — The streets of Philadelphia are piled with trash as a sanitation workers strike extends into its second week. The temperature hit 94 there yesterday, cooking up a garbage stew. —  A federal judge in Colorado yesterday fined lawyers representing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell for their error-laden filings.  Judge Nina Wang said the filings misquoted cases and cited some that do not exist. She said the lawyers had not explained how the errors could have been included in the filing “absent the use of generative artificial intelligence or gross carelessness by counsel.” — Foreigners seeking student visas to study in the US are scrubbing their social media accounts to erase ideological red flags that will upset the Trump administration, The Washington Post reports.

BELOW THE FOLD: President Trump yesterday talked about possibly having gold leaf applied to decorate the Cabinet Room at the White House. He asked the advice of the cabinet and they all enthusiastically said “yes.”

  Then Trump laughed about taking a grandfather clock from the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the man he used to degrade as “Little Marco.” Trump said, “So as president, you have the power—if I go into the State Department, or Department of Commerce or Treasury—if I see anything that I like, I’m allowed to take it. Can you believe this?” All the cabinet members laughed. 

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