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  • RFK Jr. Cancellation of Vaccine Research Was “the Most Dangerous Public Health Decision,” Says Expert

    RFK Jr. Cancellation of Vaccine Research Was “the Most Dangerous Public Health Decision,” Says Expert


    PBS ran an important segment on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in grants to study mNRA vaccine grants. These are the vaccines that broke the COVID pandemic.

    PBS interviewed scientists about this surprise decision. If you would like to see the interviews, open the link.

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to cancel nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development has left many public health experts and scientists stunned.

    mRNA technology was central in the battle against COVID and can be developed more quickly than traditional vaccines. But anti-vaccine communities and skeptics don’t trust its safety.

    Geoff Bennett spoke with Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, about the latest in mRNA vaccine research and the implications of Kennedy’s move. 

    “I can say unequivocally that this was the most dangerous public health decision I have ever seen made by a government body,” Osterholm said.

    U.S. children’s health in decline

    As the Trump administration works to reimagine public health through its “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, a new study paints a stark picture of the challenges facing the nation’s kids.

    The health of American children has significantly worsened across several key indicators since 2007, according to a recent study published in JAMA.



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  • Ex-CIA Whistleblower: The 2024 Election Was Rigged

    Ex-CIA Whistleblower: The 2024 Election Was Rigged


    We have learned, over the past decade, that Trump often projects what he is doing, what he has done, or what he intends to do, on others. We have heard his nonstop claim that the 2020 election was rigged since the day it was decided. Even now, his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says that the 2020 election, which he won, was rigged.

    There are people who suspect the 2024 election was rigged to enable Trump’s re-election. I am one of them, though I have no evidence, just a gut feeling that the American electorate would not re-elect a twice-impeached convicted felon and sexual predator who campaigned on a platform of hate, divisiveness, and lies. But that’s just me. Time and again, Trump thinks, acts, and speaks like a mobster, so why would he not cheat to win? Winning means redemption, revenge, and riches. He never accepts losing.

    A CIA whistleblower claims that the voting machines were programmed to produce a Trump win. He believes that Harris and Walz won, and it was not close.

    During their week of breaking up, Elon Musk said several indiscreet things about Trump. Among them was a tweet saying that Trump would not have won without him, and that Republicans would not control the House without him. Was he referring to his gift of $300 million to the campaign? Or, did he mean another kind of help? Did Trump spill the beans when he said that no one understood the voting machines in Pennsylvania better than his close friend Elon?

    An investigation of voting irregularities in Rockland County, New York, was initiated a few months ago. Some districts in Rockland posted surprising results in a few districts. Governor Kathy Hochul won one district by hundreds of votes, but Presidential candidate Kamala Harris received zero votes. An MIT professor claimed that the vote reflected bloc voting by Orthodox Jews, but others questioned his analysis. The judge will decide whether to proceed in late September.

    A side note: I was a member of a federal commission created after the debacle of the 2000 election to make recommendations for improving elections. The commission was bipartisan, chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. One of our recommendations was that the federal government should pay the cost of replacing existing voting machines with electronic touch screens. We made this recommendation after reviewing all existing and proposed machines.

    Interestingly, the most accurate voting machine tested in 2001 was the one in New York City, known as a mechanical lever machine. The voter enters an enclosed space, closes a curtain behind her, pulls individual little levers for the preferred candidates, then records the vote by pulling a large lever that also opens the curtain, and exits. Every vote is cleanly and correctly registered on paper. That machine had 100% accuracy but it was considered antiquated. It was likened to an old-fashioned cash register that would soon be replaced by touch-screen technology.

    Congress adopted some of our commission’s recommendations, including the purchase of touch-screen technology and allocated $350 million to states that agreed to buy the new machines.

    Some members of the commission–including me– were concerned about the possibility of hacking. Hackers had demonstrated that there were no electronic machines, no matter how sophisticated, that were secure. But our doubts were dismissed. There was no reversing the inevitable march of progress.



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  • Why Didn’t Pam Bondi Prosecute Jeffrey Epstein When She was Florida AG?

    Why Didn’t Pam Bondi Prosecute Jeffrey Epstein When She was Florida AG?


    Blogger Dean Obeidallah raises a very important question: why didn’t Pam Bondi prosecute her state’s most notorious child sex predator when she was Attorney General of Florida? Who was she protecting?

