The News You Need on Wednesday, May 27, 2026.
Don Jr.'s 1789 Capital Fund swells, the Pope takes on tech bros in his manifesto, and why are Trump's threats to use nukes not getting attention in US media?
Trump’s Threats to Use Nukes Disturb Allies But Get Little Attention in the US Media
To the Contrary
Scott: Wisconsin Republican analyst Charlie Sykes has increasingly become a voice to turn to for a clear understanding both of Donald Trump and his cult-like control over the GOP.
His latest column explores the fairly dramatic collapse of the pillars of Trumpism, one after the next, accelerating with the failure of the war on Iran. But at its outset, Charlie offers this:
Before we try to parse the latest on-again-off-again imaginary Peace Deal, take a moment to reflect on this: Donald Trump saw what Putin did in Mariupol and Netanyahu did in Gaza, and thought, “I’d like to do that in Iran. But I can go even further by wiping out an entire civilization, one of the oldest in the world.” In the end he backed off, but his threat opened a portal into the mind of the man we have entrusted with the nuclear button.
Charlie is right. Trump’s threats got fleeting coverage in US media, mostly along the lines of “there he goes again with that childish nonsense.” Media who do this are enabling the worst.
European allies were sufficiently alarmed by Trump’s tweets (and there were, as I count, at least four that implicitly threatened to employ nuclear weapons against Iran) that they turned through diplomatic channels to the State Department asking Marco Rubio to clarify that no, Trump was not threatening to use nukes.
But the main response in places like Japan, Korea, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Uunion was focused on the American public and media: How could an American president make a cavalier threat involving nuclear weapons while the supposedly “serious people” in the United States say nothing about it?
It points to a moral collapse than cannot be undone simply by replacing Trump by President B some years from now.
Grand Juries Revolt Against Trump “Justice”
The New York Times
Charles: As Trump’s lackeys across the country transform the Department of Justice into the Department of Revenge, ordinary citizens sitting on Federal grand juries are defying prosecutors more frequently than ever before.
Times reporter Alan Feuer reports “a flurry of no true bills in federal courts across the country,” especially in Los Angeles and Washington where grand juries have rejected several cases “involving people accused of protesting the administration’s immigration crackdowns and surges in federal law enforcement.”
Other high-profile failures have involved grand juries hearing cases against Mr. Trump’s political foes — among them, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and the six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video reminding military and intelligence personnel of their obligation to disobey illegal orders.
In Wyoming a panel of three federal judges threw out nine indictments — including some for murder — after an examination of the grand jury proceedings revealed misconduct by Darin Smith, the state’s Trump-appointed U.S. attorney. In the end, a new grand jury — one that Mr. Smith had never spoken to.
U.S. Attorney Darin Smith of Wyoming
The most flagrant recent case of prosecutorial misconduct was in Chicago, where Judge April M. Perry
cited a remarkable list of grand jury errors in a case that was dismissed against four Democratic activists about to face trial for impeding the police during a protest last fall at a suburban immigration detention facility. . .Prosecutors had spoken to grand jurors outside the grand jury room — a major breach of protocol — and had improperly coached them that the evidence they had presented was particularly strong.
The prosecutors also stacked the deck in their own favor by removing from the panel some grand jurors who had voted against them when considering an earlier version of the charges.
The Times story doesn’t mention it, but my partner Scott points out the dismissal of grand jurors by a prosecutor is flagrantly illegal.
Under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 6, only a federal judge has the authority to excuse a grand juror for “good cause” (such as illness or extreme hardship). Prosecutors cannot arbitrarily dismiss jurors whose votes they disagree with.
Judge Perry said, “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”
The Remnants of Assad’s Chemical Weapons Program Discovered
Reuters
Scott: Over many years, Bashar al-Assad and his Russian patrons managed a remarkably resourceful push back against accusations that he developed and had used chemical weapons in violation of international law.
But now the gig is up. Assad lives a life of seclusion in Moscow as his successors in Damascus managed a investigation into the program, which has yielded results, Reuters reports.
Syria’s transitional leadership has located remnants of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s clandestine chemical weapons program, including raw materials and munitions similar to those used to carry out deadly gas attacks during the country’s long-running civil war, a Syrian official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Syrian authorities have also taken into custody 18 suspects for alleged involvement in Assad’s chemical weapons program, including high-level military, political and technical officials, said Mohamad Katoub, Syria’s permanent representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, in an interview.
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Charles: As we explained in our statement of principles, we are above and beyond anything else relentless critics of the press who believe that the frank facism and shameless corruption of the Trump administration make the old customs of deference incompatible with the kind of journalism the United States needs right now.
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