Another reason why Republican lawmakers are issuing a pass on the event has to do with the cost of attendance at the Felon’s rally in Texas, especially given that the Felon himself is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars that he has so far refused to spend to help Republicans’ election odds. So, yes, the starting price of entry: $25,000! For that fee, which gives those who agree to pay the tariff, as it were, one obtains the ability to book 1 singular hotel room (at an extra cost), 2 event tickets, and the right to attend a “welcome reception.” Not even a t-shirt, but I’m certain a mountain of branded MAGA shit will be available for purchase.

One has to wonder on what accomplishments the Felon will rally his followers. He will talk about 2020, again, and still offer no proof. He will segue into the need for the SAVE Act, even though he cannot prove any significant voter fraud. He will attack mail-in voting for reasons still unknown, but likely because he doesn’t want to make voting easy, notwithstanding the fact that most Americans love not having to wait in line at a polling place. Given that red states are limiting polling places by the hundreds, particularly in black and predominantly Democratic districts, this is voter suppression writ large.

As for the plan to sabotage mail-in voting? Representative Joe Morelle, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on House Administration, which oversees the administration of federal elections, posted: “These whistleblower allegations [the recent USPS claims] are extraordinary. If Trump Administration officials knowingly built a system designed to prevent Americans from receiving their ballots, that is not election security. It is a betrayal of our Constitution and the American people.”

While the Felon attempts to see a full house (which I would bet against as I think the crowd will be small, even in Texas) hear him rewind and repeat, Democrats will run against the Felon’s higher prices, his tariffs, his war, and his assault on governmental institutions. The icing on the cake will be reminding voters that the Republican Congress has enabled those policies. Funny thing, but the Speaker in his effort at continuing smugness, gave them a hand. When asked on CNN about his past projections about the Iran war, including calling it a skirmish that would be over in short order and lead to just a “temporary blip” in gas prices, his response was, well, less than persuasive. “That is one of the stupidest questions you’ve ever asked,” Johnson snapped. “I have nothing to do with the prosecution of the war across the globe.”

I guess maybe the Speaker should go back to the non-existent law school of which he was dean, and read the Constitution. If you take him at his word, the official position of the Speaker is that he, and by extension the House of Representatives, have nothing to do with matters of war and peace. And in fact his Party has voted time and again not to stop the war. It hasn’t even used its control of Congress to challenge the conduct of the war. Not even a peep was heard when the Felon and Pull Up Pete claimed that notwithstanding continuing fighting that the MOU tolled the 60 day time limit, claiming that there was no need to have Congress authorize the war.

The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility for declaring war, raising armed forces, appropriating funds for them, and making rules for their government and regulation. Do the American people want another Congress that utterly disclaims these responsibilities? Do the American people want another Republican Congress that rubber-stamps a war that’s a failure and that provides no oversight of a Defense Department in chaos? This is an area where it seems the Republicans don’t respect the American people who overwhelmingly do not support the war. Even military leadership was weighed in with the recent “do not concur” note with respect to our continuing military action.

We also cannot forget our actions against Venezuela. The DOD is not allowed by law to make equity investments in foreign countries. The official position of the US is that the current government of Venezuela is illegitimate, and yet they speak of the current president as our ally. But if the government is illegitimate, Caracas cannot enter binding legal contracts. Even if the current government of Venezuela were legitimate (according to the US), giving equity to a foreign government seems to be against the Venezuelan constitution, which I have noted previously. And why even mention Alejandro Betancourt, the guy who controls a big chunk of the Venezuelan oil market, and the one who it seems is the Felon’s “partner” who was, until recently, held in the United Kingdom while Swiss authorities sought to extradite him on suspicion of money laundering. Birds of a feather?

We have to do the math on this one. The deal is illegal from both the American and Venezuelan points of view. On paper, this deal cannot happen. So what does it all mean? Well, it seems than the Felon has chosen the short term mindset as if to say he’ll be long gone if and when anything is realized, so no problema para el presidente. And then the South America oligarch, Betancourt, is possibly hoping that he can take a piece of all the action, notwithstanding the Venezuela proscription against private ownership of Venezuela oil.

Finally, our week began when, by a vote of 5–4, the United States Supreme Court allowed the Felon to continue to build his ballroom. The 5 right-wing justices concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which had sued to stop the construction of the ballroom, did not have legal standing to sue and that national security considerations came down on the side of construction. In another chicken shit move, the majority said it was not resolving the issue of whether the project is legal. It was Chief Justice John Roberts who, as some may recall was the one who saved the ACA, wrote in dissent that the project is “likely unlawful.” “The White House is an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” Roberts wrote. He wrote that it is critical to “ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”

The Felon’s behavior in his second term is a logical outcome of the theory of the “unitary executive.” On July 1, 2024, the United States Supreme Court, stacked with the Felon’s appointees, took this theory to a conclusion that overturned the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law. It decided that the president of the United States has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch. Is it clear now why the Felon believes he has no guardrails or limits on what he does or says? The more terrifying part of this nightmare is that all of his enabling co-conspirators know that they can do whatever illegal nonsense they want because as he heads out the door everyone gets a pardon.

We must bring some order back to our country. We need to stop deflection, let alone outright lying. We need a reset that begins with playing by the rules. We need for Democrats to not simply point out the actions that have damaged so many millions of Americans, but to offer us what they will do differently. Face it the Republicans work for the wealthy as they accept the premise of Milton Friedman’s famous 1984 paper where he basically said there is no altruism in capitalism; it’s all about the accumulation of wealth. I think we have reached a tipping point in how we see capitalism that many of those aligned with the DSA promote, namely, we need a more progressive distribution of wealth, kind of like what existed before Reagan slashed income tax rates and gave us the most failed economic theory of all time: trickle down economics. Let’s all take action, rally people to the real issues, verify voter registration, and get out massive numbers to bring America back, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle warned that the Navy, which has been at the forefront of operations against Iran, cannot sustain its current level of support for the war. Barely a quarter of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is currently able to deploy, while delays in maintenance are threatening the readiness of other ships. While Leaders of the Army and Air Force concurred with the plan to extend force deployments, they warned that there would be significant risk to such an extension. With no surprise to anyone, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, a fact denier of the first order, took to social media to push back against the story, saying, “Publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary’s orders book is a crime. It’s a betrayal of the force…. We are in great shape around the world. This story isn’t about readiness. It’s TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] and PDS [Pete Derangement Syndrome]—they hate President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more than they love America.” But offer an actual assessment of military readiness to dispute the claim of knowledgeable military men (I know, it seems only men now) is to address the issue, when using shop-worn tropes is much easier.

National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “This is a good time to note that Hegseth is terrible at his job, that the Pentagon is a mess, that he should never have been confirmed, and that he should be fired first thing in the morning. But in this administration, sycophancy is more important than competence.”

Because he knows nothing about diplomacy, on Monday night, the Felon posted an AI video of military strikes and fires on what appears to be Iran’s Kharg Island, the major storage facility for Iran’s oil and the seaport for about 90% of its oil exports. The caption read: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT.” I guess that is Natalie doing her job. But as proof positive that General Bone Spurs has no respect for planning or reality, the DOD had to chime in yesterday morning and clarify that the U.S. had not attacked Kharg Island. The U.S. did, however, claim to have launched attacks on 2 Iranian rocket launchers yesterday as they attempted to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed to retaliate with strikes against Jordan, which the Jordanian military said were all intercepted. And for you and me? The price of oil went up.

As our leaderless leader is incapable of accomplishing anything for the benefit of the nation, he would rather post fantasies such as: “Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of “BULLSH*T.” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”.

And just when you think the lies have to stop, reports have been noting that the Pentagon has secretly hired several right-wing military veterans with large social media accounts, including Rob Maness, Kurt Schlichter, and Thomas Anderson, to boost Pull Up Pete’s positions. A Pentagon spokesperson would not comment on the content of their jobs, whether they are receiving a taxpayer-funded salary, or how long their employment is expected to last. Just as good old Ms. Leavitt would have said, this is the most transparent administration ever, which in Felon-speak means the biggest liars.

While the tip-toeing monster of loss creeps up, the Felon and his Party are looking for something on which to run, but since they have no accomplishments that actually benefitted a large segment of the country, they have adopted data centers. Yes, those mega-buildings that use so much power that the increase consumer costs, use so much water that neighbors are having issues with both availability and quality, create an ambient buzz, the long term impact of which does not seem to have been studied, and which will provide a lot of construction jobs in the short term, but where the long term job creation is miniscule. So, Don Donny weighed in: “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.” If they don’t fall in line, he added, “you will only have yourselves to blame.”

I don’t know about you but the threat of “backwards and poor” is simply insulting. The Felon is not a great unifier, in fact, he is the polar opposite. This is especially true on this issue as approximately 70% Americans say they don’t want one built in their community, and that opposition cuts clean across party lines. More than 500 localities have already stalled these projects, with New York passing a statewide moratorium. Don Donny would dispute that number and fall back on it being “fake news,” but as with all of his claims, he provides not facts or data to support his challenge. This really seems more like a punchline to some Yiddish-kite story that ends with “don’t ask” as the punch line.

Because the Felon is incapable of listening as he only wants to say what he wants to say, and because he has done nothing for the majority of Americans, it now appears that he understands that his Party’s prospects are not looking good. The Venezuela play will do nothing for our gas supply, especially as someone needs to invest billions in the infrastructure, and such private action is prohibited by the Venezuelan Constitution, so why not ignore the Supreme Court and do an end run on mail in ballots. We know that because a whistleblower has revealed that the U.S. Postal Service is moving to implement elements of an executive order from the Felon.

The disclosure was sent to the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal and was revealed in a letter he sent to Postmaster General David Steiner, an appointee of the Felon.
The whistleblower explained that the administration has been hurriedly putting in place an online system to purportedly screen ballots, which they say could lead to “catastrophic failure.” Of particular concern is the extreme sensitivity to purported errors built into the system. For instance, the complaint notes that if even one ballot out of a batch of 10,000 sent has an improperly scanned barcode, every single ballot in the batch would be sent back to the state—leaving thousands without a ballot to vote in the election.

Blumenthal’s office also relayed that the whistleblower contends that the rollout of the online system has been “sloppy” and “rushed,” and that “millions” may not receive their ballots in time to vote this year. But here is where the slime really bubbles up as Blumenthal also notes that much of the work on the system should not have occurred. Between June and August, the executive order was held back by federal court rulings that said it couldn’t be implemented. It wasn’t until the conservative majority on the Supreme Court gave the order the green light on Aug. 24 that many of these changes could have been made. However, on August 27, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on USPS’s implementation of the order, setting up yet another Supreme Court battle.

In his letter, Blumenthal demands details on what has been implemented so far. He is also seeking access to records showing changes made to the mail system regarding how ballots are being processed. The manipulation of the nation’s mail system is just one way in which the Felon and other Republicans have tried to rig the outcome of the election. Amidst this report, the Felon’s approval numbers are historically low, and other than the white-noise claims of fake news from the Felon, his Party is nervous heading into the midterms. His own senate campaign committee flagged data centers as a sleeper issue that could cost them seats. But we all know that the Felon cannot make the smart political move to listen and empathize, because he literally can’t do it. The end result is more name-calling and some ill conceived sense that people mistake the cruelty for strength.

Finally, while our nation is bleeding money, the Felon is spending $250,000 to fix up the White House bowling alley, without a peep from Congressional Republicans. This is particularly interesting that when President Obama sought in 2014, to fix the lanes in the White House alley, as they hadn’t been serviced in about 15 years, within 90 minutes after the story broke, the GSA scrapped the project after then-Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus tweeted about how the mere suggestion of even doing so was an indictment of Obama’s priorities, because he should have been fixing the economy and the border. House Republicans got so outraged over the mere possibility that Obama might try to do this sort of renovation that they adopted an amendment that would prohibit any funding to renovate the bowling alley, calling the lanes a “want,” not a “need.” With Don Donny, not a peep.

The bottom line is that the Felon fails to represent strength, and certainly wouldn’t know wisdom if it smacked him on the ass. The strongest thing a leader can do is sit across from someone who disagrees, take their concerns seriously, and try to win them over honestly. The weakest thing a leader can do is stand at a distance and hurl insults because he’s decided the people who serve under him owe him their agreement. Real authority persuades. Only fear and ego demand. We can help put a stop to much of this, at least the part about Congressional acquiescence, as we, we the people, have the power to demand our right to vote and use that vote to make the change we so desperately need, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

As with all of the Felon’s ALL CAPS proclamations, this one needs reviewing. A U.S. official told reporters at Politico that this deal was a new venture between the U.S. government and an “experienced private operator in Venezuela.” Although the official did not identify which operator that is, it became clear over the weekend that the person in question is Alejandro Betancourt López. Reporters from the New York Times explained that Betancourt’s family controls Venezuela’s second largest private oil producer, North American Blue Energy Partners. Betancourt has been accused of corruption for years; Switzerland has investigated him for money laundering and has issued a warrant for his arrest, although it has not charged him. Birds of a feather?

According to the report it appears the plan is for the U.S. government to back North American Blue Energy Partners, which will, in turn, develop oil reserves in 17 of Venezuela’s oil fields. The U.S. official who talked to the Politico journalists said the new venture would be the second-biggest private oil company in the world, after Saudi Aramco. The U.S. would control 55% of the venture’s output. When production starts, the person told the journalists, “the resulting stable supply of at-cost oil in our Hemisphere will go toward filling the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve and fulfilling the supply needs of our Great U.S. Military.” But an executive in the oil industry told the journalists that the deal was built on a legal environment that does not exist as the Venezuelan constitution does not allow for anyone other than Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company to own rights to oil and gas in the country. So, what we have is the Felon claiming billions of barrels of oil, which could stabilize prices as Don Donny could claim to actually have billions of barrels of oil in reserve, hoping that would assuage international concerns over the Strait of Hormuz’s closure.

What may actually be at play is a classic failure in planning. How so? Don Donny thinks “oil” but heaven forbid that he speaks with experts so that he might learn about any potential issues with Venezuelan oil. The fact is that it is different from other crude and as such there are not a lot of places to refine it in the US (apparently only 1 or 2 in Louisiana). Why would US companies want to invest in building new refineries as even they know the oil future is not what it once was, as they nonetheless bring in record profits. My guess is that they see no value in building new refineries and the longer ROI might not make sense.

Meanwhile, we should all be asking where is all the Venezuelan oil money? We don’t even know how it may benefit our country. I am not sure if we sought an audit we would get anywhere as the funds are in a Qatari bank! Would anyone be surprised if there were slimy side deals that benefitted the Felon and/or his family? Of course not! And are we supporting democracy there, or are we actually supporting the anti-democratic forces there?

