Tropical Storm Isaias is forecast to track northeastward and quickly ramp up to a hurricane while over the central Gulf in the next several hours. Landfall along the central Gulf Coast is expected Friday night or Saturday morning as a strong Category 2 storm.  Residents in the FL panhandle, MS, LA and AL should pay attention to local forecasts.

A hurricane watch is in effect from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Indian Pass, Florida. A storm surge watch is in effect from the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana to Yankeetown, Florida. {Nat Hurricane Center} Those in the forecast areas are strongly advised to pay close attention to local officials and heed all evacuation orders.

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Check your hurricane supplies of shelf-stable food, water, medicine and don’t forget pets.  Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.  Everything is replaceable, except you and your family.  We have a lot of Treepers in the path of this storm. If you need assistance, use the comments section of any ‘Isaias Update thread’ to reach out, or use the email address in the upper right of the site.

Right now, you are in control.  Have a solid plan, work that plan – stay busy, and don’t get caught up in the hysteria.  Try to avoid national media hype. Stay updated via your local news stations. Friday morning looks like the key day impact zones will be identified.  Reach out to your neighbors; touch-base and check to see if they are okay or need anything.  Community restoration begins before the storm arrives. Look out for each-other.

Remember the inland lessons in Tennessee and Western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene. Regarding any evacuation plan, please pay attention to your local officials who will be coordinating with state Dept. of Transportation.  As the path and impact zone of the storm becomes more predictable your local officials will alert to best route(s) for evacuation.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a press conference with Giorgos Gerapetritis, the Greek Foreign Minister earlier today. Rubio is on a three-nation strategic alliance tour of Iceland, Greece and Portugal.

The video and transcript of the press remarks and questions are below.

[Transcript] – SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.  Thank you for your welcome.  It’s actually great to be here to have our sixth Strategic Dialogue, which is ongoing, and we’ve begun downstairs a few minutes ago.  It’s an event where our two countries commit to continue to work together on a range of issues.

We are two countries that are bound by a common heritage and by proud histories.  The United States and Greece share a long history of friendship and partnership and alliance.  In fact, the importance of this historical alliance is highlighted by the instability in the world today that we see as a result of conflicts in Hormuz with Iran, or the conflicts in the Red Sea with – in Yemen, or the conflicts in Ukraine and Russia.  As you see a world that faces these destabilizing events, you recognize how important this alliance with Greece is to the United States.

It’s both historic – historical in its foundation, but it is also critical.  It is a source of stability in an unstable world.  And I’m thankful – we’re thankful – that Greece remains a great ally and that we share a common understanding – this is really important – not just a great ally – we share a common understanding of the threats that face our countries, the face – the threat – that face our societies.  And we share a common understanding about the means to address them.

One thing we agree on, for example, is that the nations of Europe need to take on a greater share of the burden in defending their continent, and Greece is doing just that.  They’re on track to meet the commitments that have been made to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense this year, with over 3.5 of that – of their GDP – percent of GDP being spent on core defense.  They’re also joining the National Guard’s Bureau of State Partnership Program, and they’ll be paired, ironically enough, with the Florida National Guard, which will bring our military collaboration even closer.

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During an oval office press availability today, President Trump is asked directly about Joe Biden, former AG Merrick Garland and former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith targeting himself and his family.  WATCH:

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Following announcements to update on the status of “Trump Accounts” for American youth, President Trump took questions from the media.

Media questions begin at 22:38 of the video below. The question topics included: AG Garland & DOJ weaponization, Russia plague a bioweapon? Trump Accounts & capitalism Mr. & Mrs. Dell & Trump Accounts (Dells respond), regret endorsing Ken Paxton? Conflict of interest (?) Could France protests happen here? Go to football game if hurricane? Nobel Peace Prize, Mar-a-Lago as Prez retreat? Dems impeach you for what? Spoken with Pres. Putin? Election integrity, Mortgage rates (Sec. Bessent responds) Trump Accounts & midterm Money givebacks & midterm Russia sharing information? (Plague) Mike Rogers & trade with Canada.

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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio used the background of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, to highlight how western civilized history created the cornerstone of western democratic ideals….. Then government became complacent.

As nations of the western world struggle with retention of civil order, Rubio notes the fundamental ideas and ethical laws that originated from Greece still exist today, and we can choose to reestablish the essential code of ideals and honor.

…”Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.

The word “nationalism” became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments; we condemned our own history. And in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit. In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.

