All of our presidents did things in their youth that they were not particularly proud of: George Washington chopped down that cherry tree; Bill Clinton famously didn’t inhale, but Barack Obama did. And when he was 30, George W. Bush was caught driving under the influence. (He quit drinking for good ten years later.)

When Trump was 33, his company evicted a 74-year-old widow from her Queens apartment. As Joe Conason reported in the May 5, 1980, edition of the Voice, the Trump Organization sent “three big fat men” to Mary Filan’s apartment to clear both her belongings and her bedridden body out of the building on Barclay Avenue in Flushing.

Filan, who had recently suffered a stroke, told Conason, “They said they’d come to put me on the street because I owed four months’ rent. I don’t owe back rent. The last thing I got from Trump was a bill for $10.20, about two weeks ago, and I sent that. They just want me out because they can get twice as much rent.”

“Trump Evicts Stroke Victim”
May 5, 1980

For more than 30 years Mary Filan — widowed, 74 years old, and half-paralyzed from a recent stroke — has lived in apartment 6B, 143-15 Barclay Avenue in Flushing. Last Friday afternoon, she answered the insistent doorbell, only to be pushed aside by the henchmen of city marshal Norman Katz, who proceeded to cart her belongings out to an idling truck. Taped to her door was an eviction notice from her landlords, the Trump Organization.

They took Filan’s sofa, chairs, TV, jewelry, dishes, and silverware, leaving nothing but a hamper for her to sit on. The marshals and the police tried to convince her to leave, but she refused to go until a neighbor, Bob Hennessy, convinced her to stay in his apartment until she could get help.

“She was distraught,” said Hennessy, and by Monday afternoon he was still unable to ascertain where her belongings had been taken. Thanks to her doctor and the Human Resources Administration, Mary Filan is resting in a bed at Parsons Hospital.

“They rang the bell,” recalls Filan, “and I was still in bed. I don’t get up much unless I have to. They rang and rang, and when I got to the door they pushed it open, and walked in, these three big fat men. They went right in the kitchen and started pulling out drawers, turning ’em upside down into one of these big cartons.

“They said they’d come to put me on the street because I owed four months’ rent. I don’t owe back rent. The last thing I got from Trump was a bill for $10.20 about two weeks ago, and I sent that. They just want me out because they can get twice as much rent.” Mary Filan currently pays about $200 a month for her apartment. Her income — from Social Security and a telephone company pension — is under $500 a month.

The Trump Organization is one of the biggest landlords in this city, a dynasty passed from father Fred to son Donald. Like most dynasties, it has flourished through the exercise of power; in earlier time, mostly through the Brooklyn Democratic machine; now, through Donald’s liaisons with the governor and a variety of state agencies, particularly the Urban Development Corporation, which paid Donald Trump more than $800,000 for brokering its convention center deal. He has used political clout to obtain more than $160 million in tax exemptions for his renovation of the old Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street. Donald Trump is a very successful 33-year-old dealer and developer. So why did Trump evict Mary Filan?

“The Trumps don’t get involved in any of that,” said a spokesman at their Manhattan office. “The management corporation handles that kind of thing. It’s part of the company, but the Trumps don’t get involved with individual cases.” He didn’t know why Mary Filan had been evicted. She doesn’t give loud parties, or cause property damage, or threaten her neighbors, who are actually fond of her.

“The Trump Organization doesn’t evict people indiscriminately,” he said at last, and suggested another number to call for specific comments on the Filan case. There was no answer at that number; nobody seemed to care about the details.

Nearly 600,000 Trump supporters paid $100 each towards a gold smartphone that, nearly a year on, does not exist.

The Trump Mobile T1 phone was announced in June 2025 by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as a patriotic alternative to Apple and Samsung, retailing at $499 and promising a ‘Made in the USA’ build.

An estimated 590,000 buyers paid a $100 deposit to secure one, collectively handing the Trump Crime Family roughly $59 million.

As of May 2026, not a single confirmed customer has received the device.

Now, a fresh wave of anger is spreading across MAGA forums after buyers received communication making clear that their money is, for all practical purposes, gone.

Trump Mobile launched on 16 June 2025 at an announcement at Trump Tower, headlined by the president’s two eldest sons and timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign launch. The T1 was marketed as a gold-colored Android handset bearing an American flag on its back and bundled with a monthly service plan at $47.45) per month. Initial delivery was promised for late summer 2025.

That deadline slipped to November 2025, then December, then the first quarter of 2026. A mid-March 2026 T-Mobile carrier certification deadline also passed without resolution. By April 2026, Trump Mobile quietly redesigned its website, removing the release date entirely rather than replacing it with a new one.

NBC News, which placed its own $100 deposit in August 2025 to track the story, called Trump Mobile’s support line five times between September and November 2025 and received inconsistent answers each time. A representative said in October that the phone would ship on 13 November, but it did not.