If the Felon is not trying to rebuild DC, with largely tasteless crap with garish appointments, he is golfing in some way or another. Now we have the marriage of his love of golf and his favorite, ignoring a judicial order. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes said that she wanted advance notice before the government took down more than 10 trees from the East Potomac Golf Links or brought equipment larger than a sedan onto the property, as the administration has taken down more than 60 trees in apparent preparation for Don Donny to redesign the golf course. In classic absurd defensive positioning, a spokesperson for the Interior Department said: “Arborists are doing routine maintenance at East Potomac Park with selective removal of hazard trees, non-native invasive trees, and declining and dying trees that cannot be brought back to good health through any degree of intervention.”

There have been suits to stop the redesign of the historic publicly owned course. The Felon has said the makeover will begin on September 1, but the administration has released no final design, construction schedule or estimated cost. It has apparently not conducted either environmental or historical preservation reviews. It has not said how changes to the course will affect public access to the three courses and to the popular recreation path on the property. Anyone want to bet that he puts his name on the golf complex? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Steve Schmidt, the former speech writer for John McCain and a longtime Republican strategist, and a founder of the Lincoln Project, in response to a very general question regarding the Felon’s Presidency, spoke for 2 solid minutes and gave the most insightful and brutally honest response of what the Presidency of Don Donny has done to our great country.

“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And, I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And, he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And, there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.

“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country who’s ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale.

“And, let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are, because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

The spanking may be late, but, damn, that’s what I call a spanking!

Finally, and it’s also worth pointing out, that at this time in the Felon’s first term, he had the following officials: Jim Mattis, Kirstjen Nielsen, Jeff Sessions, Alex Azar, and Mike Pompe, and they represent a world of difference from what we have now. Mattis wasn’t dedicated to politicizing the military and waging unconstitutional wars, like Pull Up Pete. Nielsen wasn’t willing to go all-in on masked agents brutally carrying out a mass deportation, like either Noem-Nothing or Mullin. Sessions still thought some rules and norms should be observed at the Department of Justice, unlike Blanche or his predecessor, Blondie. Azar didn’t spread wild misinformation about vaccines or seek to destroy our medical research infrastructure as the most unqualified RFK, Jr. has. Pompeo still tried to uphold a U.S.-led international order, while little Marco seems to be no more than a dummy with the Felon controlling it all.

This second term has brought us an older and crazier and more megalomaniacal persona. Where it really becomes upsetting is that the people now controlling the most powerful government departments would never stand up to the Felon even in the face of truly destructive commands. I don’t see any of them telling the truth if they knew that lying for Don Donny would cost them their jobs; yes, they all swore oaths to the Constitution, but this is all about loyalty to the man. As crazy as this may sound, I am starting to believe that they would all act illegally because they know that there will be pardons galore. The real question is how far will they go to support voter suppression, not just in these midterms, but in 2028.

So, how can we all spank the Felon, and I am not talking about any kink he may enjoy (who knows…who cares!)? By getting out the vote and flipping Congress. Another 2 years of a Republican rubber stamping Congress would be a disaster for our country, and the impact on the rest of the world is almost incalculable. There are just over 2 months before Election Day, early voting will start shortly in many states, so let’s all focus on not simply getting our ballots in, but making sure all eligible voters have their votes counted (Texas pulled over a million people off of voter roles, so be sure to confirm voter registration) and their voices heard, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

When the Felon chose to start a war with Iran there seems to have only been a pipe dream of a plan where we would bomb the country, dissidents would revolt, and we would take over the nation and its oil. Instead the Felon has driven our military, the most well funded in the world, with a budget greater than the next 5 or so nations combined into a severe financial crisis. It has been reported that the U.S. Navy, which is bearing the brunt of the operation, is transferring money from payroll to combat operations, creating shortfalls. Officials are covering that shortfall by raiding other accounts. So, rather than running this through normal approval channels, there seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors at work, begging the question: from where are they taking money to pay for an unlawful war?

Senator Patty Murray, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations committee, noted that Pull Up Pete was using a funding mechanism that “does not make a lot of sense.” The Secretary responded by blaming the “gross negligence” of the Biden administration and its “woke” policies (forget about getting anything other than blaming someone else). The ways in which he has spent the department’s budget were not closely examined. In a surprising response to this mess, defense analyst Todd Harrison of the conservative American Enterprise Institute reported that the shortages are no secret, but speculated that “that is a deliberate decision of the civilian leaders in the Pentagon, starting at secretary, that this is for political reasons, that they don’t want to look like they’re damaging future military readiness over a war that is becoming increasingly a political liability.” Seeing how much I like direct responses, a former military officer who now works for a company that contracts with the navy summed it up nicely: “They’re fucked. They shot all their weapons; they trashed all their ships; they ran out of their money.”

While the Felon and his merry men are pissing away our future hunting for more oil, Representative Jared Huffman, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, had already called for investigations of the more than $4 billion the administration has spent buying the abandonment of offshore wind development. “These fake ‘settlements’ were already an insane waste of taxpayer funds and a ridiculous charade that seems to be blatantly illegal. This now adds the stench of corruption” he was quoted as saying. Huffman said of the buyouts of offshore wind projects: “The deals are deeply corrupt and illegal. When the accountability comes, and I promise you accountability is coming, everyone involved in them will answer for it.”

Even Congress under the Republican thumb lacks any adult to deal with real issues. This is especially true with Rand Paul’s never ending witch hunt against Anthony Fauci. Senator Paul promised after Dr. Fauci plead the 5th that there would be repercussions, but 3 weeks later, it doesn’t seem like those repercussions are coming. According to the Wall Street Journal, administration officials are privately questioning whether the case will hold up in court. And if administration lawyers are worrying about whether something is legal, you know there’s a problem.

In this case the over-zealous Paul seems to have forgotten about the part where a contempt resolution typically goes to the full Senate for a vote before it heads to prosecutors knowing it would never pass the 60-vote threshold. Instead, he sent a committee recommendation straight to the DOJ, and he’s asking JD, as president of the Senate, to certify it as if the whole chamber had voted. That unprecedented move would force the White House to defend the referral in court, and without the full Senate vote, administration officials doubt it could survive a motion to dismiss. All of those procedural rules aside, the case is beyond weak. In simplest terms did nobody on the committee game this out and consider the hurdles they would face convincing a grand jury to indict an 85-year-old man for invoking his constitutional right, at the request of the man who’s been chasing him for years?

As they move into the midterms it seems that Republican are looking for an issue to rally their loyal followers. If all they got is trying to arrest Dr. Fauci as means by which to motivate the base, this shows that there is an understanding of loss in the air. But even this craven administration won’t touch the Fauci case because it seems that even they know that there is no case.

While all of these actions are taking place as the Republicans try and figure out what they have to sell to America, we should consider our better angels about which we were reminded of back at the time of Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington, whose anniversary was last week. Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King explained, in the spirit of Lincoln, that: “When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” He emphasized that “we must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.”

But it was his concluding words that will forever mark our history and remind us of what we must as a nation stand for: “I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed . . .

“This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning. “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountain side, let freedom ring. And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. . . .

“When we allow freedom to ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.”

There was progress for the 50 years after that speech, but this administration seems to love nothing more than to pull that back, and there is no greater proponent of pulling that back than Pull Up Pete and the DOD, where they have some bullshit warrior ethos that seems to be code for white Christian nationalism. In each of the Felon’s terms he has sought to undermine those dreams of Dr. King, and in this current term they are trying very hard to accelerate that regression. They have the levers of power, and they’re using them against our rights, against our freedoms, and against the principles and promise of the Declaration.

Finally, In Washington, D.C.,last week students, union members, civil rights organizations including the NAACP and National Urban League, and 90 community partner organizations held a “March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote.” As the Supreme Court weakened yet another key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act the organizers explained the “why” of their action: “We know in this fight we’re fighting powerful forces, but this is why we rally today,” ​Indeed, in the rush to cement MAGA power, the assault on voting is no longer directed at Black and Brown Americans alone. The DOJ sent more than 80 election monitors to observe the primary elections in 7 states and has said it will send about 1,000 monitors to specific polling places for the November midterm elections.

Republican candidates in Georgia, Maine, and Michigan have been recorded calling for deployment of retired police officers or ICE agents to polling places to make sure undocumented immigrants can’t vote, although it is widely understood that they don’t. In Maine, Republican nominee for governor Bobby Charles told the Maine Young Republicans that he will call his friend Tom “$50K in a bag” Homan, the border czar, to ask him to send ICE and U.S. Marshals to the polls. And in Michigan, Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has called for off-duty police officers to go to the polls to intimidate voters: “I mean, they wouldn’t be able to wear their uniforms, but they would, you know, all you got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt, right?” he said.

But with a different view of the impact of voter intimidation, CNN reported that the Republican governor of Wyoming, Mark Gordon, has asked the state’s attorney general to investigate the “aggressive” behavior of the election monitors the DOJ sent to observe last week’s primary election. Gordon said the “behavior” of the election monitors sent by the DOJ “seemed to exceed what the authority that Congress had given them was.” He added: “I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes.” Amen.

If we want to continue Dr. King’s dream, if we want legislative bodies in DC that work to improve our lives, and if we want the sort of future that we would like to leave to the next generations of Americans, we must vote and get everyone we can to do the same. The trajectory seems headed in the right direction, but we all need to continue to push and to fight for free and fair elections, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Moving from Russia to Florida, we see the golden sycophant, Ron De Santis, having some explaining to do. It appears that his administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money by diverting it to a charity tied to his wife, according to a leaked Florida grand jury report that took a sharply critical view of the dealings. The report also said grand jurors found insufficient evidence to levy charges. Nevertheless, it intensified a controversy over the investigation into the fund-raising arm of Hope Florida, the charity that the first lady, Casey DeSantis, started in 2021. The charity’s goal is to keep families off public assistance by connecting them with churches and aid groups.

In 2024, the charity’s fund-raising arm, the Hope Florida Foundation, received $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement, which seems on its face fishy, but the real story is that it was quickly redirected to political committees backing a campaign led by the governor against a ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana. The transactions amounted to misuse of public funds as “part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities,” the grand jury found in its report. Not surprisingly, the report was completed in January but has been kept secret since. One can only hope that all of these clowns that thought they could game the system will be taken down and proven to be the selfish entitled assholes that we all know them to be.

According to Politico, the White House has internal polling that identified affordability as the issue that could sink Republicans in November. Don Donny has apparently seen it, which seems to be why he’s spent the last week picking a fight with cattle ranchers over cheap beef imports, which proves how shortsighted he is because he effectively sells out one of his biggest constituencies, the ranchers and farmers. It’s why he’s leaning on oil companies over gas prices and pressuring retailers to cut costs. And it’s why Republicans in Congress are now debating a stimulus package push before November. The bottom line is that the Felon is the little Dutch boy trying to put his tiny little fingers in a dam that even he senses is about to burst.

What the administration cannot escape is that the latest federal data showed the economy slowing and inflation still hanging around. Paychecks have failed to keep up with prices for 3 straight months, and a function of that is that consumer confidence is dropping fast. In an effort to calm the current crisis (heaven forbid they come up with long term plan) House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is floating a fourth budget package, more tax cuts, with 2 months left before the election. As bad of an idea as tax cuts are, especially as history teaches us that those cuts only create problems for the nation, even if a budget with more tax cut passes, voters likely won’t see a dime of it before they cast their ballot. No, Wimpy, pay for that burger today!

With all the other madness going on we cannot lose sight of the unhinged efforts of ICE. In July, ICE set a record for daily arrests of people without a criminal record. It was also the first month of Felon’s second term, when people with nothing more than a civil immigration violation made up more than half of all arrests. People with violent convictions? About 4% of those taken into custody. But this is not the part about which we should all be concerned. The administration, lead by the most evil Pee Wee German, knew what mass deportation was going to look like all along, and so they opted to lie. Remember that they promised the worst of the worst were being targeted, but in reality they are just kicking people out whose only offense is being here. Did these power-hungry clowns actually believe that nobody would actually check the numbers?!

One of Don Donny’s favorite flavors of the day is AI, and for a tech idiot, one can only assume that he sees it as a good bet to make him even wealthier. But as the administration sought to control the market, one court gave them a good solid “not-so-fast.” Judge Rita Lin of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled that the administration acted illegally when it labeled the artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic a security risk and barred the company from working with the U.S. government. In her lengthy opinion she ruled that the government had unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic “for constitutionally protected expressive activities” after the A.I. company spoke out about how its technology should be used.“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote. Maybe more judges will question the endless claims of national security as the basis for taking so many of our rights.

A voice from deep inside the tech world, Bill Gates, is loudly warning that artificial intelligence poses a grave threat to jobs and human life, and that urgently addressing the risks should be “the world’s top priority.” Gates said the tech industry was knowingly downplaying those threats because there was too much money on the line.“In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it’s getting, they’re very worried,” he said. But few tech executives, Mr. Gates said, are willing to publicly admit that. “They’re now saying to each other: ‘Hey, man, don’t say that. It’s bad for us — the next trillion dollars we’re trying to raise.’”

Gates posted on his website that he was motivated to speak now because recent improvements in A.I. had far surpassed his expectations and because the industry had ignored technology milestone, like A.I.’s escaping the allegedly controlled “sandboxes” used for testing. Technological breakthroughs in the past created more jobs than they eliminated, Gates said, but he is in disbelief that industry boosters say that will happen again this time.

The A.I. era is “utterly, absolutely, completely, totally different,” he said. He acknowledged that this unpopular opinion (in tech circles) was “a hell of a claim, and I’m staking everything I know — everything — saying, ‘Are you kidding?’” He said mass job losses, if not addressed, were inevitable because A.I. would spread across the economy and leave little room for one industry to absorb the refugees from another. The biggest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, are racing to help corporate customers adopt A.I., which could replace many workers. In short, he suggested that the market-driven avarice of the tech companies might conflict with what was best for society.

Finally, I am not an “I-told-you-so” kind of guy, but more and more Americans are starting to see the grift. More of our fellow Americans are realizing that the Felon doesn't care about any of them, other than as vehicles to attend his rallies; rallies that have not changed in years, especially since his loss in 2020. Since there are no controls, no policy alternatives, but only an administration that has gone all-in with the plan to steal America, more and more people seem to be waking from the false belief that the Felon and his mob would make America…well, you know the line. We all need to make sure that anyone not fully anti-Don Donny is educated, not just as to how he has stolen from us all, but what a continued control of the legislative branch could mean, not just for us today, but for our children and their children, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Admittedly, we produce lots of oil and are not as reliant as we once were on oil from the Middle East. However, if we don’t move away from fossil fuels and adapt to renewable technologies, we are destined to lose our way in the world. Climate change is real and any time the Felon or one of this lying supplicants spew hoax tropes, every voice in whatever room has to shout them down. Stopping nukes? We went to war because the Felon thought he could control all of that oil, or at least get a big piece of it because he only knows the past and clearly does not believe in the future. Maybe he is just terrified of all that he doesn’t know, and he simply cannot take the scorn for being such a troglodyte.