    He wrote on his Substack blog:

    Donald Trump is so panicked by what is contained in the Trump-Epstein files that he’s now slamming his own followers demanding its release, calling them “stupid” and “weaklings.” Whine as he may, Trump has lost control of the narrative given a new poll released Wednesday which found nearly 70% of Americans believe the Trump regime has engaged in a cover up of the Epstein files–including 59% of Trump supporters. At the very least it appears that Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein was involved in sex ring where children were raped yet did nothing to stop that evil. But Trump’s actions could be worse than that.

    However, lost in the discussion is that Trump’s current Attorney General Pam Bondi was Florida’s Attorney General from 2011 to 2019 in the very state that was ground zero for Epstein raping and trafficking children. Why didn’t she investigate and prosecute Epstein for these heinous crimes committed in Florida?!

    Taking a quick step back, Epstein received in 2008 the “deal of a lifetime” from local Florida prosecutors and George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. At the time, Bush’s DOJ had identified 36 underage girls who were victims of Epstein. But they offered the well-connected Epstein a deal to plead guilty to just two prostitution charges in state court. He was then sentenced to 18 months in jail–which he served in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail where he was allowed daily work release. In addition, Bush’s DOJ agreed not to prosecute him for federal crimes. Worse, Epstein’s victims were not even told of the deal in advance so they could object.

    After Epstein’s release from jail in 2009, Epstein returned to his lavish lifestyle and was able to “continue his abuse of minors”—a point made in a 2020 report by Trump’s own DOJ after Epstein died in the custody of the Trump administration. So again, why didn’t Bondi investigate Epstein for his crimes while she was AG from 2011 to 2019?!

    Open the link to finish reading.



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  • Measles Returns, 25 Years After It Was Eradicated

    Measles Returns, 25 Years After It Was Eradicated


    Measles is back! This is bad news. Our nation officially eradicated measles in 2000, yet measles is having a banner resurgence.

    Why? We all know by now. The COVID pandemic launched an anti-vaccine movement, joined by large numbers of parents who distrusted science and wanted to protect their children: not by immunizing them but by refusing to immunize them.

    Now that an anti-vaxxer–Robert F. Kennedy Jr.– is in charge of the nation’s public health system, we can anticipate an active effort to discourage parents from vaccinating their children. This is sad. In fact, it is tragic because children who are unvaccinated stand a high risk of death.

    The New York Times reported:

    There have now been more measles cases in 2025 than in any other year since the contagious virus was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, according to new data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The grim milestone represents an alarming setback for the country’s public health and heightens concerns that if childhood vaccination rates do not improve, deadly outbreaks of measles — once considered a disease of the past — will become the new normal.

    Experts fear that with no clear end to the spread in sight, the country is barreling toward another turning point: losing elimination status, a designation given to countries that have not had continuous spread of measles for more than a year.

    “It’s a huge red flag for the direction in which we’re going,” said Dr. William Moss, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has studied measles for more than 25 years.

    Most of the cases this year have been tied to the Southwest outbreak — the largest single outbreak since 2000 — which began in January in a Mennonite community in West Texas and has since jumped to New Mexico and Oklahoma.

    But cases have also popped up in 38 states, which experts say represents a concerning vulnerability to diseases of the past. Because of the contagiousness of the virus, researchers often think of measles as the proverbial canary in a coal mine. It is often the first sign that other vaccine-preventable diseases, like pertussis and Hib meningitis, might soon become more common.

    In total, 1,288 people have had a confirmed case of measles this year, 92 percent of whom were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown….

    While measles symptoms typically resolve in a few weeks, the virus can cause pneumonia, making it difficult for patients, especially children, to get oxygen into their lungs. It may also lead to brain swelling, which can cause lasting damage, including blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities.

    For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die, according to the C.D.C. Two unvaccinated children and one adult have died this year, the first such deaths in the country in a decade.

    The outbreak’s full effect on public health may not be apparent for years.

    The virus causes “immune amnesia,” making the body unable to defend itself against other illnesses it has already been exposed to and leaving patients more susceptible to future infections. And very rarely, the virus can cause a degenerative and almost always deadly neurological condition that may appear a decade after the original infection.

