On Wednesday 27 June 2018, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. The move, while not unlikely coming from the 82-year-old jurist, was unexpected, and set the capital buzzing, with Democrats and Republicans quickly forming ranks and preparing for the grueling political battle ahead.
On Friday evening, June 22nd, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her party of seven others were asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, without being served. The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, politely ejected Sanders after restaurant staff expressed discomfort at serving the premiere spokesperson for the Trump administration.
A bizarre sidebar emerged in the migrant family separation story on Thursday, June 21st, when First Lady Melania Trump made an unannounced visit to a detention center for minors in McAllen, Texas. Both when boarding her plane in Washington, and again when disembarking upon her return, Mrs. Trump wore a green jacket emblazoned on the back with the words “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” in white graffiti-style lettering.
OK, this is one for the books! Tem Tarriktar, publisher of “The Mountain Astrologer”, recently approached me with a cosmic challenge – find the asteroidal basis of one of the most bizarre sports-related stories of our time. On June 18th Kathy McVay was assaulted at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game by a wild-pitch wiener launched from the team mascot’s hot dog cannon.
Two Trump-related stories came into focus in mid-June, just as the President celebrated his 72nd birthday. On the day of, June 14th, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood gave Trump a rather unusual present, charging his charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, with state and federal charities law violations extending over a decade.
Meanwhile, controversy mounted over the Justice Department’s “zero tolerance” policy on immigration, which has been the cause of children being separated from their parents and held in detention. The debate came to a crescendo over the Father’s Day weekend,
On Tuesday June 12th, 2018, US Representative Mark Sanford (R-SC) lost his primary bid for reelection, in a hotly contested race which went to his rival, state representative Katie Arrington, who had been endorsed by Donald Trump. Although Sanford had an 87% record of voting with the White House on the issues, he had also been deprecating about some of the Commander-in-Chief’s more egregious Tweets and statements, and Trump had trashed him in a fit of presidential pique.