As if on cue, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian rejected the administration’s call for isolating Iran economically. “Cooperation between China and Iran has always been conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted,” Lin said. “China has already stated many times that it firmly opposes illegal unilateral sanctions.… China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests.” Oh, yeah, diplomacy.

Meanwhile while Pull Up Pete has depleted our military leadership, reducing our 4 star generals from 10 down to 4, and we are now abandoning our Middle East bases. Iran will continue to attack and there are real questions both logistically and via the leadership vacuum that focuses on whether we will ever be able to reclaim that foothold in that part of the world. Can we be as effective of a force as we were prior to this Iran action remains a critical question, and one that is not assuaged by General Bone Spurs claiming that everything is great. I wonder how he will respond to an escalation by Iran, which could easily happen with more Chinese cooperation, which, in turn could lead to reducing our deployment in the Pacific, which removes a deterrence from Chinese actions in Asia. Are we getting outplayed in a military game of chess?

While we are engaged in an action of unknown term and about which he have no real information about a plan, Developer Donny cannot control himself. Even worse he seems to believe that his power cannot be challenged and so he can do whatever he wants; case in point, the Kennedy Center. For starters, ticket sales and fundraising for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts plummeted after Trump’s name was added to it, even though the board insisted his takeover was a financial rescue. Even though he lost another case about what was simply an effort to put his name on something else, his lawyers suggested a great new strategy, namely, that the administration might have to demolish the Kennedy Center if the courts don’t allow the board to renovate it over the next two years and add the Felon’s name to the facade. After the renovations, it would read: “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” How fucking horny for name recognition is the Felon, and you can be sure he will claim that the project won’t cost us anything.

Justice Department attorney Brantley T. Mayers wrote: “Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years.” This threat to destroy the Kennedy Center is governmental extortion on par with some local thug seeking an unsolicited “insurance” payment basically saying nice building you got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it. Yes, dude, this aggression cannot stand.

Trying to figure out what goes on in the Felon’s mind is a fool’s errand, but you have to wonder if he claims polls are fake as a facade to cover up his hatred for being a loser. What we do know is that he will never accept a loss having anything to do with himself. We have all heard the rationale over and over, namely, that it’s the fault of the Democrats, who are all communists. He even plays to the other side of the aisle and blames the Republicans who didn’t live up to his leadership. Everyone in the world besides him owns the fault.

Seeing the potential for the loss of the power, for which his appetite is insatiable, beside pointing fingers, obviously, what can he do? It would seem that he would return to his Apprentice-like persona and take pleasure from dominating other people. But he also sees power by sticking his name on everything he can. The war in Iran? Healthcare? The Deficit? The midterms? Is there any focus there or is it all about his construction projects and trying to leave his mark on everything in Washington. The funny part is he has started a lot of stuff and has left a path of destruction with little of anything accomplished, and many projects correctly stalled by actions seeking to hold him accountable for not following any process. Yes, he somehow believes that rules do not apply to him.

As voting is the most critical right we need to protect, I think a little clarity on the recent Supreme Court decision on mail voting needs to be made. The underlying premise is that the Felon is trying to exercise control over elections when he has absolutely no authority to do so. The Court really decided nothing because what they really said was that it was too soon for federal courts to get involved, even though they could have emphatically ended Don Donny’s efforts to regulate voting, which is the province of the states. But the real issue here that the Court ignored the context that the Felon is attempting to do something for which he has no constitutional authority.

The title of the EO is question is “Ensuring Citizen Verification and Integrity in Federal Election.” That’s a big name for something about which there is no evidence to show that some new EO or law is required, but given that the SAVE Act was DOA in the Senate, once again, the Felon cared nothing for rules and tried to play CEO, with no Board of Directors to vote against him, in reshaping our voting system. Justice Brown Jackson made the best case in her dissent when she said the the EO “involves the President whom the Constitution vests with no express authority over elections undertaking a substantial and unfunded overhaul of election practices.” She really made the case when she noted: “When he Government’s obvious goal is to interfere with the Plaintiff States’ practices and prerogatives in a manner that the Constitution does not authorize, it is both a serious legal error and a grave misuse of our equitable emergency powers to let the Executive proceed even one step further.”

Finally, federal law says that in the 60 days before a general election, TV and radio stations have to sell ad time to candidates at the lowest rate they charge anyone. Super PACs and outside groups pay several times more for the same thirty seconds. Not surprisingly, and beginning to feel the plunging poll numbers, back in the spring, Don Donny’s FCC issued guidance saying party committees could get the candidate discount, too. Then in June, the Supreme Court struck down the limits on how much a political party can spend in coordination with its candidates. That case was brought by JD Vance and the Republican Senate committee, and the Felon’s DOJ refused to defend the law. But in win for our elections, a 3-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit threw out the FCC’s guidance. Candidates get the low rate. Parties don’t. The 60-day window opens September 4th, so this landed just in time. Of course, Republicans are appealing. The Senate Republican committee called it “an incorrect ruling that ignores decades of precedent.” I know, sounds good; I can’t wait to see the precedent!

The crazy part about this attack is that the Republicans are the party with the cash advantage. Democrats are still digging out from 2024, and the Republican committees have outraised them all cycle. Why then would a party swimming in money spend months fighting for a discount? It seems to me that when you have to try and rewrite the rules to win, it’s probably because you already know you’re losing. As they move towards breaking all the rules, as they ravenously cling to power, there is much to be done to make things right in America. The need to shine a light on the Republican Party of states’ rights and personal freedom having become a big-government party shoving a radical Christian nationalist agenda down our throats while letting Big Tech and corrupt billionaires do whatever the hell they want with this country should be paramount.

We are being punched in the face on a daily basis. Let’s be sure to channel the great boxer Jake LaMotta who is famous for saying “I don’t go down for nobody.” They can try to beat us down, but they will never win. There are more of us ready to stop the destruction of our institutions, physical and otherwise, than are left supporting the Felon. Let’s all get together and make change happen, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

For decades there has been a trade zone that reinforced the close alliance between Canada and the U.S., enabling people in both countries to enjoy the longest demilitarized border in the world stretching more than 5,000 miles across the entire North American continent. Canada and the U.S. have shared military and defense capabilities, with NORAD operating since 1957 to detect aircraft or missiles, especially those coming over the North Pole, that could prove a threat to the United States. But as soon as he won reelection in 2024, the Felon began to emphasize that he intended to use “economic force,” specifically tariffs, to pressure Canada into joining the U.S. as its 51st state. And so he opened up crazy town.

Don Donny began to exercise threats to Canada the day he took office for the second time, saying he would put 25% tariffs on Canada. This violation of his own trade agreement (literally he signed the most recent trade agreement with Canada after he attacked NAFTA) reflected the administration’s abandonment of the principles of free trade and defensive alliances put in place after World War II. Don Donny wanted a new system like his pal Vlad supported in which strong countries imposed spheres of influence in their regions of the world. What is ironic (yes, the administration has no understanding of the concept) is that we were the sphere of influence before the Felon began to fix what wasn’t broken.

What the Felon started with Canada, that is, seeking to leverage the extraordinary economic power of the United States to force countries into subordinate relationships, is extortion, not diplomacy. The recent threat against Canada came after his previous tariffs either were struck down or expired. On July 20, then Felon said he would use the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, to impose a 50% tariff on certain Canadian products. No president had ever before invoked Section 338 of that Act, which allows a president to impose tariffs when a country discriminates against U.S. products relative to its comparative treatment of other countries’ goods. Like so many of his actions, he is basing actions on incredibly weak legal arguments, which is evidenced by his failing record in the courts.

The amount of Kool Aid being consumed amongst the Cabinet is really getting out of hand because there does not seem to be a realist anywhere in the room. Transportation Secretary Sean “Reality Show”Duffy said PM Carney would have to back down because tariffs will be “devastating for his country.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted that the Felon “has contrived an array of pretexts—from fentanyl trafficking to trade deficits—to bludgeon Canada with tariffs.” And the editorial board, known for its right-wing slant, called this tariff war on Canada “the dumbest trade war in history” and said it “makes no economic or political sense.”

And speaking of not making any sort of sense, what about the public slights to our allies. Certainly, what is going on with Canada, our second largest trading partner, will hit consumer goods, construction materials, and manufacturing elements, which will drive up prices when many American consumers are already feeling the brunt of the Felon’s prior actions. But what the hell did the Felon think he was doing with South Korea?! He nonsensically attacked South Korea, another longstanding and loyal ally in what seems like some poser move by trying to reassert his dominance. Bizarrely, the Felon doesn’t dare to cross the leaders who actually threaten the U.S., those like Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong Un, rather he has resorted to the bully paradigm, where the bully beats on someone knowing (believing?) they will not fight back.

If the Felon has started the fight, which he has, what might Canada do in response, because they will not hide and the PM has already set a date for the imposition of tariffs. But think about what might happen. Imagine waking up on a freezing Michigan morning with no power because Canada cut off its supply to your home as a result of a trade war started by Don Donny?! Well, that’s a possibility for 1.5 million American households and businesses after recent negotiations fell apart. Even if the power kept flowing, what happens if, for example, Canada attaches a 25 % surcharge on its electricity exports. The fact is that Ontario Premier Doug Ford has put these potential measures on the table, threatening to stop the delivery of electricity and critical minerals essential to U.S. daily life, manufacturing, and national defense if the trade fight worsens between the two nations. Canadians, he said, are preparing to make sacrifices in an “economic war” with America.

The economic connection between the 2 nations has been mutually beneficial for generations. The US and Canada have stitched together their power grids, auto plants, and defense industries on the assumption that neither country would use those connections to threaten the other. The Felon has broken that assumption, and he seems willing to brutally destroy that cooperation. Showing his lack of understanding of, well, reality, it seems his theory is that if Canadian parts and product inputs become more expensive, American manufacturers will miraculously produce everything domestically, cheaply and immediately. Can somebody tell the Felon that factories cannot be conjured into existence by presidential proclamation?

The real issue that this presents is how has a Republican controlled Congress sat back and let him act in such a manner? The answer seems to be that they are not willing to challenge, or cross, or even upset the Felon. I fear that the rest of the world, and in particular our allies, look at our nation as one devoid of principles, and that our word is, if not meaningless, certainly valueless. An early post yesterday shows how the Felon loves to recycle old material as in making claims that “Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years” and warning that “Canada will be treated like a State no longer!” Treated like a state? Is he trying to manifest taking over Canada. Must every move of this idiot be a real estate tranaction?!

Did Canada get angry? Were they hysterical? Well, literally they are laughing at the absurd claims of the Felon. In fact, rather than responding directly to the Felon, Carney told reporters that Canada will soon “begin intense discussions with the European Union, the world’s second-largest economy, to build a much stronger and deeper economic and security partnership. Now,” he said, “we can build such unparalleled access because we’re trusted, because we’re reliable, and because we have what the world wants.”

If any of you are wondering about whether or not we actually have a recognizable trade policy, I have one word: cattle. Historically cattle ranchers and farmers, who have in the past strongly supported the Felon, cried foul, saying the imports recently granted by Rancher Donny would drive down prices while making it impossible to distinguish between U.S. and foreign meat. The man who his former Press Secretary boasted about his transparency, has refused to identify from which country or countries he plans to get the ground beef. More importantly, these actions interfere directly with our own ranchers and farmers, who are, or perhaps were, big supporters of the Felon. That tide may be turning.

Finally, we cannot lose sight of what is going on with the voter suppression efforts of this administration. The recent ruling by the Supreme Court is not an approval of the EO, rather it offers a chaotic reprieve wrapped in a lot of legal nuances. But if you cut through the jargon and nomenclature it all comes down to whether or not the President gets to decide who receives a ballot? And in reviewing the EO that’s what it does, which should lead us all to say, hell no!

The Court was explicit in removing one of the stays against Trump’s order, but they were not venturing any opinion about that order’s constitutionality. They were simply allowing, for the moment, the government to proceed with its condom of legality intact. The order had commanded USPS to establish new rules cracking down on mail-in voting “to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law.” So until those USPS rules actually hit the books, states had no way of demonstrating they were harmed by the order, meaning that any legal violations would come through those rules, not through the order itself.

Why do we need a change in DC? Because we need to right or at lest to attack all of these questionably legal maneuvers by the administration. We need to be a partner with the rest of the world, and to regain our leadership. We need to neuter the Felon. We need to get out the vote and be prepared to stop the government from trying to stop anyone from voting; after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

It seems that since the US cannot win the war it started, and that the failure of airstrikes to quickly resolve an unpopular war that was started by an unpopular President, the Administration is now pursuing an “economic D-Day.” It would appear that Pull Up Pete is being hidden from reporting on war efforts, so Bessent has now taken the visible lead on Iran among Cabinet officials. This move from DOD to Treasury is, in itself, an admission of failure from an Administration that was so convinced of its ability to utilize military force to gain control. The war has exposed the vulnerabilities of American military bases in the Persian Gulf, many of which were damaged and became unsafe for personnel. The real question one might ask Bessent is given that Iran has worked around economic sanctions, can we coerce other nations to stop trading, as well?

I think it is pretty clear that the Treasury Secretary’s role in this foreign-policy operation is notable, if not unique. I wonder what Bessent is thinking about the trouble we have seen lately in the bond markets, or the rising interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and other issues surrounding consumer credit. These forces clearly have to be putting pressure on the White House ahead of the midterms. Because the Felon hates giving anyone else the stage or the spotlight, and rather than delegating, he loves to say what he thinks will make his followers rejoice, independent of the truth. This ethos was evidenced during a rally in South Carolina late last week when he said: “I view the Strait of Hormuz as an American territory right now.” Yes, if he says it, it is so.

As we move towards an election that seems more and more likely to flip at least part of Congress, the efforts to discredit our elections just got a slight nod. A divided Supreme Court yesterday allowed the administration to move forward with plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterm elections. In an emergency opinion the justices, in a 6-3 opinion, said the Felon could proceed with implementing an executive order he had signed, which directed the U.S. Postal Service to help decide which voters should receive mail-in ballots. Under the executive order, DHS will also create lists of U.S. citizens that the administration believes could be used to monitor voter rolls for noncitizens. Nothing can go wrong with that….YIKES!

Before you get too upset, the decision means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots even as a lower court continues to weigh the legality of the executive order. But with a little more than 2 months until Election Day, and considerably less time before early voting begins in many states, it remains unclear whether the White House’s rules will be in effect for a midterm election in which control of both chambers is at stake. Additional legal action is a near certainty with the plan’s fate not yet final. As expected the three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning that the majority “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

The majority said the states that challenged the president’s order could not demonstrate that they were sufficiently harmed by voting rules that had not yet taken effect. Talk about a back door way to get to what sounds like a lack of standing argument. I see no justification for this decision and it now appears that next to all the reporters used by the justices, they also seem to rely on Project 2025. Where this really gets twisted, however, is by the justices cautioning that their order was preliminary and not a final decision about whether the administration’s order “will necessarily be lawful” once the plans are complete. “On that score, time will tell,” the majority said in the 10-page, unsigned order. This seems to be saying rather than look to the constitution and the fact that states control elections, they would rather create chaos so close to voting as to fuel the claims of fraud everywhere that Republicans lose.

