What does Xi know that you don't?

Let's start our round-up of the day's news with a note from Francis Fukuyama, leading with "It was both painful and humiliating to watch media coverage of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Beijing" and getting more depressing from there. Yes, and:

• The OAFPOTUS and the Justice Department that he controls "agreed" never to investigate the obvious tax improprieties the entire Trump family perpetrates now and "in perpetuity," or at least until someone enforces 26 USC 7217, the "prohibition on executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations." Or until half a million citizens file actions under the False Claims Act.
• Josh Marshall calls this and other obviously corrupt acts "a kind of bust-out phase, realizing that his power is ebbing and you need to grab every dollar on the table, cross every line while it’s still possible."
• Paul Krugman says MAGA corruption has reached the point of no return as the OAFPOTUS loots the country. "I would argue that the blatant nature of the new looting is a signpost of where America under Trumpism is heading in the months and years ahead. So you can think of the $1.8 billion slush fund as a promise to MAGA-world that there is a payoff to be had if they just stick with him for the next two and a half years." Dan Rather agrees.
• Brian Beutler predicts that Illinois governor JB Pritzker will win the Democratic primary in 2028, and wow do I hope so. Or maybe Georgia's junior US Senator, Jon Ossoff? That works for me too.
• Speaking of corruption (do I do anything else?) and closer to home, Chicago Parking Meters LLC appears to have been sold to a private-equity group in New York. The Chicago City Council still has to approve the measure, and the only mayor we have backed us out of a deal for the city to buy the revenue back. That's OK, the deal only has another 50 or so years to run.

Finally, Jeff Maurer rages against what postal mail has become, and I can't disagree after trying to get my Real ID renewed last week. My recurring joke, which is more an expression of sadness than humor, is that the Post Office has delivered my recycling again. "Not only am I paying for trees to be cut down, sent to my house in the form of chores, and then hauled away again, but I’ll also get in trouble if I miss the oh-so-important needles that are mixed into the haystack. I am enrolled against my will in a system that feels like some shit The Riddler dreamed up," he writes. He's not wrong.