    Until now, 2019 held the record for the highest number of measles cases since the virus was eliminated. (Before that, large outbreaks sickened tens of thousands of people in some years.) Most of the 1,274 cases that year were connected to a large outbreak that spread through Orthodox Jewish communities in New York State for nearly 12 months.

    To see graphics that show where outbreaks of measles have occurred, open the link.



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  • The Cartoonist Who Was Canceled by MAGA

    The Cartoonist Who Was Canceled by MAGA


    Adam Zyglis of the Buffalo News was supposed to have a showing of his drawings in Buffalo. But it was canceled due to threats from MAGA people who don’t like his artwork or his politics.

    This cartoon, in particular, was denounced by rightwing media, who agreed it was “vile.”



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  • ‘There was a lot of fear’: Central Valley immigration raids drive up absences in schools, study finds

    ‘There was a lot of fear’: Central Valley immigration raids drive up absences in schools, study finds


    Credit: AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File

    Top Takeaways
    • Absentee rates in five districts cumulatively increased 22% after immigration raids in the Central Valley earlier this year.
    • Raids increase stress levels in school communities, making it difficult for students to learn.
    • Fewer students in class means less funding for schools, which rely on average daily attendance to pay for general expenses.

    Immigration raids in California’s Central Valley earlier this year caused enough fear to keep nearly a quarter of the students in five districts home from school, according to a report released Monday by Stanford University. 

    The study evaluated daily student attendance in the districts over three school years and found a 22% increase in absences after immigration raids in the region in January and February.

    Empty seats in classrooms impact student education and reduce districts’ funding for general expenses, which are tied to average daily attendance. The financial losses are especially difficult now because districts are already grappling with lost funding due to declining enrollment.

    “The first and most obvious interpretation of the results is that students are missing school, and that means lost learning opportunities,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford professor of education and author of the report. “But I think these results are a harbinger of much more than that. I mean, they’re really a leading indicator of the distress that these raids place on families and children.”

    The raids in the Central Valley began in January as part of “Operation Return to Sender.” U.S. Border Patrol agents targeted immigrants at gas stations and restaurants, and pulled over farmworkers traveling to work, observers reported.

    All five districts analyzed in the study — Bakersfield City School District, Southern Kern Unified, Tehachapi Unified, Kerman Unified and Fresno Unified — are in or near agricultural regions that were impacted by the operation. The districts closest to the raids had the highest absentee rates, Dee said.

    It is unclear how many people were actually arrested during the four-day operation. Border Patrol officials have claimed 78 people were arrested, while observers say it was closer to 1,000, according to the study.

    Raids keep kids out of school

    But whatever the number of arrests, fewer students in these districts attended school in the wake of the raids. The results of the study also suggest that absentee rates in California schools could continue to increase if the raids persist.

    In the Stanford report, Dee cited studies, including one he co-wrote, that found that prior instances of immigration enforcement have negatively impacted grade retention, high school completion, test scores and anxiety disorders. The climate of fear and mistrust caused by the raids impacts children even if their parents are not undocumented, according to the report. 

    An estimated 1 in 10, or 1 million, children in California have at least one undocumented parent. And while most of the children of undocumented parents in the United States are U.S. citizens, approximately 133,000 California children are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

    Of the more than 112,500 students attending the five districts studied, almost 82,000 are Hispanic, according to state data. 

    Not all districts impacted by the raids were studied, however. Big Local News, a journalism lab at Stanford University, approached multiple districts to request data. These five districts responded, according to Dee.

    The school’s youngest students were the most likely to miss school because of immigration raids, according to the report. That trend is expected to continue because younger children are more likely to have undocumented parents, Dee said. Parents are also more protective of their younger children, he said.

    “I think it just makes sense that if you’re concerned about family separation, it is a uniquely sharp concern if your kids are particularly young,” Dee said. 

    Family separation has been a constant fear since the Central Valley raids, agrees Mario Gonzalez, executive director of the Education & Leadership Foundation. The nonprofit provides immigration support and educational services to the community, including tutoring in 30 Fresno Unified schools. 

    Gonzalez said the foundation saw a decrease in the number of families participating in onsite services, such as legal consultations, beginning with the first reported immigration raids in Bakersfield in January, and a decrease in school attendance. 