Although the Court’s conservative majority has been receptive to some, but not all, of the administration’s broad claims of executive power, in this case, the majority said that the provision of the Felon’s order that required creating lists of U.S. citizens was “an internal directive from the president to a subordinate” and so far imposed no obligations on the states. If these justices wanted to muddy the waters around the issue, then they have certainly succeeded. We are now 10 weeks away from an election and it is unclear what the rules are, and now the litigation floodgates have been opened by the Court because it remains unclear how this impacts mail-in ballots.

For those that believe that the Republicans will maintain power after the elections, it seems that the administration is hedging its bets. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, and the minority leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, and discussed potential areas of common ground, according to 5 people with knowledge of the meeting. This odd couple meeting was held in a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the 2 men, according to people with knowledge of the meeting and a third who was briefed on it. They and others were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting about which they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Through aides, neither man would comment on the session, which was described by one person with knowledge of it as a broad conversation on a range of topics. Still, its timing underscored that those around the Felon were well aware of the likelihood of a Democratic-led House, and trying to foster as much of a working relationship as possible before any change. Mr. Jeffries is in line to be the speaker if Democrats win the majority. Assuming that the men actually met, why would Jeffries be willing to provide any support for any of the Felon’s initiatives. Was Jared offering a deal to keep a Democratic House from impeaching the Felon yet again? I am in full support of finding ways to civilly resolve disputes, but when one of the parties is a liar and wholly untrustworthy, what is the point other than agreeing to hear them out.

This election cycle has been a brutal as I have ever seen. The temperature is rising and none of us know what might happen as we all hope that the Felon, in a moment of real desperation, does not try and cancel the midterms as Republicans are fighting to retain their thin House and Senate majorities. During the Kushner Jeffries meeting the pair discussed housing, immigration and the high cost of living as potential areas of common ground. Kushner apparently suggested that Jeffries should meet with the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. I guess under the doctrine of talk is cheap that makes some sense, not to mention showing how to negotiate, compromise and not do what this Congress has done in denying Democrats a voice, but, face it, the likelihood of any compromises between the White House and Democrats on those issues seems remote.

Why talk when the President refused to sign the bipartisan housing bill? Let us not forget that the Felon has repeatedly expressed openness to a deal with Democrats on immigration, only to back away from any such agreement. We can never lose sight of the fact that while he was out of office, he successfully lobbied Republicans to abandon a bipartisan border security bill as he clearly did not want anyone to take the light off of his campaign’s immigration platform. The bottom line is that until the administration acknowledges that the affordability crisis is not a hoax, and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable, there is little to discuss. As Democrats fight the cause for an affordable America, the real question is whether Republicans will find their way back to reality.

Finally, why do they let JD out in public? He is one smug SOB and although he may have classic debating skills, he is simply unlikable. “I’d love to go back in time and tell my papa [yes, he went pure Appalachia, but at least he didn’t say
pappy” or “paw paw”] that there’s a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a white supremacist,” Vance recently said during an Ohio rally. Taking a lead from the ramblings of the Felon he went straight for the go-to move of the Party, fear mongering when talking about the Michigan race with El Sayed: “This is what we’re up against in November….Whether it’s child predators, Somali fraudsters, foreign gang members, or even visa fraudsters who are working to undercut American wages and steal from American taxpayers, the Democrats know who they stand for, and that’s anyone but you.” I cannot believe he didn’t bring up all of those dog and cat eating Haitians, whose loss will cripple the communities in which they have thrived. After this recent speach, I have to agree with Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia who characterized the vice president as “one of the most craven politicians on the American landscape.”

What is most perplexing is that while JD scapegoats immigrants and then accuses Democrats of enabling criminals to invoke child predators, his own administration faces continued scrutiny over the Epstein files, and his genital-grabbing boss’s history with Epstein. JD’s speech offered a glimpse at the current GOP platform, which is to accuse Democrats of the very failures and controversies that hound the White House, while presenting Republicans as the defender of ordinary Americans. We can never allow the lies to become the truth.

The first challenge to free and fair elections has been put into motion by the Supreme Court. That said, states have to look at the fact that there is an on-going case in the lower courts and not simply agree to the sorts of suppression that the Felon wants. The Felon will lie about what the Court’s decision means and will continue to push for the SAVE Act. Fortunately, I think the clock has run out on making the SAVE Act the law, and given the chances for flipping at least some of Congress, there is no way the Republicans will kill the filibuster. We have been questioning, raising some hell, and fighting for the truth for more than 19 months, but these next 10 weeks will test our mettle and we should all be ready to throw ourselves into gaining back our country, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

In what can only be seen as an effort to assuage that chatter about the Felon and Ms. Harp, suddenly First Lady Melania Trump showed her face at the White House late last week for the first time in weeks. The scene of her walking out with the Felon, holding his hand (sorry for such a vile image) to stage something akin to them having a relationship is as disingenuous as they could do. Even more bizarre was her going up to the microphone in the Rose Garden for her first appearance at the White House in more than a month and saying: “I heard you missed me…Here I am.” Was that supposed to move the Harp story out of the news cycle? If so, it was an epic fail, but since all about which the Felon is concerned is perception, he felt appearing with his frozen-faced wife would somehow convince someone that he is a committed married man. Yeah, no.

This entire story has been blown up by the White House, Republican members of Congress, and the right-wing media personalities who slammed Senator Ossoff for bringing up Harp’s name at all. Ossoff never said that the relationship between Trump and Harp was an untoward sexual one, but rather that Harp is part of a “circle of sycophantic aides” who give Don Donny his “daily dose of delusion and flattery.” This seems to be a classic case of being caught in a compromising situation and rather than letting the story die a quiet death, with perhaps some continuing snarky commentary, the denials came so fast and furious that it had the opposite effect.

Since the clear goal of the Felon and his administration, fueled by the Project 2025 insurrectionists, is to control the press, they might have reached a new low as the DOD fired the publisher and the editor in chief of Stars and Stripes, a government-funded news outlet that reports on the U.S. military, according to a senior Pentagon official and the dismissed journalists. The firings raised questions about the Pentagon’s willingness to ensure the editorial integrity of the publication that has reported extensively on difficulties faced by military communities, such as the allegations of conditions on the USS Lincoln, as the war in Iran has dragged on. In fact, the terminations came about 10 days after Stars and Stripes journalists reported on hardships that Navy sailors were facing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln,.

At the end of last week, the Pentagon sent termination notices to Erik Slavin, the editor in chief, and Max Lederer, the publisher, who had announced his retirement earlier this week, citing conceits with Pentagon leadership on the paper’s direction, which chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell posted being about "bringing Stars and Stripes into the 21st century….We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members." Lara Korte, a Middle East correspondent at the news outlet, was also fired on Friday, according to the official and a post she made.

I think that when the Felon lies tells stories he always love to throw out statistics, none of which ever seem to be verifiable. There may be no greater fairy tale than when he goes into his rant about voter fraud, a rant that one can only hope is beginning to fall on deaf ears. Earlier this week, the administration published a 7 page report (wow, 7 pages; there must have been pictures for them to get 7 whole pages!) claiming that more than 24,000 noncitizens voted in the 2020 election; yes, talk about living in the past, especially as he lost more than 60 lawsuits based on such bogus claims. The Felon immediately jumped on the report, posting that the report proves he won in 2020 and predicting the numbers will, “explode,” as more records get processed.

As we all know, details matter and especially when making a legal claim, one better have vetted every word. In this case the Felon didn’t mention that the report has no author, which former bureau officials say is unheard of for an agency built on layers of review; it doesn’t explain its methodology; and according to reporting from NPR and CNN, it wasn’t produced by the bureau’s career statisticians at all. It came from partisan analysts the administration installed from the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by the Felon’s own former officials. Needless to say, a leading election lawyer, David Becker, shined this analysis on the report: “This analysis is laughable. Census data cannot reliably be matched to voter data.” And even if you took the report at face value, 24,000 votes out of 128 million is about two hundredths of one percent.

Possibly supporting my hope, or perhaps my hoped-for thesis, Republicans aren’t buying it. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, ran an intensive audit in 2024 and found fewer than a dozen noncitizens who had ever voted in his state. This report claims Georgia had 400 in 2020 alone. So this week, Raffensperger wrote to the bureau with a simple request: show me the names. Likewise, Nevada’s a good example of what happens when these numbers actually get checked. Last month, Homeland Security claimed nearly 16,000 noncitizens were registered to vote there. This week, on a recorded call with state election officials, DHS’s own staff admitted they had confirmed just 185 potential noncitizens and hadn’t even reviewed more than 14,000 of the names on their list. What this exposes is the administration’s playbook: announce a giant number, stamp a federal seal on it, and hope nobody reads the fine print. The 2030 census depends on every American trusting this agency, and this President is burning that trust to prop up a six-year-old lie.

The tariff fairy tale that the Felon has promoted about nations paying with not so much as a nod to us consumers, may be among the worst of his claims. Even when the Supreme Court shuts them down, the Felon imposes them regardless. Most recently he imposed a 50% tariff on a range of goods from Canada. While Canada chose to play along initially, the strong arm tactics of the US, including adding new demands at the 11th hour, caused Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney suspended trade negotiations with the U.S. and said Canada will impose retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. beginning September 8. In a statement, Carney said: “We have recognised from the beginning that America has changed, and that we will not return to our old relationship.” Canada, he said, will be “focused on building our strength at home [and] diversifying our partnerships abroad.” I love political speak, but for those who need a translation: “fuck you” seems to be the most direct comparison.

The Felon thinks all negotiations are the same. There could be nothing farther from the truth. When I negotiated talent deals with agents, I had a situation where the network wanted to hire talent, and the talent wanted a network gig. It was also clear that the respective agents and I would work together many times. In these continuing relationships, the negotiations are very different than in a real estate transaction, for example, where a buyer or a seller might only do this one deal. The Felon sees everything from the perspective of being an unscrupulous real estate grifter…in my opinion, that is. A simple check of all the lawsuits filed agains him would likely support my opinion.

The Felon seems to believe that the US can order around all the other nations of the world. He does not want international relationships other than ones where other nations bow to the demands of the US. When NATO nations tried to explain why they were having no part of the fiasco in Iran, our petulant child-like President could only view the denial of aide as a slap to his ego, which like his body mass (except for one part, that is) is enormous. More importantly, his behavior supports the goals of Project 2025, and the evil anti-American goals of the Heritage Foundation. Meanwhile, the great businessman at the helm pushes us towards financial ruin as our national debt climbs above $40 trillion, and he offers no means to slow that debt, nor certainly a means by which we can reduce that generational burden. Oh wait, destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security seems to be the answer!

Finally, not allowing for the truth about our healthcare may be the most dangerous long-term action that impacts more Americans directly than almost anything else. Let’s start with the fact that the FDA has lost about a fifth of its staff. The CDC used to have 11 scientists tracking food parasites, and now it has 3. A federal early-warning system that tracked 8 dangerous food-borne pathogens now tracks only 2. And a rule that would let investigators trace contaminated food back to the farm was delayed until 2028.

Late last week Moderna and Merck announced that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine succeeded in a late-stage trial. Patients who had melanoma surgically removed got the vaccine alongside an immunotherapy drug, and it kept the deadliest form of skin cancer from coming back. In an earlier trial, the same combination cut the risk of recurrence or death by 49% over 5 years. Doctors are calling it a game changer, opening the door for vaccines against other types of cancer too. The research has scientists taking the mutations from your specific tumor and building a custom vaccine that trains your immune system to hunt the cancer down. That is American science at its absolute best, built on decades of federally funded mRNA research. Yet for some reason, that is exactly the type of research this administration is trying to cut, and RFK Jr. canceled 22 mRNA research projects worth half a billion dollars, calling the technology ineffective. The New York Times has documented how Trump’s cuts are quietly shutting down the war on cancer across the country, with grants frozen and labs going dark.

This assault on science is not just happening in DC as Ken Paxton, the Felon’s pick for Senate from Texas, voted against creating his own state’s cancer research institute back in 2007, and that institute has since detected more than 58,000 cases of cancer and made Texas a world leader in the fight. That same year, Paxton also helped block the HPV vaccine requirement, the shot that prevents nearly all cervical cancer. The bottom line is that cancer breakthroughs happen because America spent decades funding the science, through every administration, no matter who was in charge. That’s the deal that made us the envy of the world. RFK Jr. is breaking that deal over a grudge, and the cures your family might need someday are at risk because of it.

We simply cannot allow this aggression to continue, right Dude? The assaults on election integrity, on science, on honest reporting, must be vanquished, and the only way to do so is at the ballot box. We have just over 70 days left to make sure that we can restore some checks and balances, so we all need to do what we can to make the change happen, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Matt Royer of the Democratic National Committee Youth Council noted: “The word “affair” was never uttered, and yet apparently every single conservative talking head in the world heard it anyway, so what does that tell you?” He added: “Never have I seen a more exquisite example of the Streisand Effect [the Streisand effect is when an attempt to hide, censor, or remove information backfires]. Instead of disappearing, the information gets much more public attention] someone’s supporters fall over themselves to basically accuse them of adultery when it wasn’t even brought up.” The lesson here is pretty basic: he who makes the unsubstantiated claims is not telling the truth. It is more like a race to see who gets the most likes.

The most interesting part about the attack on Ossoff’s comments, is that the critics and the stone-throwers never addressed the other issues he raised. I guess calling out the Felon’s apparent stock manipulation, an issue the Felon highlighted recently when he sold early access to his Truth Social posts for as much as $100,000 a month, should be ignored because they can never let the truth or the entire story be reported when it might possibly shine a false light on our criminal President. I guess I may be in peril as I have often written about how investors (even before actually buying access, the family has always been given a head’s-up) appear to be making a killing by anticipating Don Donny’s posts as they make markets go up or down.

CNN published the results of an investigation on July 16, that found that the Felon himself made at least 44 stock purchases of 21 different companies within a week before he posted a complimentary Truth Social message about the firms, their executives or their products. He has made thousands…thousands of stock trades this year alone! But the stock trades, the growing deficit, the bullshit-ballroom all get moved to the back-burner when they have a shiny object like Natalie Harp on which to attack their focus. In particular, this shifted attention from the ballroom, which is enormously unpopular and which is in the news as Don Donny has appealed to the Supreme Court to override lower courts’ rulings that he does not have the authority to build such a structure without the permission of Congress. Even Republican members of Congress seem reluctant to grant such permission, as it highlights the Felon’s grabs for luxury while Americans are hurting under high gas and grocery prices caused by tariff wars and war on Iran.

