So the royal visit was a resounding success. Charles III got whisky tariffs dropped, Trump got a shiny new bell, the “Special Relationship” (yuck) endures. If only the weather could have played ball for Tuesday morning’s White House greeting. The President branded the spattering rain and cloudy skies “a beautiful British day.”
One member of Congress saw the forecast and decided to give the festivities a miss: Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who opted to wait for the King to give his joint address indoors that afternoon. “I love King Chuck, but I am not going to ruin a suit for him,” Kennedy was overheard telling reporters. Quite.
The state dinner Tuesday night produced a minor slip-up for the New York Times. The Gray Lady had to issue the following correction on its story listing the attendees:
A correction was made on April 29, 2026: An earlier version of this list misidentified one of the guests, Keith Poole. He is the editor in chief of The New York Post, not the former N.F.L. player of the same name.
Poole the wide receiver had a middling career with the New Orleans Saints and the Denver Broncos at the turn of the millennium. Poole the expatriate newspaper editor has had a storied multi-decade run helming the West’s top tabloids. Easy mistake to make.
On our radar
FLORIDA MAN President Trump travels to Florida this afternoon, for an event with seniors at the Villages before attending the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches dinner this evening.
SMELLS LIKE NO SPIRIT The budget Spirit Airlines is preparing to shut down after a $500 million government bailout effort faltered. (Read Matt McDonald’s defense of the airline here.)
PENT UP The Pentagon has struck AI deals with seven Big Tech firms. They do not include Anthropic, which the Trump administration has blacklisted.
Maine character energy
Is it all over for the Democratic gerontocracy? Janet Mills, the 78-year-old Governor of Maine, dropped out of Vacationland’s Democratic primary for the US Senate this week. Mills had been encouraged to run by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, 75, as a safer, middle-of-the-road alternative to Graham Platner. Platner, you may recall, is a 41-year-old ruddy-faced red-headed “oysterman” type, who codes working class by railing against the oligarchy, championing Medicare for All and campaigning with Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (84 and 76, respectively). In reality, he went to Hotchkiss and is descended from a noted 20th-century architect and interior designer. We contain multitudes.
Platner has managed to survive a number of scandals that would prove fatal for other campaigns: a back catalog of foul-mouthed Reddit posts, the small matter of an SS tattoo he got in the Marine Corps, the resulting rotating door of staff departures. Despite all that, he managed to show more staying power than Mills, who said she lacked the “financial resources” to make it to the June 9 primary.
Bankers’ bonuses
A former JPMorgan employee, 35-year-old Chirayu Rana, this week accused 37-year-old Lorna Hajdini, a high-ranking female executive at the bank, of sexual harassment under the pseudonym John Doe. The Daily Mail broke the sensational story Wednesday, citing explicit details from a now-retracted court document. Rana accused Hajdini of “turning him into her ‘sex slave’ by drugging him with Rohypnol and Viagra and threatening to slash his bonus if he did not comply,” as reported by the New York Post. Some of the phraseology in the Mail story stretched credulity. Rana alleged that Hajdini referred to him as “my little brown boy,” propositioned him multiple times and demeaned his “little Asian, fish head, wife” for lacking “cannons.”
Online mayhem followed. Rana and Hajdini were portrayed in a viral AI fruit soap-opera video – a now-familiar format which uses anthropomorphized fruit to depict lurid sexual scenarios, often in workplace settings. The video was on the one hand painful for Cockburn to watch, yet on the other, impossible to look away from. The video features some iconic lines from the court document such as, “Who is going to believe you?” It also embellishes with commentary from side characters: “No, sir, this is a complaint.”
Hajdini denied the sexual harassment claims outright and her lawyers issued a statement through the New York Post: “Lorna categorically denies the allegations. She never engaged in any inappropriate conduct with this individual of any kind and has never even been to the location where the alleged sexual assault supposedly took place.” Based on internal investigation, JPMorgan determined that the claims were a “complete fabrication.” In fact, those familiar with the company’s structure at the time of the allegations said that Rana did not report to Hajdini and that she would not have had any say over his bonus.
For those of you looking for the local angle: Rana is from Northern Virginia and went to Bishop O’Connell High School in Falls Church. Go Knights!
Needless to say, the “he said, she said” story has brought the bank’s reputation into disrepute. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for them. Almost.
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