The 2026 US midterm elections, to be held on November 3rd, are among the most consequential in the nation’s history. If the slide into autocracy for the US is to be averted, it’s essential that Democrats retake at least one chamber of Congress, since Republicans are apparently unwilling to curb even the worst impulses of the Mad King.
June 2026 saw a bevy of controversies, eccentricities, and record setting. If this is what Uranus in Gemini is going to be like, hold onto your hats for the next seven years! Throughout, referential asteroids in significant placement tell the tales, from an NBA championship to an insulted Italian Prime Minister, a tentative peace deal, a rectified name change, and the world’s first trillionaire.
Somewhere in the midst of all the fireworks and monument upgrades, the competing nonpartisan and partisan 250th birthday celebrations, the gilding and ballroom-building, and the Octagon-style cage matches on the White House lawn, is a weakened, tired, mentally-challenged old man, tuning 80 and facing his mortality. Badly.
The defining feature of the second Trump administration so far has been the Retribution Comeback Tour, with Trump venting his rage on any and all who have ever opposed him, from prosecutors to pundits and politicians, many in his own Party. But providing the backbeat has been an increasingly obvious obsession with gold and gilding. As a metaphor for wealth generally, one of very few things Trump truly seems to care about, gold is certainly apt, but there’s a limit, and Trump doesn’t seem to have found it. From tacky scrollwork embellishments and knickknacks in the Oval Office, to a golden Marie Antoinette-style White House Ballroom, a proposed gold-accented massive Triumphal Arch near Arlington National Cemetery, regilding the equine statues by the Lincoln Memorial, even a larger-than-life gold statue of himself at his Doral golf club, Trump is cranking out more gold than Midas himself would know what to do with.
So little time, so many stories. Once again, AAA plays catch-up with some skipped news over the final weeks of May 2026. Included: a pair of top-level Summit meetings in Beijing; the death of a long-term progressive Congressman, a leading light in the fight for gay rights; and the grand finale of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
So many stories, so little time! In Part Two of this catchall conglomeration, we’re looking at developments in late April, US-based, including a federal reclassification of marijuana, another failed Trump assassination attempt, and a gentle monarchical rebuke.