Rather than acknowledging the holistic crisis in Iran, the Felon continues to downplay the flailing of his administration in Iran. Heaven forbid he acknowledges the reality that is Iranian forces continued control of the Strait of Hormuz. When asked today about the Strait, he told reporters: “Last night we had a lot of boats come through, we have possession, complete control of the strait, I mean, outside of nuisance value—and there is nuisance value when they shoot a drone every once in a while, but and not everybody’s going to go through. But they come through. And over the last couple of weeks, we had a lot of oil coming in, a lot of oil. It’s not gonna be perfect, but it’s a lot of oil coming in, a lot. In fact, people are amazed.” There is no part of this that has any relationship to reality.

Politico reported on Monday that while an average of almost 140 ships a day traversed the Strait before the war, last Sunday only 3 did. The facts continue to be a problem, except the Felon seems able to ignore them all; everything from the USS Lincoln, to our munitions stockpiles, to our great economy. He has lulled a segment of America into a slumber from which they need to be awakened and realize our President is a pathological liar.

There have been far too many reports that the Felon is more concerned with building monuments to himself than dealing with the cornucopia of problems facing Americans every day. The biggest FU he has adopted is with regard to the ballroom. When U.S. District Judge Richard Leon first enjoined above-ground construction last December, for some reason he allowed below-ground security-related stuff to continue, he told them they were on “fair notice” that if they did anything that prevented the court from later ordering a change, “the government should be prepared to take it down.” Not surprisingly, just one month later, the administration was back in court teeing up the argument that the courts can’t stop the construction now that it had started, with a DOJ representative whining “Are we going to suspend construction in the middle?” This all reeks of some kind of childish behavior where the entire concept of “no” is seemingly ignored.

The administration keeps pushing ahead with a ballroom we don’t need and which is NOT funded by donations. If this all ends up costing a billion dollars or more, don’t be surprised. If there is no audit trail to see who and how much came from donations, don’t be surprised. Hopefully, there is a court that stops the construction, and when it continues nonetheless, that somebody is held in contempt and the ballroom is stopped. Given that there appears to have been no permits and, therefore, no inspections, in the real world whatever gets built could be subject to being torn down. More importantly, since this is the White House, the lack of independent supervision may lead to the project being torn down. On the one hand, the administration cries for security, but we have no information on who is in charge of supervising, who on the crew has been vetted for security reasons, or many other concerns that leave many people questioning too many things. That is not how the People’s House should be treated.

Finally, while freedom of the press is under assault, a recent report published in the Guardian exposes documents obtained thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request and a lawsuit from Democracy Forward showing that FCC chair Carr has been working closely with the White House and right-wing media. In addition to talking and meeting with White House officials, Carr has been working with the FOX News Channel and the chair of the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group. Everything that has been thrown about regarding a right-wing media conspiracy is being exposed. Fairness? HAHAHA. The goal is to have state run media so that nobody questions the destruction of our country.

I have been known to joke that my favorite Republican President was Bill Clinton. In much the same way, former Republican, David Jolly, thanked Democrats for welcoming him to their Party. Yes, the Democratic nominee for governor of Florida is the old-school Republican, as he defended free markets, lean government and the belief that politicians should stay out of people’s bedrooms. Having been left by his own Party, he found a home with the Democrats..

One of the big issues facing us in the midterms is whether Republicans will vote for a Democrat. It now seems that the issue is whether there are parts of the Democratic Party willing to accept old-school moderate Republican ideas? I think the answer is yes. As the Republican Party has turned towards autocracy, there are some old school Republican ideas that can bring Republicans under the tent of the Democrats. Can such policies co-exist with the DSA folks? We have to see, but inclusiveness seems to be a far better path than some sort of binary approach to politics. The key is fighting for the freedoms that another 2 years of Republican control of Congress will rip away. These are the challenges, and we need to be accepting and open, the entire Abraham opening of his tents, as it were, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Mr. Carney said last month that “our objective is not to reach a deal whatever it costs” with the United States, but he has also made it clear that Canada would make any agreement contingent on eliminating or reducing tariffs of up to 50% on Canadian steel, aluminum and autos introduced last year. Canada also is seeking relief on tariffs against Canadian lumber that date back decades and were increased by the Felon. Because Don Donny loves old ways and old issues he also posted “The great Keystone XL Pipeline, long ago killed by Sleepy Joe Biden, may be awoken from the grave!”

Shockingly, despite being considered largely dead for 5 years, speculation that a new project, closely mirroring Keystone XL, could return grew this year as a U.S. company filed an application in Montana to build a pipeline bringing in Canadian oil. Carney had brought up the possibility of resurrecting the project with the Felon during a White House visit last year. So, while there may have been a discussion, and while an application to build may have been filed, there is no “there” there.

Of course, even though the Supreme Court shot down most of the tariffs, the Felon cannot help himself. He keeps finding sycophants that tell him other ways he can impose these trade burdens. If he thinks they have been successful then we can be assured that he is a bona fide idiot. The great economy about which he boasts?Sometime this week, our national debt will cross $40 trillion. Double where it stood the day Don Donny first took office. And on his watch, it’s growing quicker than expected. Six months ago, the Congressional Budget Office projected the debt would top out at 39.4 trillion this fiscal year. But on Monday, the Treasury reported 39.9 and climbing, months ahead of schedule.

So how could this have happened and happened so quickly? It is actually quite simple: we are paying record interest on the debt, a war with Iran, and tax cuts for the rich are piling on trillions more. The only plan he had to close that gap, was tariffs, but the Supreme Court struck those down, wiping out an estimated $250 billion in revenue and forcing the government to borrow even faster. More importantly, the businesses got those tariffs refunded, while us consumers got nothing besides higher prices. All of this begs a simple question: where are the so-called “fiscally responsible” Republicans? Remember when the GOP sanctimoniously lectured everyone about burdening younger generations? That party is gone, the debt is as high as it’s ever been, and none of them are willing to speak up, believing, it seems, that they still believe the Felon’s promise he made to bring it down.

One of the newest hot topics, one which Georgia’s Jon Ossoff brought up, is Natalie Harp who has become known as the Felon’s “human printer” because she reportedly carries around a portable printer and prints out social media posts, articles and other material she believes Don Donny would like to see. She has also reportedly left him personal notes and expressed an extraordinary level of devotion, including assurances that she will never abandon him. And we know how much the Felon craves (demands?) loyalty. Where it gets weird (even for this guy weird might be too kind) is that he has reportedly told staff that Harp is the only person who loves him as much as his wife and children, adding that while everyone else around him will eventually leave to make money, Harp will never leave him. I am not intimating a romantic relationship (let my stomach settle for a second), but it does establish that this is not an ordinary president-staffer dynamic. In fact, recent reports suggest she is his ghost writer of the all night posts.

Where this relationship raises eyebrows is when the Felon was secretly moved from Air Force One in Turkey because of an Iranian assassination threat, Harp was reportedly among the extremely small group of people taken with him. Cabinet officials, including Marco Rubio, remained on the plane believed to potentially be at risk, while Harp accompanied Trump to safety. But taken together with everything else we know about Harp’s access and Donn Donny’s comments about her devotion, it is understandable why people are starting to ask exactly what kind of relationship exists between these two.

As the Felon has embraced the tech world and sung the praises of AI, even as the stocks in that sector of the economy are taking a hit, he seems to not care about the impact of data centers that AI will require. Panicked that data centers will take down GOP candidates in must-win states, national Republicans are essentially begging Big Tech to defend the facilities that consume massive amounts of energy and natural resources to power their artificial intelligence models. The National Republican Senatorial Committee admitted that Ohio GOP Senator Jon Husted is “in a dead heat” with former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown because of Brown’s relentless ad campaign tying Husted to data centers. The GOP group said if Brown wins with this message, it will create even more political backlash to data centers that could hurt big tech companies in the future. In a memo on the issue the committee stated that
“Ohio is one of the leaders in building these AI factories. Brown has made his opposition to them the centerpiece of his campaign against Husted. Brown is using it because it works….More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck. If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice—and they will not go near the next one.”

In Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro has changed his mind about data centers, issuing an executive order on Tuesday that would require data centers to have community support and prove that they won’t be a drag on local resources before they can get approval to be built. “We’ve seen too many developers who are trying to bulldoze our community with these speculative deals that are never going to come into reality, and they’re wreaking havoc on our neighbors,” Shapiro told CBS News on yesterday.

Also yesterday Politico reported that Republicans in Texas are worried that the explosion of data centers in the state could even cause GOP Governor Greg Abbott to lose. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa released an ad this week tying Abbott to data centers, which cleverly uses imagery of an AI chatbot explaining how data centers are hurting Texans and that Abbott has supported them. This has become a key issue as rural folks are seeing that the negative impact is on them.

Finally, A Manhattan judge ruled that the remaining case files from an Epstein victim’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell must be released. That case produced tens of thousands of pages of evidence, including sworn depositions of Maxwell herself, before she settled and paid millions of dollars to make it go away. Nearly all of it has been sealed ever since, and Maxwell fought for years to keep it that way, but now she has lost. The judge ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act overrides the old secrecy orders, warning that keeping the documents hidden would leave the public with an “incomplete and potentially misleading picture” of Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes. The files will be redacted to protect victims, as they should be. But the rest is coming out. Depositions. Exhibits. Evidence that reporters who know this case believe implicates some very powerful people, which the administration seems to know.

In a separate case last week, another federal judge held a hearing over the DOJ’s refusal to release parts of its own Epstein files, including material about allegations involving the Felon himself. That judge has already ruled that the DOJ is violating the transparency law, writing that AG Blanche has admitted it in court. So the DOJ is breaking the very law the Felon signed, while a convicted trafficker’s secrets get pried loose by everyone else. Court by court, the truth is coming out anyway. The only question left is why the White House is standing in the way. Yes, that would be a rhetorical question!

Even though it seems that those proverbial chickens are coming home to roost, we need to keep pushing. We need to keep demanding disclosure. We need to seek accountability. We need to stop the Felon from bankrupting our country just like he has so many of his businesses. There are less than 90 days until Election Day and we cannot stop our efforts, in fact, we need to be more forward facing, more demanding, and more supportive of voting rights, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

PS: Has anyone ever told the Felon that his favorite song, YMCA, is a gay anthem?

Looking toward reality, I wonder if the Felon knows that the MOU with Iran expired earlier this week. Rather than ushering in a permanent agreement that opens the Strait of Hormuz and stops Iran’s nuclear ambitions, today shows just how badly the Felon is flailing. However, since reality means nothing to a pathological liar like the Felon, he called into state TV, I mean FOX News, to proclaim “that Iran should ‘put up the white flag of surrender.’ I have no time schedule….I’m not in a hurry...the midterms have nothing to do with my thinking.” As for talks between Iran and Oman over control of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump tasserted: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” Oman is a key U.S. ally in the region; yes, so much for being an ally of the steady USA.

To provide a wee bit of perspective, the President is threatening to bomb a country that for nearly half a century has quietly provided the US with military access, logistical support, diplomatic assistance, and something increasingly rare in the Middle East: the ability to communicate with friends as well as enemies. For decades, Oman hasn’t been in the way, rather it has provided us a way. Oman helped establish the secret channel between Washington and Tehran during the negotiations that produced the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, and it has helped secure the release of Americans held hostage by Iran. When Washington and Tehran needed an intermediary during the current crisis, Oman stepped forward again.

For Iran’s part, an Iranian leader told Reuters that if diplomacy fails, Tehran will shift from defense to offense. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Iranian hard-liners have spent the past 2 months planning to widen the war and raise the cost for the U.S., inflicting enough pain that Iran can deter future attacks. Today Reuters reported that Iran-backed Houthis launched missiles at Saudi ships near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, another key international shipping route.

The unspoken and unthinkable concept of nuclear war seems to be something that General Bone Spurs has contemplated. To even float such an idea is, if not crazy, virtually incompressible, yet he has the codes and it is unclear if anyone in senior leadership roles in the military will stop such an action. He has no concept that nuclear weapons are not ordinary diplomatic tools, and they are realistically outside all of the “biggest” and “greatest” and other hyperbolic claims he throws around. He does not seem to understand that nukes are capable of killing millions of civilians in a flash, contaminating territory, provoking retaliation and transforming a conventional war into World War III.

I do not believe that the Felon has any understanding of the risks in making such threats. First of all, he is TACO Donny, so an enemy could call the bluff. Or perhaps an enemy or an ally or a subordinate could misunderstand the threat. Spin this out in a variety of ways and we end up in a real life Dr. Strangelove. The very concept of nuclear deterrence has always depended upon something General Bone Spurs seems to lack, namely, seriousness. The cocktail of his outrageous claims and his access to military power should keep the entire world on edge.

While the Felon has put the world on edge with his unhinged behavior, it appears that he thinks we aren’t looking at his continuing enrichment at our expense, this time with setting up his own bank! Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, said: “President Trump is now the first President in history to approve, operate, and supervise his own bank. This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen—and Congress cannot allow it to stand.” She and 9 other senators are introducing a bill to guarantee “that no President, Vice President, their immediate families or other senior government officials can exploit their positions to own or control a bank, which could serve as a major vehicle for corrupt dealings.” Admittedly, this is mostly a performance, but it does establish a formal record putting the Republicans in the Senate on notice that they are allowing the Felon to violate yet another traditional sort of protocol (and maybe envelope another violation of the Emoluments Clause).

In a bold move and a twist worthy of a thriller, ABC sued the FCC on Tuesday, accusing the agency of violating the First Amendment in its efforts to possibly strip the network’s local broadcasting licenses. The company asked a federal court to stop the F.C.C. from pursuing the regulatory moves, which the network said posed an “existential threat” to its operations. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, was a rare example of a major media organization’s suing the administration over its unrelenting campaign to punish the national press through lawsuits, reporting restrictions and, in the case of the major networks, the regulatory power of the federal government.

ABC, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, has already argued in agency filings that the F.C.C. was motivated by a hostility to the network’s coverage and content. Its lawsuit includes various quotes from the Felon calling for the revocation of broadcast licenses for coverage he has not liked. The lawsuit noted: “This case boils down to a simple question: Can the administration use its control over the federal regulatory apparatus to punish a media organization for editorial decisions and news coverage it dislikes? Because the First Amendment provides a clear answer — of course not — this court’s intervention is necessary to stop the Federal Communications Commission’s extraordinary assault on free speech.”

In response to ABC’s claims, the F.C.C. chairman, Brendan Carr, called the lawsuit “meritless” and denied that the agency was violating ABC’s free speech rights.“Holding a broadcaster accountable to their public interest obligations and statutory obligations is not a violation of their First Amendment rights,” he said, “and that is what the F.C.C. is doing.” Uh, Mr. Carr, WTF?! You would have to be an absolute idiot not to see that this is and has been the modus operandi of this administration and its effort to silence critics, often times via the Felon’s own law firm, I mean the DOJ.