    High school students told the foundation staff that their friends were afraid to come to school.

    Fresno Unified attendance dipped

    Attendance in Fresno Unified — the state’s third-largest district — dropped immediately after the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump, said Noreida Perez, the district’s attendance and social emotional manager. Based on internal calculations, a decline in average daily attendance continued until March, with attendance rates decreasing by more than 4% in one week in February, compared to the same time in 2024.  

    Families reported keeping their children home because they were afraid that immigration enforcement officials would be allowed on campus or that parents would be unsafe traveling to and from school for drop-off and pickup, Perez said.

    “There was a lot of fear during that time,” she said. “There’s a lot of stress that’s associated with the threats of something like this happening.”

    Families concerned about sending their children to school have reached out to the Education & Leadership Foundation to ask how their kids can continue to receive services, including bilingual instruction, reading and math intervention, and mentoring. Some wanted to learn about the district’s virtual academy, which Superintendent Misty Her had promoted during her home visits to address increased absenteeism. 

    The fear of immigration operations has also impacted the students who attend classes.

    “If a student is worried about this happening to their parents or to somebody that they love, it makes it really hard to focus on learning or to be present with their peers or with their teacher,” said Perez, who is also a licensed clinical social worker. “If it feels like I might not be safe at school, or I don’t know what I’m going to come home to, that supersedes my ability to really focus and learn.”

    Compensating schools

    Ongoing declining enrollment is causing financial pressure in many school districts. In the 2024-25 school year, enrollment statewide declined by 31,469 students, or 0.54%, compared to last year. The previous school year, attendance declined by 0.25%, according to state data. Immigration raids could make a bad situation worse.

    The issue is so concerning for school districts that the California Legislature is considering a bill that would allow the state to fund districts for the loss of daily state attendance revenue if parents keep their children at home out of fear of a federal immigration raid in their neighborhood. 

    Assembly Bill 1348, authored by Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, D-Delano, would allow the state to credit a district with the attendance numbers and funding they would have received had there not been immigration enforcement activity in their community.

    To receive compensation, a district will have to provide data attributing a decline in attendance in a school — of at least 10% — to fear of federal immigration enforcement. The district must also provide remote learning as an option to families who keep their children home for this reason.

    “When attendance drops, funding disappears, and when funding disappears, all students suffer — regardless of immigration status,” said Bains in a statement after the Assembly passed the bill 62-13 on June 2.

    John Fensterwald and Emma Gallegos contributed to this report.





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  • Georgia: Brain-Dead Woman Kept on Life Support Because She Was 9 Weeks Pregnant

    Georgia: Brain-Dead Woman Kept on Life Support Because She Was 9 Weeks Pregnant


    Several days ago, I posted this horrible story about a young woman in Georgia who is on life support. She is brain dead. Because she was nine weeks pregnant when her brain died, Georgia law requires that she be kept in a vegetative state until the fetus can be delivered at 36 weeks.

    The political cartoonist Ann Telnaes posted this visual commentary on her Substack blog:

    “The decision should have been left to us- not the state”, says her family

    Telnaes quit her job at The Washington Post when her editor refused to publish a cartoon showing the tech billionaires bowing to Trump. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, was one of them. Telnaes won a Pulitzer Prize for that cartoon.



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  • This Cartoon Was Deleted from a PBS Special About the Artist, Art Spiegelman

    This Cartoon Was Deleted from a PBS Special About the Artist, Art Spiegelman


    The New York Times reported that a cartoon about Trump by Art Spiegelmaan was removed by the executive producer of the PBS show “American Masters.”

    Trump has proposed defunding both PBS and NPR.

    The Times wrote:

    The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations.

    The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste.

    Alicia Sams, a producer of “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie’s April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of “American Masters,” informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. The series is produced by the WNET Group, the parent company of several New York public television channels.

    Stephen Segaller, the vice president of programming for WNET, confirmed in an interview that the station had informed the filmmakers that it needed to make the change. Segaller said WNET felt the scatological imagery in the comic, which Spiegelman drew shortly after the 2016 election — it portrays what appears to be fly-infested feces on Trump’s head — was a “breach of taste” that might prove unpalatable to some of the hundreds of stations that air the series. 