In January 2026, a call center operator said the T1 was ‘in the final stages of certification and field testing,’ with a ship date ‘sometime in Q1 2026.’ That quarter has now passed. At one point, customer service representatives blamed a 43-day federal government shutdown for the delay, an explanation analysts quickly dismissed as irrelevant to a private-sector hardware company.

The clearest signal yet that buyers may never see either a phone or their money came with a revised terms of service published on 6 April 2026. The updated document states explicitly that paying a deposit ‘does not constitute a completed purchase and does not create a binding legal contract.’ The payment is described as ‘a conditional opportunity to buy the device if Trump Mobile eventually chooses to sell it,’ with the company retaining all control over whether a phone is produced at all.  TRANSLATION:  We will keep your deposit, we will never return your deposit, so don’t ask about deposits.

The terms confirm that deposits will not accrue interest, are non-transferable and carry no independent cash value. Buyers who wish to cancel must submit a request through customer support before any final sale is completed. If Trump Mobile cancels the project outright, it says it will issue refunds of the original deposit amount. The fine print adds, however, that the company bears no liability for delays caused by ‘parts shortages or hold-ups with regulators,’ and that buyers waive any right to pursue claims beyond the original deposit figure

The T1 was sold from day one on the strength of a single, politically loaded promise: it would be built in America. Within days of the June 2025 launch, that language vanished from the Trump Mobile website. ‘MADE IN THE USA’ became ‘American-proud design,’ then ‘Brought to life right here in the USA,’ language that supply chain experts noted was legally and commercially meaningless.

By February 2026, company executives confirmed to reporters that the T1 would not be manufactured in the United States. Final assembly of roughly the last ten components would take place in Miami, while bulk production would happen overseas. In the meantime, Trump Mobile began selling refurbished iPhones, made in China, and Samsung devices, made by a South Korean company, under the same ‘American’ branding umbrella.

For nearly 600,000 Americans who trusted a brand built on the Trump name, the gold phone has become the latest entry in a long record of ventures that took their money and delivered nothing. And these morons are waiting patiently for the next Trump scam so they can send him more money.

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UPDATE:

MAY11, 2026:  TRUMP PHONES ARE NOW BEING DELIVERED

 

COVID came into the US as a viral disease that struck 12 passengers on a cruise ship who were quarantined in California.

Trump was President at the time and he told us it was nothing to worry about.  Donald Trump often predicted that COVID-19 would “disappear” or “go away” on its own.  

1,500,000 dead Americans later . . . .

AND NOW:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed it is sending a team to Spain’s Canary Islands, where the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius is expected to arrive on Sunday, and US passengers will be evacuated to an airbase in Nebraska. However, experts say the US is unprepared for such a disease threat.

The CDCs limited role in responding to the hantavirus outbreak is raising questions, including whether it now has a diminished role in responding to health scares. Most of the response has been led by the World Health Organization (WHO), of which the US is no longer a member.

The hantavirus outbreak was reported to the WHO on 2 May; a notice issued two days later updated to seven confirmed or suspected cases. Three people had died, one person was critically ill and three others had mild symptoms.

On Wednesday, the CDC said in a statement it was “closely monitoring the situation” and said the state department was leading a “whole-of-government response including direct contact with passengers, diplomatic coordination, and engagement with domestic and international health authorities”. It wasn’t until Thursday that the CDC activated its 24/7 emergency center in Atlanta to monitor the recent hantavirus outbreak and classified it at its lowest activation level.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/09/cdc-hantavirus-who-cruise-ship-outbreak-response

Jack Smith remarks spur report he could drop ‘unreleased evidence’ against Trump

Source: Raw Story

May 10, 2026 8:16AM ET

Jack Smith is reportedly sending a message to President Donald Trump: even as he faces the prospect of prosecution, he still possesses weaponizable information that could damage the president.

Speaking at a private event at the Cosmos Club in Washington on April 20, Smith indicated his readiness to take on potential charges and signaled he could deploy unreleased evidence should Trump move forward with retaliatory prosecution, according to video of the event obtained by The New York Times. “But unlike others targeted by Mr. Trump, Mr. Smith still could inflict damage on the president by revealing unreleased evidence. He appears unfazed by the prospect of shifting from accuser to accused,” the Times reported.

The implicit threat underscores the precarious position of both men: Trump is demanding Smith’s prosecution, but doing so risks Smith going public with material that could prove damaging to the president. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former lead defense lawyer, now controls whether to bring charges, a potential conflict of interest that intensifies the political stakes.

Previously, the White House successfully blocked the release of a section of Smith’s final report on the Mar-a-Lago documents case that “might have reminded the public of the evidence used to bolster the indictment,” according to the Times.

Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/jack-smith-2676874374/

Here’s what the whole gerrymandering debate is about: Who gets to have and exercise power.

The Speaker of the Alabama House delivered a timely reminder, as the state legislature moved at lightning speed to pass “new” voting maps (they’re really, more or less, the old ones that the Supreme Court said were illegal a couple of years back). In a press conference, the Speaker, Nathaniel Ledbetter, called on the courts to “overturn the 14th Amendment.”  There is no ambiguity. He’s talking about the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Unfortunately, no one followed up to ask Ledbetter which part he objected to. There are five sections in the 14th Amendment. Donald Trump already objects to the guarantee of birthright citizenship: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But the Supreme Court seems likely to hand him a loss in that regard; his executive order is currently on hold while it considers the case.

So maybe it’s the start of the next sentence? “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Or maybe it’s the following clause: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Maybe it’s the provision that prohibits states from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Probably it’s all three. What’s clear is that he wants the courts to say Alabama can use maps that were drawn with the intent to prevent Black people’s votes from counting. In any event, the Supreme Court doesn’t overrule constitutional provisions; it’s job is to interpret them.

Ledbetter is wrong, no matter how you look at it. He’s wrong about the law and how it works, which is odd for such a highranking law maker. He was elected to the Alabama House in November of 2014, which means he’s been around for long enough to have acquired some experience doing the job and understanding how government works. So making a statement like this amounts to little more than pandering, and the only people to whom a statement like this appeals are (yes, I’m going to say it out loud) racists.

You would think Alabama would have learned its lesson. Selma. Birmingham, The Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

When Alabama elected Doug Jones to the Senate, it was a marker for who the state thought it could be. It was Jones who brought the men responsible for killing four girls preparing for worship services at the 16th Street Church to justice as a prosecutor. It meant something for the state to elect him. It also means something when Alabama’s House Speaker stands for using racially discriminatory maps to intentionally do away with Black electoral representation.

Alabama’s position here is unique. Because of Milligan, the case where the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, which has rarely seen a gerrymander it won’t sign off on said Alabama’s was a bridge too far, there is still an injunction in place that keeps Alabama from reverting to its discriminatory maps. (Background on Milligan here if you want a refresher). Of course, it raced to court to undo that after Callais was decided. And now, it’s just a couple of days, working through Tornado warnings and flooding of the statehouse, the Republican supermajority has passed what Ledbetter called “a contingency plan” for the lifting of that injunction. “The moment we get relief, Alabama will be ready to act,” he tweeted on Friday.

In Ledbetter’s view, how the state should draw maps that are used to elect members of Congress is a matter of “conservative values.” He seems to be unaware that elections are about letting every eligible voter have their say, not about a political ideology. Who you vote for is a political choice, but the right to vote is foundational. That’s what the pro-Trump faction, not just in the Deep South, but across the country, is willing to overlook in order to stand by their man and stay in power. And in any event, the court-ordered maps that are currently in use in Alabama, which Ledbetter calls “nothing more than a racially gerrymandered disgrace that does not represent the conservative values held by Alabamians,” were imposed by a panel of judges consisting of two Donald Trump appointees and one Ronald Reagan appointee.

“Alabama has done its part in helping President Trump maintain a republican Congress, and we will continue fighting to ensure that our elections are decided by Alabamians, not activist judges.” Politicians who want to stay in power instead of protecting the rights of the people they serve, the voters, to decide who represents them.

The stakes are the legitimacy of our democracy. Memphis, Tennessee, is where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, because he demanded equality and dignity for Black people. Now, the Tennessee legislature, taking direction from the White House, has split up Memphis among three different congressional districts, eroding the right to vote in one of the places that was its cradle. Alabama, too, where people marched and were beaten bloody over the right to vote. Much of the rest of the South. And every place where elected officials are willing to sacrifice their constituents to the current occupant of the White House. We are indeed going back, and the problem isn’t just Alabama and Tennessee; it’s everywhere. It’s about who gets to register to vote, who gets to vote, and whose vote gets counted, and that affects all of us. In this moment, post-Callais, we have the opportunity to see, in blazing detail, the lengths Trump and his cronies are willing to go to in order to hold onto power. We can’t afford to sugarcoat the moment.

Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary.

 

15 people with hantavirus have been removed from a cruise ship and are being quarantined in the US.

COVID first appeared with 12 people off a cruise ship in California. Then-President Trump told us not to worry, the disease will run its course in 14 days.

As of January 20, 2021, when Donald Trump left office, the official COVID-19 death toll in the United States was over 400,000, some saying 450,000, some say more.

15 hantavirus . . . Trump is President . . . and Dr. Fauci is retired.

We are fucked.

Sure, Donald. pic.twitter.com/UowKRzONxu

— The Lincoln Project Advocacy (@LPAdvocacy) May 8, 2026