Finally, Last Tuesday, nearly 800,000 Democrats voted in Wisconsin’s primary for governor, the state’s highest midterm-primary turnout in more than 20 years. There was no presidential candidate on the ballot and no national convention waiting at the end. It was the kind of election Americans usually ignore. This time, they showed up and the same thing is happening across the country. More than 1.5 million Democrats voted in Michigan, a state record for a midterm primary. Georgia drew just over a million voters to its Democratic governor’s primary, while about 2.3 million Texans voted in the Democratic Senate primary. Both states recorded their highest Democratic midterm-primary turnout rates since at least 2002.

In Minnesota, Democratic turnout roughly matched 2018; those two years now stand as the state’s strongest Democratic midterm primaries of this century. By June, Democratic turnout was higher than in 2022 in nearly 93 percent of House primaries where more than one Democrat ran. On the other side of the coin, Republican turnout has not risen the same way. In Michigan and Wisconsin, GOP participation remained near its usual level for a midterm primary. That was true in Michigan even though Republicans had a competitive race for governor. Republican voters may still come out this fall, but so far the surge is happening on the Democratic side.

Yes, this is good news, but we need to see more engagement when votes are cast in November. This good news is not something on which we should rest, rather, this is the kind of news that should excite us and engage us. It should energize us to keep fighting, keep promoting, keep keeping hope alive, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

To put this obscene act by our government into context, yesterday morning, roughly 18,000 South Korean troops began an exercise built around the dangers they may actually face: drones crossing the border, GPS signals disappearing, and cyberattacks disrupting military communications. This matters more than ever as North Korean soldiers have returned from Russia’s war against Ukraine with battlefield experience in these methods. Yet as the exercise got underway, the order from Washington was to scale it back, not because the threat had faded, but because South Korea declined to join Donald Trump’s war against Iran. Yes, Don Donny is just that petty. In fact, General Bone Spurs said he had asked South Korean President Lee Jae Myung to participate in the “denuclearization” of Iran and Seoul replied, “No thanks!” That precipitated the change in plans. What this really means is that because a democratic ally refused Don Donny’s request to enter an unrelated war, our President weakened a military exercise meant to protect an ally from a nuclear-armed dictatorship.

The Felon is telling South Korea, Japan and every other American ally that they may not be able to count on us. If military cooperation can be reduced because a partner refuses to join an unrelated war, governments will begin preparing for the possibility that America will abandon them when they need us most. South Korea already has broad public support for building its own nuclear arsenal. If our allies decide they need nuclear weapons because they no longer trust Washington, our children will live with the consequences long after the Felon is gone. But what is most startling about these actions by our government is that North Korea earlier this month launched two more ballistic missiles, which makes our retreat from supporting our allies all the more troubling.

In our upside down world being driven by the Felon and his truth-denying supporters, rather than making life better for more Americans, he is putting gold on everything and spending most of his time looking backwards, and there is no better place to see it happening than with our military. First of all, he lets the testosterone wannabe Secretary of Defense talk a lot about warrior ethos, which seems to mean angry white men in charge. Secondly, he has demanded that the Navy construct a whole newclass of ships, Trump-class battleships, which are useless, which would be sitting ducks, and which make no sense in a world of modern warfare. Finally, and this is where the loyalists in his Party have to scream “STOP!” is with his demand that the Navy replace modern catapults with steam catapults, for reasons that seem to make no sense other than it’s how they used to be deployed. And because he thinks he has the best design sense, he is demanding that the Navy relocate the command tower on aircraft carriers because he wants them to look more like the way they looked during World War II.

Another of the insane spending efforts is the $7 billion in ship building the Felon has committed for a no-bid contract for 11 massive polar icebreakers, which is twice as many as the Coast Guard said it needed. As if that was not bad enough, he also waived the law prohibiting national security vessels from being built overseas, clearing the way for at least 4 of the ships to be constructed in Finland. Icebreakers in the midst of climate change makes the move even more wasteful.

When you think about what is happening in our country now, the visceral response should be a combination of anger and anxiety. The anger should be about how far we have moved away from the concept of liberal democracy that brought us success, security, and stability at home and in the world. Have things been perfect? Far from it, but we have questioned and resolved and questioned again and again because finding the truth in things is a full time job that needs testing. What we have been subjected to especially in the torrid destruction of institutions lead by the Felon and his handlers is a vision of America that seems almost unrecognizable as American.

The anxiety is more about not knowing what our path in the world is and what will it take to regain that role. The post industrial world of America since 1945 was driven by our country. When the US spoke people listened and nations trusted in what we said. Were we friendly with everyone? Not necessarily, but as the saying goes, our word was our bond. Other nations trusted us if we were allied with them, and the ones we opposed trusted that we would stand for what we said. We helped form the greatest peace keeping alliance with NATO, an alliance that an impetuous, spoiled brat of a criminal wants us to leave. The rationale has nothing to do with diplomacy or a vision of a safer world, it has to do with the selfishness of a man-child who wants all the intention in the room on himself. How many more institutions, buildings, park, and monuments will he destroy under a flood of gold paint remains a real concern for all of us. As each day passes, I pray for an impeachment conviction so that he will be an emasculated stain on our country for eternity with no voice.

The idea that the President is imposing his personal aesthetic preferences on design decisions that were made originally by professional designers and reviewed by commissions to maintain some sort of consistent vision, is simply incredible. Somehow, the Felon actually believes the hype of the Apprentice, and that he wrote the Art of the Deal, which gives him a false sense of something that he is not. Yet he bull-rushes his way through Washington, and believes he is the arbiter of taste, diplomacy, and governance. Washington was a carefully designed city that he wants to glitz-ify. He is all about form with no regard for substance, and much of the form is gaudy, as well. There is no diplomacy in any conventional sense as he seeds our outposts with unqualified donors. He has determined that governance is the province of the executive with no accountability to any of the other co-equal branches of our government. And much like Netanyahu’s embrace of the far right orthodox, the Felon has embraced his alliance with the Christian Nationalists who are no better than any other religious zealots, be it the the Israeli orthodox, the Taliban, or the Iranian clerics. When power supersedes the well being of a population, serious problems arise, which we have been seeing over these last 18 months.

Finally, I am still stunned how this move of the Felon’s toward an authoritarian regime somehow promotes incompetence. Look at the Cabinet or what we have left of the foreign service; competence has taken a back seat to loyalty. In fact, one could argue that the Felon actually actively dislikes competence. Why does this matter? Because someone who is competent and actually knows what they’re doing, might stand on their dignity, maintain their integrity, and refuse to follow instructions from the boss. Sheep win out over free thinking humans in the Felon’s model.

But on a good note the Supreme Court for a second time refused to review the E. Jean Carroll $5 million award that she received after a jury found in 2023 that the Felon had sexually abused and defamed her. This was an announcement without rationale nor any noted dissents. But since he is petulant, the Felon has separately asked the Supreme Court to overturn a much larger award of $83.3 million that a jury ordered him to pay in 2024 for defaming Ms. Carroll in 2019, after she accused him of a decades-old rape. The justices are on summer recess and not expected to consider whether to take up that case until late September at the earliest. And because he hates the idea of being told he is a loser (the only word that might be worse from him than “no’) his legal team issued a statement: “The American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes. President Trump will keep winning against liberal lawfare, as he continues to focus on his mission to make America great again.” Blah blah blah blah.

This is the time to get involved. Donations to candidates are good. Phone banking, post card mailing, precinct walking, polling place observing, and making sure people register to vote and that we make sure to verify all of our registration status, are all critically important. This will be a very tough few months, but what we do matters, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

As bad as the round-up has been, the administration is also moving cases through immigration courts as quickly as possible, leading to people missing court dates in historically high numbers. Having missed their court date, they are being ordered immediately deported. While this is terribly distressing, there is an AP report on August 1, that makes the story even more problematic as overworked judges are often deciding hundreds of cases a day, often making decisions in less than 5 minutes. This is not about anyone’s rights, rather, this is all about throwing people out of our country mostly because of their skin color. I’ll say it: the entire immigration process is based on racism.

For those that may still believe in the fair administration of justice, the most crooked administration ever allowed a contract for legal representation for immigrant children to expire on July 31, then offered a $150 million no-bid contract to a small Texas law firm with no experience in the field but with close ties to the Felon. When the story broke, outrage led the law firm to decline the contract. Could that have been due to the law firm realizing that they needed to maintain some integrity? Whatever, the number of no-bid contracts being given by this administration is staggering for 2 reasons: 1) there have not been any emergencies to justify such action; and, 2) they are all awarded to loyalists of the Felon or those who have given him huge sums of money.

Senator Angus King released a statement saying: “At a time when the majority of Americans believe that Immigration and Customs Enforcement…has been irresponsible in its use of force, the new ICE announcement touting shock gloves [yes, they now have a new toy with which to subdue people) begs a crucial question: is ICE genuinely focused on de-escalation or, what appears more likely, intimidation of anyone critical of their often unlawful conduct?” King urged “every single one of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand up, assert our constitutional authority, and demand immediate answers from ICE on their hiring practices, training, and tactics.” He continued: “I never thought I would see the day when masked and armed men in unmarked cars would be roaming the streets and neighborhoods of America, acting in utter disregard of the legal constraints that are basic to our freedoms. It’s becoming more and more clear that the stated basis for this gross violation of our rights—that they are ridding our communities of ‘the worst of the worst’—is a lie, and the real purpose is to establish a national police force to do the bidding of a corrupt and lawless administration.” He concluded by saying: “It is past time for Congress to do its duty and, for once, put country ahead of party.”

In an effort to control some of the moves being undertaken by the Felon, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to stop construction of the unnecessary ballroom, and lower courts have agreed, saying the ballroom requires congressional approval, although they have permitted construction of an underground bunker to continue. On August 7, an appeals court wrote: “We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.”

Because there is no legal theory on which to support the administration’s claims, construction has continued, and now U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer is telling the Supreme Court the ballroom is critical for national security and that it is too late to stop the project. He claims it is “65% complete” and has “a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep the Project ahead of schedule and under budget.” This all begs the real question, namely, can we verify these numbers, or are they like all of the fake numbers thrown around by the Felon et al. The administration wants the Supreme Court to step in to allow Trump’s vanity project to continue when we know neither the true cost or for how much our Treasury will be on the hook. The timing of Don Donny’s request that the Supreme Court allow him to ignore Congress and the law in order to spend taxpayer money on a vanity project could not be worse, with fuel costs still too high, a sleeping job market, and a rapidly growing deficit, he is redecorating and remodeling his temporary residence under no apparent authority.

There is so much about the war in Iran about which we don’t know, and probably an equal amount that we do, or for which we have solid beliefs, but between the Felon and Pull Up Pete, it is hard to believe anything they say about it all. The case of the problems aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln has been discussed by me recently, but it really focuses on unusually poor living conditions and concern for the mental health of all those aboard. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle claimed that the reports “grossly mischaracterized” the situation. Reports suggest that Caudle is another unqualified person who sucked up to Pull Up Pete in a manner that seems outside the ethos of a military officer. I know this will shock y’all, but his predecessor was Admiral Lisa Franchetti who was apparently fired because she is a woman. Not surprisingly, Secretary Testosterone claimed that the reports from the Lincoln were, you guessed it, fake news!

On the evening of August 6, in a 200 person meeting at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, families verbally attacked acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and other Navy leaders about the situation. Cao is acting secretary because his predecessor, John Phelan, was fired in April of this year after repeatedly clashing with Hegseth. This is the same Cao who, after retiring from Navy service as a captain in 2021, ran for Congress in 2022 and for the Senate in 2024 in Virginia, and had received some national attention when he said “witchcraft” had taken over the city of Monterey, California. In 2024, in response to a question about military recruiting, Cao offered the following: “What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat ‘em, and ask for seconds. Those are young men and women that are going to win wars.” This presumably is what got him a job as under secretary of the Navy in Hegseth’s Pentagon, and got him promoted, even though Phelan had so little confidence in Cao that he routinely excluded him from briefings and meetings.

In a recent interview on MSNOW retired conservative judge J. Michael Luttig noted: “Todd Blanche now becomes the symbol of Donald Trump’s corruption of the rule of law in America and the actual ruin of the Department of Justice of the United States. This is another shameful act of acquiescence, if not obeisance, by the Senate Republicans; they will bear this badge of shame the rest of their lives. Never before in American history has an attorney general been confirmed who was as corrupt as Todd Blanche. The Department of Justice is already in shambles.” “And,” Luttig added, “he will further ruin the Department of Justice.” Thank you Captain Obvious! If only conservatives would wake up to this reality!

Where this prediction really hits home is the rapidity with which Blanche issued a memo dramatically expanding executive privilege, which he described as the authority of the president to “withhold certain sensitive information for the public good.” There have been Presidents who did act for the public good, like Eisenhower sending the National Guard into Little Rock, but the only good that the Felon cares about is his own. In the past executive privilege has enabled the President to protect conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny with the logic that the President must be able to get a wide range of advice, given freely, by those in the executive branch. But what Blanche is effecting to achieve is the ability of the President to shield “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decision making.” The memo defines as a “private adviser” “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.” Cutting through this proposal’s real impact, this definition would enable the White House to defy congressional subpoenas for anyone to whom the president talks. Yes, they are avoiding a accountability and therefore any culpability

Finally, the most recent Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that employment actually fell in July, while simultaneously revising the estimates for earlier months down. Thus July’s report confirmed the now widespread view among economists that the job slowdown during reign of King Donny isn’t a blip, rather, it suggests that America has entered a new, possibly permanent era of stagnant employment. And wasn't the entire focus of the Felon’s campaign about all the jobs he would create and how he would grow our economy. Clearly, the jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector have yet to arrive and there are no indicators that they will.

For those heavily invested in the stock market, things look good on paper. But if you are a minimum wage worker, especially in a state that adheres to the absurd federal minimum wage, the stock market is meaningless. For those that believed in the future of crypto, well, the Crypto King fucked you all. He and the entire crime family of his made out like bandits, but all the investors are more than upside down. The real economy, not so good, but the Felon loves to crow about how great it is and suggesting how everyone is happy when looking at their 401(k)’s not realizing the majority of Americans don’t have access to such accounts. Working people who believed in his campaign promises, in large part, see the errors of their ways. We should all be out there making sure that voters see these lies and the damage they have caused, but we need to show them how Democrats can make things better.

This idea of better days begins, I believe, with putting an end to the corruption running rampant in and around this administration. Senator Chris Murphy just presented the grounds for impeachment to the Senate and it is certainly worth taking a look at the case he presented, but what matters his that he has presented a case that covers a litany of crimes, criminal behavior, and lies which should not be encumbered by partisan bickering. Let’s make sure to remind our elected officials that their duty is to the Constitution and not a literal felon, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

The difference between then and now, is that our American sailors are now literally throwing themselves off of ships because General Bone Spurs and Testosterone Pete won’t let them go home after nearly a year at sea with no end in sight. It has been reported that at least 6 sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed in the Middle East to support the illegal war against Iran, have thrown themselves off the deck or have tried to and been caught. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been at sea for 271 days. It has not been to port in 38 weeks, and conditions on the ship are apparently horrific and with no word on when deployment might end, it appears that conditions are going from bad to worse. Reports are that the showers are moldy, the food is limited and not what could ever be described as healthy, items like deodorant and toothpaste are pretty much gone, which shows the disdain that General Bone Spurs and his incompetent Secretary of Defense have for the military.