And with every passing year, we seemed to outsource more of our sovereignty, transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control.”… WATCH:

[Transcript] – SECRETARY RUBIO: “There are great ruins all across the world. In many cases, they are places where history seems to have exhausted itself: remnants of distant cultures that have long passed beyond living memory.

But the Acropolis is different.

For thousands of years, the civilization that built what stands behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world. Generations of our statesmen, artists, and philosophers have looked to it – they’ve looked to it with wonder and they’ve looked to it with awe.

Now time has a tendency to dull the senses: great victories and catastrophic defeats, they seem to shrink to becoming like a footnote in a textbook, another fact for our schoolchildren to memorize and forget. But the Greeks of antiquity, they seem to have an almost mystical hold on our memory. They call us back to them, again and again.

480 years before Christ, the armies of Xerxes arrived in this city and they put its sanctuaries to the torch. Most Athenians had by then evacuated by ship to a nearby island. But there was a handful of them that refused to leave their home. So instead, they barricaded themselves in the rocky fortress of the Acropolis to fight an extraordinary last stand, heaving massive stones down the cliffs onto the Persian invaders and holding the greatest empire of the age at bay for days. They were eventually overwhelmed. The Persians plundered the temples, burned the shrines, and razed the Acropolis to the ground but when the Athenians returned, they gathered the broken remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill where it had stood. And decades later, under Pericles, they raised the Parthenon.

For 25 centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow. And the progeny of the men who built it – the sons of Athens and Rome – have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the Earth.”

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

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President Trump announced a collective investment effort between defense tech firm Anduril and the U.S. Navy worth an estimated $6.6 billion. $3.7 billion comes from the private sector by defense technology firm Anduril in a new shipyard at Sparrows Point, Maryland, alongside $2.9 billion in Navy contract funding. The facility will build next-generation submarines including autonomous underwater vessels.

When you really think about this effort closely, putting this kind of investment into U.S. shipbuilding in Baltimore is a genuine swing for the fences to reestablish northeast industrial manufacturing.  I give President Trump a lot of credit for taking this big a leap of faith in the Baltimore region.

The Trump administration has announced new or revitalized shipbuilding in Galveston TX, Houma LA, Brownsville TX and now Sparrows Point MD.  While the southern regions will likely be capable of transferring a solid work ethic into a successful America-First business model, trying to reindustrialize Baltimore away from a dependency mindset (built on a foundation of corruption) to a skilled jobs work ethic, is a very bold move.

There will certainly be job opportunities for people outside the immediate Baltimore area who are willing to travel for high-paying good quality work.  Anduril will also need some form of trade-school, apprenticeship or vocational training if the manufacturing hub is to be generationally changing.   This really is a major move to put money behind reindustrialization in one of the key areas where it was destroyed by leftism, globalism and corruption.  WATCH:

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You might remember the story of CIA senior officer David J. Rush, 49, of Ashburn, Virginia, who was indicted after an FBI investigation found gold bars, cash in dollars and euros as well as luxury cars and dozens of luxury watches.

Today the DOJ announced that Rush has plead guilty {pdf SEE HERE} in a deal where he will admit to one count of wire fraud, and that will permit the DOJ to finish prosecuting the case without revealing extremely sensitive information about the CIA operations Rush was involved in.

Rush stands accused of manipulating more than $195 million in wire transfers to his own accounts, after setting up covert fake CIA operations centered around unknown foreign intelligence efforts.  When you read the plea agreement that stipulates the facts of his activity, it certainly sounds like David Rush was able to execute the fraud under the auspices of Ukraine operations.

To be clear, there’s no mention of Ukraine, but the scale of the money involved, the timing of the activity, the location of the real estate and the attributes of the money and gold (as described) sound very Ukrainian-ish.

DOJ PRESS RELEASE – […] On May 19, 2026, the FBI searched Rush’s residence and recovered 298 gold bars, approximately $2,106,550 in cash, €104,795, and numerous luxury watches. Rush had obtained the gold bars at an approximate cost to the government of $46 million. Pursuant to the plea agreement, Rush has agreed to forfeit the gold bars and currency found at his home, the fraudulently obtained properties, 30 watches (many of which were Rolexes), and two 2026 BMW Alpina vehicles, at least one of which is valued at approximately $172,000. 

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President Donald Trump delivers remarks to the assembled press pool as he departs the White House to attend a ship building event in Baltimore, Maryland.  It’s a short chopper presser.  WATCH:

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