Sunrise — 5:24.

"The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax..."

"... even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional Boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more Boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette, and which is 'secured' by only a garage door that is paper thin, and open much of the time."

Writes Trump, at Truth Social, just now.

And:

I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election. I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!

 And:

This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America. We are a Country in serious and rapid Decline, but together we will Make America Great Again!

"In the past several years, views have shifted on gender identities. In 2021, nearly six in ten Americans (59%) said ..."

"... there are only two gender identities, man and woman, and 40% of Americans believed there are many gender identities. The following year, in 2022, 62% of Americans believed that there are only two gender identities, and more than one-third (35%) said there are many gender identities. This divide slightly increased again in 2023, with 65% saying there are two gender identities and 34% saying there are many." 

From a PRRI study of more than 5,000 Americans.

Much more at the link.

"Now, some of Trump’s longtime advisers are even urging him to continuously make reference to the size of DeSantis’ penis..."

"... telling him such insults could stick with GOP primary voters and mess with his rival’s head, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. Trump’s team discussed having Trump refer to the Florida governor as 'Tiny D,' Bloomberg reported in March. While some understood it as a shot at DeSantis’ height, the sobriquet was specifically intended to suggest diminutive genitalia, four people familiar with the topic say. 'He’s also short but … yes of course it’s about his penis, that’s why we’re doing it,' says a source involved in the effort to get the former president to use the line of attack against DeSantis."

From "Oh-So-Mature Trump Aides Want Him to Focus on DeSantis’ Penis/The 2024 GOP primary is headed for the dumbest places imaginable" (Rolling Stone).

Over in New York Magazine, there's an article called "Donald Trump’s Nasty Ron DeSantis Nicknames, Ranked," and "Tiny D" is listed as #3 (after "Meatball Ron" and "Rob"):

"China is destroying Arab-style architectural features of mosques, such as domes and minarets."

The NYT reports.

The party has systematically closed, demolished or forcibly redesigned mosques in Hui enclaves across the country, condemning Arabic architectural features, such as domes and minarets, as proof of unwanted foreign influence over Islam in China....

“This roof represents our respect and freedom. We chose it freely ourselves at the time,” said Mr. Na, a Hui resident in his 30s, who asked to be identified only by his last name for fear of government retaliation. His family, like many in town, had helped fund the mosque’s most recent renovations in the early 2000s, when the minarets were added. “Now they are saying, ‘My rule overrides your free choice.’”... 

"The Supreme Court, in a surprise decision, ruled that Alabama had diluted the power of Black voters by drawing a congressional voting map..."

"... with a single district in which they made up a majority. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 ruling. He was joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and the court’s three liberal members, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Voting rights advocates had feared the decision would undermine the Voting Rights Act, which instead appeared to emerge unscathed. The chief justice wrote that there were legitimate concerns that the law 'may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the states.' He added: 'Our opinion today does not diminish or disregard these concerns. It simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here.'"

 Writes Adam Liptak at the NYT.

"I heard somewhere that people in the middle class pay for things they used to do personally and personally do the things they used to pay for."

"The example, I think, was that people used to pay travel agents to book trips and mowed the lawn themselves. Now, they pay someone to mow their lawn and book travel themselves. Hiring people to do things in your house that you don’t want to do is its own luxury.... Still, the more our society monetizes every aspect of life, to include the empty seats in our cars and the empty beds in our houses, the more necessary it is to undertake work for the pleasure and dignity of the work itself. Our only relationship to work cannot be as a cog in a financial machine."

Writes Theodore R. Johnson, in "Why mowing the lawn is like making your bed in public" (WaPo).

"Unlike many evangelists, Rev. Robertson came from a privileged background. He grew up in the corridors of power in Virginia and Washington and graduated from Yale Law School..."

"... before turning to the ministry in the late 1950s. 'Robertson’s critics often depict the evangelist-broadcaster as a political extremist with bizarre beliefs,' novelist and journalist Garrett Epps wrote in The Post in 1986. 'But it may make more sense to view him as the last old-school southern politician.'"

From "Pat Robertson, televangelist who mixed politics and religion, dies at 93" (WaPo).

"With Gov. Doug Burgum’s money and his family’s vision, Fargo, N.D., has undoubtedly changed in recent decades."