To think that there isn’t a pending mental health crisis for all of these service people would be to discredit their service. The folks have been deployed for a war we started and which the majority of Americans did not want, which was something on which the left and America First folks could agree! I cannot imagine that with the conditions, the stress, the confinement, and so much more, that it all becomes a recipe for deadly mistakes to happen. This reality when juxtaposed to the cheerleader bullshit from the Felon and Testosterone Pete show the truth, namely, neither of his faux tough guys gives a damn about our service personnel.

Meanwhile, as our troops are being stressed and stretched to the max, General Bone Spurs still flexes as if anyone really cares posting early yesterday: “ The U.S.A. has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it. They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, their remaining soldiers are unpaid, the IRGC is decimated and fleeing, and their ‘Leadership’ is uncertain, at best! They have No Money—Their country is ‘shot.’ All they have is FAKE NEWS and 300% INFLATION, and getting worse! Iran is all talk and no action, the Bully of the Middle East No Longer. Praise be to Allah!” Calling 25th Amendment to the white courtesy telephone!!

In fact, Reuters reported that in the last week, about a single ship a day has passed through the strait. The prewar number was about 130 a day. I guess facts are just too scary for General Bone Spurs. What he has done has been to effectively increase Iran’s strategic influence more than anyone in its own government has. And he eggs it on by the sort of insane post where every clause of every sentence is a bold-faced lie. But even more troubling is the Felon’s inability to end his war on Iran has eroded U.S. credibility in the Middle East. Netanyahu’s public rejection of the Felon’s Board of Peace plan for Gaza is also undermining allies’ faith in the ability of the U.S. to influence conditions and events in the Middle East. Netanyahu’s defiance of Don Donny appears to show that the U.S. no longer has leverage to impose its will on the region.

While all of the international crisis that the Felon is doing nothing to resolve continues, he figures attacking our relatively bulletproof election systems is where he needs to put his attention, especially as the real polls show his party about to take a huge hit. So rather than waiting until November 3, to decide whether he trusts the midterm elections, he is trying to change who controls them before any votes are cast. Earlier this week administration asked the Supreme Court to fully implement an executive order that would give the executive branch an extraordinary role in running elections. The order directs DHS to create a “State Citizenship List” of people the federal government considers eligible to vote. It tells the DOJ to investigate and possibly prosecute election officials who issue ballots to people the administration deems ineligible. It also tells the Postal Service not to transmit mail ballots unless voters appear on an approved list. Kind of technical but cutting to the chase, the all about the Felon wanting more control over the midterm elections and he’s trying to find ways to get it.

The bottom line is that he wants the federal government to decide who is eligible to receive a mail ballot. And if state election officials disagree, his administration wants the power to investigate them and possibly prosecute them. Let me not digress and raise the issue of Constitutionality, but if the law…the law is that elections are controlled by the states, the Supreme Court, which would likely be making a call on this, has to reject this plan. Of course, after gutting the Voting Rights Act, there may be a conservative majority that might buy this argument as to why the feds have to step in.

Since we all believe in the lessons history teaches, the action currently being attempted is what he tried after the 2020 election. In 2020 he looked for ways to use federal power to overturn state-certified results. Now he wants the federal government to have a say in deciding who can vote and to put pressure on the people who run elections. The administration’s disingenuous claim is that it says it is trying to stop noncitizens from voting. The Felon is using a very small problem to justify a much larger federal role in elections, which is best illustrated by a recent report showing federal prosecutions for noncitizen voting found only 129 people charged since Congress made it a crime in 1996. None of those cases involved an alleged coordinated scheme to influence an election. Many resulted from confusion, administrative mistakes or bad information from government employees.

Much like the disregard for numbers the administration throws around budgets, the fact that there is no identifiable widespread election fraud hasn’t stopped the administration from pushing deeper into state election systems. The DOJ has sued more than two dozen states for detailed voter rolls containing information such as birth dates and partial Social Security numbers. As of last week, it had lost 21 straight cases. The administration has threatened to withhold some disaster funds from states that refuse to use a federal citizenship database, and DOJ officials have warned election administrators they could face criminal charges if they knowingly allow noncitizens to remain on voter rolls.

With all of the bad news swirling around the Felon and his administration, he continues to insist that voters are angry not at him, but at Republicans for not passing the measures he demands. But a new Economist/YouGov poll released earlier this week found the Felon’s job approval ratings dropping even further than the numbers the same poll had shown the previous week, with only 33% of Americans approving of his performance. On top of that, the USA Today network reports, 60% of Americans think the president is “not honest and trustworthy,” and 69% feel that things in the country these days are “out of control.” 53% of those polled think the Felon is too old to be president.

Because of bad taste and self-aggrandizement, the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Thursday to inscribe the Felon’s name on the building beneath the main signage, according to two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings, aggressively testing a federal judge’s order. According to the resolution approved by the Felon-allied board, the inscription underneath the institution’s name would read: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” The board’s decision, which directs officials to act by “all legal means,” came shortly after it voted to move forward with Don Donny’s plan to shutter the building for renovations.

Let’s all remember that the Felon’s name was added to the building last year, but a judge ordered the letters taken down, finding that only Congress had the authority to change the institution’s name. The center did remove his name, but it is appealing the ruling. This was an effort at a creative workaround to a provision in the federal law governing the Kennedy Center that says “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas.” The resolution to make the change has the board directing officials to honor the Felon for bringing the center back “from the brink of disaster,” presenting a series of possibilities that included naming the center’s grounds the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” The measure said: “It is hereby resolved, that the center desires to recognize and honor President Trump’s existential and unprecedented contributions to the survival of the center by all legal means.” Go ahead, get sick, you can finish this in a minute after you clean up.

Finally, the Washington Post reported that the renovations Don Donny is making to the White House campus will cost at least $927 million, with that money coming primarily from taxpayers. The administration has bypassed Congress to find the funding by channeling money from other agencies and private donors and sending it to an account typically used for routine maintenance. A report this past Sunday said that more than $323 million has been funneled from the National Park Service to the Felon’s vanity projects on the White House grounds, even as his own Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, estimates a $30 billion backlog of deferred maintenance in the parks themselves. This number is a nearly 5,000% (not a typo) increase over the $7.5 million spent at the White House in 2024, the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency.

On top of that vanity spend, another $100 million has been allotted to the National Mall this year. The $423 million allocated this year for projects at the White House and the National Mall is more money than had been allotted to Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Mammoth Cave, Zion, and Joshua Tree National Parks, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the Statue of Liberty complex combined.

There is a long road ahead to November and we have to keep swelling voter rolls and making sure that those impacted show up to vote. I love to imagine, and see it as getting closer to reality, that we are poised to have Democrats take back Congress this fall, and get to work on the very long list of investigations to be conducted against administration officials and holding them accountable. I can’t wait to see a Republican minority defending all the pleading of the 5th Amendment by those administration officials being questioned! But the change is gonna come, but only if we keep pushing and keep fighting, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Back in the era BT, Before Trump, Republicans talked a lot about character. They denounced Bill Clinton’s adultery, his perjury, and his exploitation of an intern. They said moral rot was infectious. They warned that a party led by a scoundrel, and dedicated to defending that scoundrel, would come to resemble him. With Don Donny they have proven the point. This came to a very clear light at the start of the week when the Felon sat for an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, a conspiracy theorist on Real America’s Voice and one of the Felon’s favorite media personalities. Root was ready to wind up the Felon and boy did he. He opened with the correct thesis that Senate Republicans lack the votes to pass the bullshit SAVE Act, and then suggested that the Felon should simply declare a national emergency over elections and impose it himself. His prefatory statement called out photo ID, proof of citizenship, limits on mail voting, all without Congress being required to do anything. The key point is that Don Donny did not say “no.”

The law is clear on this point because the Constitution exclusively gives states and Congress the power to run elections, not the president. No president in our history has declared an emergency to run, change, or cancel a vote; not for wars, economic crisis, not for any reason. But here we have someone for whom power is all the matters and he seems to understand that his grip is about to get loosened in November. This leaves him with 2 paths: 1) do the unthinkable and try to take over the elections over the lack of election integrity that he claims, falsely, exists; or 2) start shoving legislation down America’s throat before a Democratic controlled Congress can act. Needless to say, he can start spitting out more EO’s, which will clog court calendars as he tries to steal our institutions, systems, and laws.

When it comes to allegations against himself, there is no calm refuting of a claim, but rather an almost hysterical denial. I think this really became relevant to who the Felon is when the suggestions that he was a Russian asset or had extensive financial ties to Russia began. Admittedly, there is no publicly known investigation into the Felon ever demonstrated that he was acting at the behest of the Russians. What we do know comes from new documents and interviews with former federal law enforcement officials, about what happened.

We can start with May 2017, a week after Don Donny fired James B. Comey, when the F.B.I. director, senior officials and counterintelligence agents at the bureau decided to move forward with a two-pronged inquiry. It was oddly code-named Oxford Comma. One of the investigations was to be criminal investigating whether the Felon, in firing Comey, broke the law by obstructing justice and interfering with the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling. It was also to assess whether the Felon’s campaign conspired with the Russians. The second was to be a counterintelligence investigation into the Felon’s ties to Russia.

Counterintelligence investigations are different from criminal inquiries. Instead of focusing exclusively on whether the law was broken, counterintelligence investigations look at whether a foreign adversary is undermining the United States. Counterintelligence investigations are classified, take place in secret and unfold over many years. Civil liberties watchdogs are critical of them because they often surface embarrassing, but not criminal, behavior by Americans. People are rarely charged in such cases, but the F.B.I. often takes steps, like warning officials and citizens, about how those around them may be trying to influence them.

Referring to the counterintelligence inquiry, one of the declassified memos made public by the White House last week said: “The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation.” According to the memos released by the White House, the F.B.I. had concluded that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election to help the Felon. The bureau had learned that Russians had offered to help the campaign, and the F.B.I. knew that the campaign had pushed the Republican Party to embrace a far more Russia-favorable position on Ukraine as part of its 2016 platform. The F.B.I. also knew that Don Donny, before firing Mr. Comey, had been pressuring him to end the investigation into ties between his campaign and Russia.

Not only has Don Donny denied any ties to Russia, there is likewise nothing to suggest the he is telling the truth. His own son has bragged about how much business the family did with Russians, especially the oligarch class. During 45 who can forget his meeting with Putin for which he had no recording or transcription (nobody can be sure that Putin’s team did not record), which seemed to be beyond protocol when meeting with a nation that has become more adversarial to the US since the fall of the Soviet Union. Moreover, he has continually taken the Russian position in lobbying for an end to the war in Ukraine. The Felon seems to have no understanding of who are actually ally is! Is getting that Trump St. Petersburg Hotel that important?

The smell of desperation is really overwhelming around the immigration policy of this administration. As I have often noted, nobody has an issue of getting rid of criminals or those who entered the US under false pretenses, but the inherent racism in the policies of the administration is not that. The gravamen of much of the deportation efforts has been the wholesale denial of due process. The fact is that most of the deportation efforts often happen before deportees can argue their cases before a judge. As is that was not bad enough, some of the countries selected by the administration don’t offer the basic legal protections to which the deportees would be entitled in the United States, such as access to a lawyer. On top of that, because they are foreign nationals, with no legal status in the countries to which they have been sent, the deportees generally remain under indefinite detention abroad, without charges and with little or no recourse in American courts. In a written statement to The New York Times, DHS maintained that anyone who was deported received due process: “These third-country agreements, which ensure due process under the U.S. Constitution, are essential to the safety of our homeland and the American people.” Yo, we ain’t that stupid!

Finally, the Party that seemed to want to own the moral high ground has abandoned morality altogether. When any of the Felon’s supporters faces the sorts of claims that put into question their suitability for serving, these acolytes love to claim that what they have suffered may be bad, but it is nothing compared to the venom brought against the Felon. The shocking reality is that Don Donny is a convicted felon. He was tried, lost, and lost appeals. The venom directed at the Felon was appropriate because he was guilty! The fact that the Felon and his cultish followers somehow want to ignore that he is a serial adulterer, a convicted felon, a tax evader, a sexual predator, and a liar, is both troubling and quite sad. The desperation to make him more than the low-life scumbag that he is falls on more and more deaf ears.

As the Felon’s endorsement of candidates seems less and less valuable, the fear coming out of the White House is growing. The hold he seemingly had coming off the 2024 election has declined precipitously, as the independents he won over and the Latino community are running from him. Knowing that a fair and honest election, even with his support for gerrymandering, especially with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, may end his reign if Democrats get control of all of Congress, there is no limit to which the Felon may sink. This is not folly or guessing, rather, he would rather cheat than lose, and we cannot allow him to cheat. The vote can save us, so we must fight to protect and preserve it, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

The 180 degree turn from the past US position that sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets were made conditional on an end to Iran’s nuclear program. While the word “nuclear” is nowhere to be found, our ill-fated efforts has Iran is asserting its right to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for global trade. Tolls on ships using the strait would provide significant funding for the Iranian regime. The impact of this may best be seen through the words of foreign policy scholar and diplomat Philip Gordon, who served in the Biden White House, wrote: “U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.” If this was legal proceeding, this would be the final words of a closing argument.

What the Felon has done is largely to obviate any united global response. In other situations, like the U.S.-led naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq war, the global coalition that reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the multinational naval force enforcing UN sanctions in the Gulf in the 1990’s, or the UN Security Council sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program in the 2010’s, a global contingent rose in a unified effort. Where we are now is that the US and other countries are now being forced to accept an outcome that would have been unthinkable before the war, but seems to have become unavoidable because of it.

Because the Felon is a failure at diplomacy, and due in large part to his refusal to have any relationship with reality, the Felon said: “We are low-keying it,” explaining: “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” He stressed that Iran’s in an economic crisis and that since oil prices have come down slightly in the U.S., gas prices have eased enough to provide some relief to consumers. He added, “It will work out….It always works out. It’s like a chess game.” Seriously, what does that mean because generally someone loses in a chess game and it seems our king is in great peril.

Not having any memory, or simply disregarding facts, at he Felon posted just after midnight: “I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous…. I have instructed my representatives to put this firmly into any, and all, future negotiations.” An hour later, he added: “Also,…Iran should be responsible for the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza!” Even crazier, he claimed Iranian negotiators had never before mentioned reparations for the damage done to Iran during the 5 month conflict, although the MOU he signed on June 17, clearly calls for the establishment of a $300 billion fund for Iran’s reconstruction and economic development, suggesting either that he has forgotten what was in the agreement or didn’t know or perhaps that he simply doesn’t care because he is incapable of accepting fault or blame.

