Money Crunch: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the government will run out of money by June 5th, four days later than the original projection, but still not leaving a lot of time for House Republicans and the White House to reach agreement on spending and the debt limit. 

  As of Thursday, the government had $38.8 billion, less than some of the richest people in the world. Elon Musk, for instance, is worth $179 billion.

  Yellen said that $130 billion in scheduled payments during the first two days of June will leave the Treasury with “an extremely low level of resources.” She said in a letter to house Speaker Kevin McCarthy that Treasury would then be left without enough money in the week of June 5^th for $92 billion worth of payments and transfers, including $36 billion for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

  The NY Times notes that Yellen urged the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling last fall while they still had control of Congress, and they ignored her.  

The War Room: A Russian missile strike hit a hospital complex in central Ukraine, killing at least two people and injuring more than two dozen others, Ukrainian officials said. President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately condemned  the strike on the medical facility in the city of Dnipro as an “inhuman” act of barbarism.

  The Russians also blew up the dam on a river in eastern Ukraine, in an evident attempt to use flooding as a weapon against Ukrainian supply lines downstream. Both sides have weaponized the rivers and bodies of water that crisscross the war zone.

Texas Mess: The Republican-dominated Texas House is expected to vote today on impeachment of the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. The articles of impeachment accuse Paxton of taking bribes, disregarding his official duty, obstructing justice, making false statements on official documents and reports, and abusing the public trust.

  The case is too messy to get into here, but it started with accusations that Paxton had used his office to help a rich political donor whose offices were raided by the FBI in 2019.

  Four of Paxton’s own aides ultimately turned against him, saying that he had committed bribery, abuse of office and other “potential criminal offenses.” Then they filed and won a lawsuit claiming Paxton had retaliated against them. They were awarded $3.3 million. 

  You get the idea. If Paxton is impeached today, he would then be tried in the Texas senate.

Another Idiot: Jessica Watkins, an Army veteran and member of the far-right Oath Keepers, was sentenced yesterday to 8 1/2 years in prison for her part in the January 6^th insurrection. Judge Amit Mehta told Watkins, “Your role that day was more aggressive, more assaultive, more purposeful than perhaps others,” and that “there was not in the immediate aftermath any sense of shame or contrition, just the opposite.” 

  “I was just another idiot running around the hallway,” Watkins told the court before sentencing. “But idiots are responsible, and today you are going to hold this idiot responsible.”

Don’t Speak: The Indiana State medical board has reprimanded Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, for publicly saying she had performed an abortion on a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion, allowing states to set the rules. 

  The girl had gone to Indiana for the abortion after own state banned most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. During an abortion rights rally, Dr. Bernard told a reporter for The Indianapolis Star about the girl’s case without naming her. As a result, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, an anti-abortion Republican, sought punishment of Dr. Bernard, claiming she had violated her patient’s privacy.

  After the decision to reprimand and fine Dr. Bernard $3,000, Rokita issued a statement saying, “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling who was going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons?”

The Obit Page: Mary Turner Pattiz, who as Mary Turner was the silky-voiced disc jockey on KMET radio, providing the soundtrack for Southern California in the 1970s and early ’80s, died on May 9th at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 76.

  The album-oriented station provided an alternative to the hyper pace of the top 40 stations, introducing new bands like the Who, Pink Floyd, and Steely Dan. 

  Turner hosted with a laid back routine of stoner jokes and sexual innuendo. 

  Nicknamed “the Burner”  by Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the J. Geils Band for her seductive delivery and blonde Southern California beauty, she held the prime nighttime spot from 6 to 10 p.m.

  Turner abruptly retired from radio after 10 years. “Well, listen you guys, it has been a lot of fun spending every single weekday night with you for the last 10 years,” she said, “but the old Burner’s got to be moving on.”

  She went on to become an addiction counselor. 

The Spin Rack: A South Carolina judge temporarily blocked the state’s new six-week abortion ban from going into effect, just one day after Gov. Henry McMaster signed it. Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman put the new law on hold until the state Supreme Court can determine whether it violates the state’s constitution. —  In an article titled, “My autopilot almost killed me,” the German newspaper Handelsblatt said it received files containing thousands of complaints about the autopilot on Tesla cars, including  complaints about sudden acceleration, braking problems, and even “phantom stops” in which the car suddenly brakes for no reason. 

Below the Fold: An Indian official who partially drained a reservoir in that drought prone country to find his lost $1,200 Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone has been suspended from his job. He found it, but it no longer worked.

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