    Note that the four panels are divided by a swastika.

    Art Spiegelman drew a graphic novel called Maus, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The book is about his parents’ experiences during the Holocaust.

    Maus has been banned by many libraries.



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  • Georgia: Brain-Dead Woman Kept Alive Because She Was Nine Weeks Pregnant

    Georgia: Brain-Dead Woman Kept Alive Because She Was Nine Weeks Pregnant


    This is one of the saddest stories I have read in a long time. Georgia has one of the most draconian abortion laws in the nation. Because of that law, a woman who is brain-dead will be kept “alive” until she gives birth. She is nine weeks pregnant. The baby will be removed when it reaches 32 weeks. One of those Bible-thumpers should offer to adopt the baby. Lots of Bible-thumpers or the State Legislature should pay the outrageous bills that will pile up.

    Robyn Pennacchia of the Wonkette wrote about this horrendous case:

    Adriana Smith of Atlanta, Georgia, has been brain dead for more than 90 days.

    Back in February, Smith — a registered nurse at Emory University Hospital — started experiencing intense headaches and went to get checked out at a local hospital, because she knew “enough to know something was wrong.”

    “They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11Alive news. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”

    The next morning, Smith’s boyfriend discovered her gasping for air and gurgling on what he believed was blood. She went back to the hospital, where they finally did a CT scan and discovered multiple blood clots in her brain. Unfortunately, they were too late and Smith was declared brain dead as they prepared to go into surgery.

    This would have been a horrific enough scenario under normal circumstances, but Smith was also nine weeks pregnant … and in Georgia. Georgia has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation, 33.9 deaths per 100,000 live births — 48.6 per 100,000 for Black women and 22.7 for white and Hispanic women. Part of that is because women like Adriana Smith are ignored when they tell doctors that something is wrong. 

    Georgia also has a “Heartbeat Law” that bans abortion after fetal pole cardiac activity is detected (but before there is even an actual heart).

    Because of Georgia’s garbage abortion ban, Smith now has to be kept on life support until the fetus is 32 weeks along and can be removed. Like, they are literally using her dead body as an incubator for a fetus. 

    Please, take a moment to scream into a nearby throw pillow, if you need it. 

    Via 11Alive:

    Under Georgia’s heartbeat law, abortion is banned once cardiac activity is detected — typically around six weeks into pregnancy. The law includes limited exceptions for rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger. But in Adriana’s case, the law created a legal gray area.

    Because she is brain dead — no longer considered at risk herself — her medical team is legally required to maintain life support until the fetus reaches viability. 

    The family said doctors told them they are not legally allowed to consider other options. […]

    Now, due to the state abortion ban, Smith is being kept on life support.

    “She’s been breathing through machines for more than 90 days,” Newkirk said. “It’s torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there. And her son — I bring him to see her.”

    Newkirk said it’s been heartbreaking seeing her grandson believe his mother is “just sleeping.”

    It would be bad enough if the state were just forcing the family to keep Smith “alive” on life support in order to be an incubator for the fetus, but they’re also requiring them to pay for it. While it’s not exactly easy to track down exact costs, an ICU bed in a Georgia non-profit hospital costs, on average, $2,402 a day on its own, without any additional treatment. According to a report from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, mechanical ventilation costs, on average, “$3,900 per day after the fourth day.” So that’s $6302 a day just for the basics. Then there’s everything else on top of that. 

    And health insurance doesn’t cover life support when there’s no chance of survival or improvement. 

    So we’re already at $1.6 million before even getting into the cost of the baby’s care. The average stay in the NICU for a baby born at 32 weeks is 36 days, and a NICU stay can cost $3,000 to $20,000 a day. That is more likely to be covered by health insurance — though it is not actually clear if the baby would be covered by Smith’s health insurance if she’s dead, or for how long. And that’s just in the beginning. It is hard to imagine that a kid born in those circumstances would not have some pretty serious health issues down the road. 

    This family is fucked. 

    Donate Just Once!

    I am going to need to point out, for the 80 bajillionth time, that the people who love the idea of forcing a woman to give birth against their will (or while braindead) are almost universally against universal health care. Especially the ones who are going around crying about “birth rates.” 

