Yesterday Trump again showed his true colors to the world at the United Nations.

Given 15 minutes to address the UN General Assembly, he spoke for 57 minutes in a rant that will go down in history as cruel, embarrassing, false, and insane.  

Heather Cox Richardson ends her column today with this: The United Nations correspondent for the Associated Press, Farnoush Amiri, reported that “[a] UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.”

We know that those Trump chooses to support and lie to him are incompetent, but who knew they can’t even ride an escalator without stopping it or manage to work a teleprompter.  On the other hand, maybe it was purposeful, an underhanded way to stop him now so we can return to the well-thought out and considered values on which the country was founded.  

Jimmy Kimmel was returned to us, and ended his beautiful monologue with the hope that the silver lining of this is bringing people from the left, right and center together to speak up for the First Amendment. He said he was touched by the speech that Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, delivered at his memorial on Sunday, in which she said she forgave the man who shot her husband.

“That is an example we should follow. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do, there it was. … A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow.” Kimmel said. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that and not this.”

Saturday is the No Kings Mass Protest.  I have three locations within walking distance of my home, so I’m hoping enough people come that the three become one.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince wrote that “there is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak”.  

May we meet in comradeship and climb together towards the same peak for unity, peace, community, protection, and connection in our country and the world.   

Heather Cox Richardson today:

 In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”

The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.

We all know the day. Pearl Harbor was December 7, not June 7th.

Here’s a history of the American Revolution, thanks to Heather:

In the New York Times, I read an article by Molly Young on Finland topping the World’s Happiness Index.  What’s the measure since Bhutan, the country whose Gross National Happiness Index gave rise to the report, has been absent from the list since 2019, when it came in number 95?

After visiting saunas, Young goes to Helsinki’s main library called Oodi which is Finnish for Ode.  She writes that the library is “enchanting but it was a piece of signage that took my breath away. At home in Brooklyn, the library is papered with reminders to “Please keep your voice down.” In contradistinction, the signs at Oodi said, “Please let others work in peace!” The two commands are almost — but meaningfully not — synonymous. The Brooklyn version is a plea for self-control. The Finnish version is a request to acknowledge the existence of other people. You see the difference.“

“On the top floor were books, games and sheet music from composers like Edvard Grieg and Yanni. There was a second cafe (more salmon soup, pink-domed princess cakes) and glass jars of fresh flowers at every table. Bucida buceras trees grew indoors. Sunshine pressed gently through curved glass walls. Beyond the walls stood the House of Parliament with its mighty gray facade. The Oodi balcony was designed to rest at precisely the same level as the entrance to the House — “to symbolise democracy and dialogue,” according to a library brochure.“

“Children in stocking feet rolled down a sloping spruce floor as though it were a grassy hill. (Pause to contemplate the farfetchedness of a public library in a major U.S. city that is clean enough for floor-rolling.) Watching them frolic beneath a wavy egg of ceiling I became, once again, very sad. Here was a vision of human flourishing that was simultaneously simple and inconceivable. As a kid in San Francisco, I remember walking into a public library and overhearing a man crack the following joke: “For a homeless shelter, this place sure has a lot of books.”“

“It would be a mistake not to mention that Oodi performed a shelter function, too. There were people with an unusual volume of possessions using the space as a temperature-controlled sleeping enclosure. It was allowed.” 

She goes on but I’m struck by how each of us measures our own happiness, and how a country spends its money.  Trump wants to increase the defense budget to one trillion dollars for 2026 while cutting programs that benefit the people, and so sadly the happiness index of the U.S. is going down and we’re in 24th place.