"Broadway, its main drag, is packed with restaurants, cafes, retailers and offices lovingly converted from old factories. Parking lots have been turned into public parks. A warehouse saved from the wrecking ball now houses North Dakota State University’s architecture and arts program. With a population of nearly 127,000 — 16 percent of North Dakota’s total population — the largest city for hundreds of miles is growing, in size and diversity, with a liberal tilt. But as a base for a presidential run, Fargo is still the smallest of towns, closer to Winnipeg, in Canada, than to Minneapolis, the nearest American metropolis...."

From "'A Long Shot, for Sure’: Sizing Up Burgum, and Most of the G.O.P. Field/In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum’s quixotic presidential campaign has people scratching their heads, but then again, many of the 2024 hopefuls have prompted the same wonder" (NYT).

ADDED: Here's his announcement. Judge him for yourself:

"Well, the funny thing is he can’t imagine any celebrities bigger than, like, people from northern Italy at the time. "

"You’re, like, Come on... what about the people who don’t die near the Tiber River? How are they going to get to Purgatorio? It never seems to occur to him. In all three of the Divine Comedy works, Dante’s always hanging out with the big names. Helen of Troy. Even in Hell, Virgil’s like, Boy, I wish I was baptized, but I know you love my work, so I’m going to show you around. And then, in Paradiso, he’s hanging out with the apostles and King David and the Virgin Mary."

Says Ken Jennings, quoted in "Ken Jennings Has Some Questions About Death/The 'Jeopardy!' host on the meaning of trivia, the awkwardness of personal anecdotes, and his new book—a travel guide to the afterlife" (The New Yorker).

"I think the Democratic Party became the party of war. I attribute that directly to President Biden."

"He has always been in favor of very bellicose, pugnacious and aggressive foreign policy, and he believes that violence is a legitimate political tool for achieving America’s objectives abroad."

Said RFK Jr., quoted in "Robert Kennedy Jr., With Musk, Pushes Right-Wing Ideas and Misinformation/Mr. Kennedy, a long-shot Democratic presidential candidate with surprisingly high polling numbers, said he wanted to close the Mexican border and attributed the rise of mass shootings to pharmaceutical drugs" (NYT).

You can listen to the entire 2-hour interview on Twitter, here.

ADDED: Kennedy is polling at a surprising 20%, so there is, unsurprisingly, an effort to crush him. One approach — and I think this is in the memo — is to portray him as right wing. Another approach — seen below, from the Onion — is to portray him as nothing but that famous name:

"Tucker Carlson's glory days are over, and his new episodic Twitter show is the evidence of his fall from grace."

Writes Cheryl Teh, in "Tucker Carlson is nothing without Fox News, and his sad Twitter-broadcast debut proves it" (Business Insider).

First off, make no mistake: Carlson still gets the views.... 

The video, up for a day and a half, has over 100 million views. At the point Teh's column went up, it was it was at 11.2 million, already much more than he had on Fox News (around 2 million, which was about twice what Fox has without him).

But enough about numbers! Teh continues with her theory that Carlson is nothing without Fox News:

Sturgeon.

What's 10-feet long, 600 pounds, and about a hundred years old? This fisherman's catch of the day. pic.twitter.com/mPwAHyQOoT

— Journal Sentinel (@journalsentinel) June 8, 2023

Sunrise — 5:19, 5:20, 5:24, 5:26.

"I booked a lovely little apartment on Rue Jacob and pretended I was a heroine in a 2003 film starring Diane Lane."

"I had coffee alone. I lunched alone. I flâneured alone. Admittedly I was too scared to go for dinner alone, so I’d sit by my apartment window eating liquorice from Monoprix listening to the world muddle through its own dramas on the streets below. I have been to Paris with my husband many times.... But our days and nights are a compromise. Restaurants are deliberated over in accordance with our different tastes. Street directions are a tussle between scenic (him); haste (me). Breakfast in bed or at a café? Museum or shopping? Early to bed or a nightcap with the revellers? Everything must be negotiated when you are married. Not in a bad way, you are to understand. But individual desires must be ceded, the essential self gently led towards a middle ground."

Writes Farrah Storr in "I’m happily married — but I holiday alone" (London Times).

"Job centres in Belgium have started asking if out-of-work Belgian actors would like to try their hand at starring in pornographic films.

"Actiris, a public employment agency in Brussels, has been the subject of criticism from politicians, who are demanding that the question be struck from a list for jobseekers. Penalties can be imposed by Actiris on people refusing to work, which has only intensified the controversy.... "

The Express reports.