    I’m not saying it would make anything okay, it wouldn’t, but the very fact that these absolute pieces of shit want to force people to give birth against their will and pay for the privilege as well is galling. In this case, the state wants to force this family to pay possibly $1.6 million or more to keep a brain dead woman alive so that she can give birth to a fetus that was only nine weeks along when she died. 

    Perhaps it’s crass to think of money, given the fact that keeping a woman on life support just to incubate a fetus is appalling enough on its own. And it is. But a nearly two million dollar surcharge is a hell of an added insult to injury. 



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  • As Global Economy Imploded, Trump’s Cash Register Was Going Ka-Ching

    As Global Economy Imploded, Trump’s Cash Register Was Going Ka-Ching


    Investigative reporters at the New York Times–Eric Lipton, Theodore Schleifer, and Zoltan-Youngs, with assistance from Maggie Haberman– were watching the busy scene at Mar-a-Lago during the brief period when Trump announced draconian tariffs on other economies (but not Russia, North Korea, Belarus or Cuba), but before his decision to postpone the tariffs for 90 days. Trump demonstrated that he could rattle the global economy with a statement, then shift gears a few days later. What fun he must have had! He knew he could crater the stock markets and he knew that he could make it soar.

    In between times, Mar-a-Lago was enriching Trump and his PACs.

    The financial market meltdown was underway when President Trump boarded Air Force One on his way to Florida on Thursday for a doubleheader of sorts: a Saudi-backed golf tournament at his family’s Miami resort and a weekend of fund-raisers attracting hundreds of donors to his Palm Beach club.

    It was a fresh reminder that in his second term, Mr. Trump has continued to find ways to drive business to his family-owned real-estate ventures, a practice he has sustained even when his work in Washington has caused worldwide financial turmoil.

    The Trump family monetization weekend started Thursday night, as crowds began to form at both the Trump National Doral resort near Miami International Airport, and separately at his Mar-a-Lago resort 70 miles up the coast.

    Mr. Trump landed on the edge of one of the golf courses in a military helicopter — just in time for a dinner at Doral. The next day, LIV Golf, the breakaway professional league backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, was scheduled to hold a tournament at the course for the fourth time.

    On Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, hundreds of guests gathered for the American Patriots Gala, a conservative fund-raiser that featured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Javier Milei of Argentina, who told his supporters back home that he was hoping to catch up with Mr. Trump while there, seemingly unaware that Mr. Trump was double-booked at two of his family properties that night.

    And that was just the weekend’s lead-up.

    Mr. Trump ordered a new set of global tariffson Wednesday from the White House using his trademark Sharpie pen, a version of which is on sale at Mar-a-Lago for $3.

    The announcement set off one of the largest market crashes in American history, erasing $5 trillion in market value from companies in the S&P 500 in just two days. Mr. Trump has said his policy would reverse what he calls unfair trade practices, and that eventually the “markets are going to boom.”

    On Friday, as markets continued to tumble, thousands of golf fans visited Doral, as did Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s son, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s $925 billion sovereign wealth fund. Mr. Al-Rumayyan is also the chairman of LIV Golf, and was there to see its stars compete.

    “It is a nice club,” Mr. Al-Rumayyan said as he walked around the golf course watching the players tee off.

    LIV Golf — a venture intended to lift the Saudi profile worldwide even as it has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds — is styled as a daylong party, with club music pumping out of speakers lining tournament courses and machines dispensing wine and large beers. On Friday, fans watched a bit of golf and danced on the edges of the course. Others in MAGA hats walked around smoking cigars.

    In short, the economic turbulence seemed far away.

    “You are all looking a little too stiff!” said Matt Rogers, a LIV Golf announcer, as he yelled into a microphone, blasting his message across the greens as the first group of golfers on Friday prepared to play with dance music blaring in the background. “You need to turn this up! This is LIV Golf.”

    Every room at the 643-room Trump Doral, including the $13,000-a-night presidential suite, was sold out through the weekend. Not a seat could be found at the BLT Prime steakhouse bar, where a porterhouse steak cost $130.

    “This is the perfect venue,” Eric Trump said as he strolled the golf course Friday.

    He had driven his father in a golf cart from the military helicopter to the resort dinner the day before, as the festivities over the big moneymaking weekend were getting underway.

    The president spent much of Friday at yet another Trump family venue, Trump International Golf Club, not far from Mar-a-Lago, sending out social media messages during the day, including, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE.” [Had he already decided to pause the tariffs?]

    By Friday night, the center of attention had shifted back to Mar-a-Lago, as Mr. Trump held another in a series of $1 million-a-head dinners at his private club in Palm Beach.

    Since he was elected in November, Mr. Trump has hosted at least four of the fund-raisers, including one in December, two in March and the one Friday night, with a fifth planned for April 24.

    The fund-raisers unfold in similar ways, according to people who have attended them.

    Roughly 20 people gather around a candlelit table with big white flowers in the club’s “White and Gold Room” after a photo session. Mr. Trump speaks, then listens to the guests discuss their businesses, one by one. In just an hour or two, he can raise as much as $20 million — a great return on his time investment, associates say.

    Attendees at some of the post-election dinners at Mar-a-Lago hosted by MAGA Inc., one of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising political action committees, have included the casino owner Miriam Adelson, the sugar magnate Pepe Fanjul and James Taiclet, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military contractor, along with representatives from the cryptocurrency and energy industries.

    On Friday, Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, and Steve Wynn, the former casino executive, both billionaires, were among the guests at the Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser, according to two people briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the event.

    The dinners have been just the start. Mar-a-Lago remains a popular site for Republicancandidates to host their own fund-raisers, Federal Election Commission records show. It is not clear to some Republicans why Mr. Trump has been raising money so aggressively, according to eight people involved in conservative fund-raising who have kept track of his efforts. Never before has a president ineligible for re-election vacuumed up so much money for a super PAC.

    Some of Mr. Trump’s associates believe it is prudent to fund-raise when the money is available, as corporate interests and others seek to get access to the president or make amends for perceived slights, people close to him acknowledge.

    The packed agendas at the two Trump venues recalled the constant buzz and spending by lobbyists, members of Congress and foreign leaders at Trump International Hotel in Washington before the Trump family sold its lease after Mr. Trump’s first term.

    In addition to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, top sponsors of the Doral golf tournament included Aramco, the Saudi oil company; Riyadh Air, the airline owned by the sovereign wealth fund; and TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media company whose fate Mr. Trump is helping to decide, according to a large billboard outside one of the event’s party tents.

    Mr. Trump’s merchandise shops — there are at least three of them at Doral — were also doing swift business, selling everything from a $550 Trump-branded crystal-studded purse to $18 Doral-branded paperweights made in China. The store clerk said that he did not know if new tariffs on imported products would mean price increases.

    Fans in the crowd said that they had traveled from as far as South Africa to attend the event. Some purchased special tickets that cost as much as $1,400 to enter exclusive party areas with free drinks and food — tickets that were sold out as of Saturday.

    In interviews, tournament attendees and others said that they did not mind the disconnect between the Wall Street meltdown and the events at the Trump properties.

    “The sky is falling every day,” said Mike Atwell, a Key Largo, Fla., restaurant owner who was attending the LIV event with his wife enjoying lunch and drinks. “When you are happy, you drink. When you are sad, you drink. It all works out.”

    Tyrell Davis, a 39-year-old entrepreneur spending Saturday afternoon in Palm Beach, said that he admired Mr. Trump for focusing on his own businesses while also implementing tariffs that he believed would benefit Americans. 

    Mr. Davis said that the United States had given away money to other countries for years while not investing in American cities, and that it only made sense Mr. Trump would continue to bolster his own businesses while in office.

    “It’s all about business and money,” Mr. Davis said. “That’s what it’s all about. America is a business. It’s a corporation.”

    On Saturday, as the tournament continued at Doral, Mr. Trump showed up at yet another family golf course, in Jupiter, Fla., which is holding its own, more modest tournament.

    Good news was announced by the White House staff: “The president won his second round matchup of the senior club championship today in Jupiter, Fla., and advances to the championship round on Sunday.” Reporters and photographers were prohibited from watching him play, and were held down the street at a coffee shop.

    As Mr. Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago, one of his political committees sent out an offer to his followers: They could buy a signed replica of his executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The minimum contribution was $50. “I want you to have a PIECE OF HISTORY in your home,” Mr. Trump said in the solicitation.

    The White House then announced that there would be no more public events on Saturday.





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