The topper to all of this was, following these series of late night posts, when a reporter asked General Bone Spurs when he thought the Strait of Hormuz would open, he answered: “Well, it’s open now…. It’s open now. Look, the only one that has control of the Strait of Hormuz right now is the United States Navy.” What can one even say? As I have postulated often, the emperor has no clothes.

Somehow the Felon may believe that he is slicker and smarter than the rest of us, but he is not a leader. Leaving Türkiye (I am still trying to find out what happened to Turkey) on July 8, after the NATO summit, the day after he had renewed strikes on Iran, the Felon made a show of switching from the newly outfitted plane given to the U.S. by Qatar to an older plane that had served as Air Force One before he got the Qatari jet. The journalists who were traveling with the president and some of the White House staff moved with the president to the older plane for the leg of the trip that would take them to Britain.

The story about changing planes because the rush job on Qatari jet had not been completed to Presidential standards, was only part of the story. In fact, the Felon and some of his aides secretly left the older Air Force One in a container lowered into an airport catering truck and were transferred to a smaller plane for the trip. There had apparently been credible Iranian threats against the Felon’s life, and so officials turned to a plan to hide him, even from senior U.S. officials. To do so, they left the journalists and staff on the plane that would use the Air Force One call sign, turning them into a decoy for an Iranian strike. White House staffers instructed journalists to lower their shades when they entered the plane. Yes, sacrificing staff and journalists is something a leader would never do; talk tough but act like a weak and frightened child is what he actually did.

Here at home the Felon continues to attack any candidate that won’t say how great he is. But when it comes to any Muslim candidate or even an Arabic name (I guess Don Donny cannot accept the fact of Arab Christians, and think what he would say if you told him Jesus was not blonde haired and blue-eyed!) he is a one trick pony. Which brings us to Michigan’s candidate for Senate, Abdul El-Sayed. Besides the Islamaphobic attacks, Don Donny and his minions are playing 1950’s and screaming communism and socialism and using them interchangeably.

One of the main points of attack is El-Sayed’s support for Medicare for All. The reality is that he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. To get to this benefit it would require higher taxes and this is the only thing to which Republicans have hitched their opposition wagon. The real question today is how much has the political calculus shifted? The truth is that Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, claim denials, and a seemingly uncompromising claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost where middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. An added benefit would be the end of obscene administrative costs.

The bottom line is that El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. If this is a line in the sand for Republicans, they may be in for a big shock come November.

The shocking part about the attacks on El-Sayed come from other Republicans choosing to ramp up their anti-Muslim language since Dr. El-Sayed’s primary win. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama posted that “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed is a RADICAL ISLAMIST,” calling him a “TERRORIST.” Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina said on social media that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic.” The ghost of Joe McCarthy lives and yet the Republican Party seems to have forgot about that blemish on our history and continue its sick and twisted message of hate for hate’s sake.

Finally, the Felon signed a long-awaited executive order to upend America’s pediatric-vaccine schedule. American kids, the president insisted, are simply taking far too many shots. It’s too much liquid going into the kids, in his view. All that liquid, you’re bound to run into trouble. “I’ve seen proof of where they have a vaccination thing that looks like the size of a bottle of soda and pour it into a little child’s body,” the president said, describing a real vaccine process that definitely, actually, totally happens…NOT! This EO cuts the number of diseases we routinely vaccinate kids against from 18 down to 11. Shots for things like hepatitis B, the flu, and COVID would no longer be recommended for all children. And the order wants to split the measles vaccine, the MMR, into three separate shots spread over many months.

And of course, doctors are alarmed over this. There is no sound medical evidence for any of these decisions. Spreading shots out over more visits just leaves kids unprotected longer, and it assumes every family can even make 5 separate trips to the doctor. And by the way, this is all happening while measles is at a 35-year high in this country.

While one might question whether this change will lead to nothing but still more vaccine hesitancy from people who take the president and his antivax-kook advisers at their medical word, but at worst, it will lead to unnecessary policy changes that force parents to make many more trips to the pediatrician to get the same amount of vaccine coverage. Either way: lower vaccine uptake, fewer immunized kids, more sickness. MAHA, my ass!

We need to move forward, not backwards. We need leaders willing to make the tough decision that will benefit a larger portion of Americans. How many billions does any person need? Why are the rich and the largest corporations not being taxed, because those benefits don’t trickle down to anyone. I am a capitalist, but to enjoy that system, one must pay taxes, and to give the richest of us a free ride, well, it makes no sense. Let’s fight for sensibility, and fairness, and healthcare for all, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Netanyahu dismissed the Felon-proposed deal, a 15-point plan to end the war in Gaza, saying Israel’s military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.” Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting that “Israel rejects the 15-point document” but was still discussing plans for Gaza with the White House. And he repeated that claim to make sure the world understood that Israeli forces will not be withdrawn until there is total disarmament of Hamas. The Felon had said Israeli forces would withdraw as the Hamas militant group’s disarmament is completed. Again, we have another example of the devil being in the details, and here the Felon seems to think he can make deals without the real parties in interest.

One can only imagine the embarrassment felt by the Felon, although it was probably exhibited as a profanity laced rage. What Don Donny may not see is that Netanyahu is in the fight of his political life with Israeli elections in October and his coalition is on the ropes. Standing up to the American president and looking tough plays well for him right now. In other words, embarrassing the Felon was good for Netanyahu’s campaign. So he did it. One might hope that the Felon would learn from this, but given that he thinks foreign policy is only about flattery and personal favors, and that if some leader calls him brilliant and hands him a shiny prize, they’re besties forever. Sadly, for the Felon anyway, world leaders don’t act on flattery; they act on their own interests, and if they’re good leaders, their countries’ interests. Netanyahu just used Don Donny and then dumped the plan when it stopped being useful for his own politics. The Felon calls himself the greatest dealmaker on Earth, but he just got played by a top ally in front of the world.

In one of the more ridiculous escapades of this administration, the Felon still wants the world to believe that it was vandalism and not poor work that created the problems in the Reflecting Pool. David Hearn, the former Olympian that was charged with vandalism and then had his case dismissed, went on CNN and when asked if he had any “final message” for the president. Hearn criticized the Felon for wrongly accusing him and added: “Leaders don’t do that.” This has become the true theme of this administration, that is, leaders don’t do that.

Although the Felon seems to have no short term memory and moves on from one shiny object to the next, the dismissal is not the final chapter in this story and what happens next will help settle whether we are capable of dispensing real justice to all those accomplices of Don Donny who are helping make our slide into authoritarianism possible. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are set to launch an investigation into the decision to criminally charge Hearn and others over the Reflecting Pool fiasco. Although Democrats are in the minority, thankfully they are not simply expressing their concern, but this sort of probe offers a blueprint for what they’ll pursue with subpoena power if they control the House after the midterms.

Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and potentially its future chair, will formally demand that the DOJ and Interior turn over documents related to the charging decisions made in this case. What this sort of proactive pressure does is push the Cabinet members and other loyal officials into the sort of comical finger-pointing that seems to be the hallmark of the administration’s ineptitude. Former FOX News host and DC prosecutor Jeanine Pirro has accused Interior Secretary Doug Burgum of deliberately misleading her office by persuading prosecutors of Hearn’s guilt. In her rush to blame others, she has lost sight of ethics guidelines that note that prosecutors aren’t supposed to bring indictments unless they really think the charges are supported. This is best evidenced by the government’s own sole witness who testified to the grand jury that this damage was visible before Hearn ever touched it, and it was obvious to the naked eye that something far more than vandalism had marred the project.

“The notion that they did not know that there was a botched, rushed renovation of the Reflecting Pool does not hold water,” Norm Eisen, a lawyer for Hearn, said. The lawyers for Hearn and others refuse to let this case drop. They’ve been seeking access to full transcripts of the grand jury proceedings, including instructions that prosecutors gave jurors on charging guidelines, to determine whether prosecutors misled them to secure Hearn’s indictment. Despite Hearn’s exoneration, the push for the grand jury materials will continue because the court dismissed the case without prejudice, which means prosecutors can theoretically revive the charges later. Getting those materials will hopefully persuade the court to rule that prosecutors cannot bring back this case, which is based in large part of seeing whether prosecutors were candid with the grand jury.

Getting the materials will be an uphill climb as defense lawyers rarely are permitted to view grand jury materials, but “rarely” does not mean never. In this case, even before the indictment, the Felon was making public statements regarding vandalism. In the world of Don Donny it seems that once he makes a claim his minions take that as a command to make, in this case, vandalism the truth. This actually presents a case with incredibly high stakes as the DOJ seems to have been charged with lawless efforts to direct law encroachment against critics of the Felon. What this really offers, however, is the likelihood of civil lawsuits against the government seeking the courts to impose professional sanctions on key actors, and seeking their disbarment, possibly up to Pirro herself. Every lawyer who’s had their fingerprints on this illegal indictment could be deemed to be complicit in this assault on the rule of law.

Another example of a sort of moral failure, not to mention making costly decisions without any basis in fact is the border wall construction, inside Big Bend, in Texas, a national park. Seventeen miles of barriers, access roads, and lighting are being built as DHS waived dozens of environmental laws to clear the way, the first time that had ever been done for a national park. And to make that construction easier, hundreds of thousands of acres of American land are being left on the Mexico side. All of that said, the one problem with this entire project is that there is no border crisis in Big Bend. Every local sheriff along this stretch of border, Republican and Democrat, says a wall here is pointless. They already have what one of them calls a “God-made barrier,” canyon cliffs dropping fifteen hundred feet to the river, and a hundred miles of desert above them.

How then can this be happening? It starts with what happens when tribute is paid (Barnard Construction’s chairman and his wife gave a million dollars to the Felon’s campaign in 2024) as nearly two billion dollars of that work went to Barnard Construction, a Montana firm that has collected more than $5.6 billion in border contracts under this administration, with their single largest award, $1.6 billion for construction in New Mexico that was handed out with no competitive bidding at all. While agencies can be rebuilt and international credibility regained, it might be impossible to restore a place like Big Bend.

Finally, whatever you think of Joe Biden’s politics, news that his prostate cancer has spread and he is not doing well, this is a moment for basic human compassion. A family is watching a father and a grandfather suffer. Your politics shouldn’t affect how you feel that news. And Biden himself is a good man, who peacefully transferred power to a president that belittled him and insulted his sons and family countless times during the 2024 election cycle. Yet when asked about the recent news on Biden’s health, the Felon slithered into the ground and said that he doesn’t feel sorry for him because he was vicious to people. I know we cannot expect much from this guy, but when anyone’s father is dying of cancer, there is exactly one decent thing to say, namely, I’m praying for him and his family. That’s it.

The counterpoint is reflecting on what Biden said after the assassination attempt on the Felon in Pennsylvania: “I’m grateful to hear he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally as we await further information. Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety. There is no place for this kind of violence in America.” Those are words for a man who served his country for decades, not as some partisan hack, but as a problem solver who spent a lifetime reaching across the aisle to make our country a better place.

There is no place for someone like the Felon is any leadership role, let alone our Presidency. If we fail to take control of at least part of Congress after the midterms, it may take a generation to rebuild our systems, not to mention the trust of the rest of the world. I hope you are all ready to take action, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

Lawmakers from both parties had also expressed discomfort that Blanche’s personal history with the president could affect his ability to run an independent Justice Department. “The problem with confirming Todd Blanche is that he has never been able to shed his role as criminal defense lawyer for Donald Trump. He just can’t do it,” Adam Schiff, said ahead of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote advancing Blanche’s nomination. “He will never do what’s best for the American people. He will only do what’s best for Donald Trump, and you cannot leave someone like that as the nation’s No. 1 law enforcement official.”

While the fund remains the subject of multiple legal challenges, in June, a federal judge in Virginia indefinitely blocked the administration from taking steps to create the fund. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema signaled she would dismiss the suit should Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent submit a sworn declaration under the penalty of perjury that the fund had been terminated, but they declined to do so, and the case has continued. It is not immediately clear whether Blanche’s cancellation order will prompt Brinkema to revisit the possibility of dismissal. The DOJ asked her to dismiss the case last month, arguing the fund is dead. She is set to hear arguments on the dismissal later this month. None of Blanche’s new documents rescinded the original settlement agreement, which was reached after Trump moved to dismiss his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and a federal judge agreed to that dismissal. That settlement yielded the so-called anti-weaponization fund to redress individuals who claim they were harmed by “weaponization” of the justice system.

Last month U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who presided over and dismissed the Felon’s lawsuit against the IRS, ripped the settlement agreement. In a scathing ruling, Williams concluded that the Felon sued the IRS for an “improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that has no viable basis in law or fact.” One outstanding question is whether the attorney general even has the authority to grant the Felon immunity from IRS audits in the first place. No one has sued to challenge the immunity deal, likely because it is unlikely anyone has standing to bring a lawsuit of that nature.

Because the Felon seems to care little for rules (see his excessive golf cheating) or the law, he thinks he can do whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Fortunately, the courts are stopping him, or at least trying! A federal appeals court ruled this past Friday that he cannot continue building the ballroom he planned as a replacement to the East Wing of the White House without explicit approval from Congress. The ruling does not immediately halt construction, but it is a blow to the president and all but guarantees that the Supreme Court will decide the fate of the ballroom. In a 2-1 vote the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the administration to stop construction on the $400 million ballroom on the site of the East Wing he demolished. The court upheld an injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued after the administration tore down the East Wing last fall and started putting up a 90,000 square foot ballroom without ever asking Congress for permission.

The language of the ruling is worth considering: “We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.” The judges also said that whether a massive ballroom gets built at the White House is, quote, “for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.” For the record, the district judge who blocked this project in the first place, twice, is Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, which takes away from the Felon his standard claim that he was rebuked by some liberal activist judge.

The Felon was, to say the least, incensed by the ruling. And I think it is safe to say that he must’ve lost it when (if?) he read the court’s ruling. “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence. The President has no—and claims no—constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people,” the court wrote. “We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.” They noted that Don Donny tore down the East Wing of the White House with no review and no advance notice, and quoted the district court’s finding that the “government’s concerns regarding the safety and security of the White House…[are] a problem of the President’s own making!”

The court stayed its decision in order to enable the Felon to appeal to the Supreme Court, which he said he will do. He posted: “The Military and Secret Service are viewing this horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful ruling as a National Security threat to our Nation in that the entire Complex is being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents.” He added that “the desperately needed, and totally secure Ballroom, which is being built ahead of schedule and under budget, is a Gift from President Trump and Great Patriots of the United States of America. There will be no expense to the American Taxpayer.” In fact, as reported in the Washington Post in June, officials from the federal government have already committed taxpayer money for more than half of the cost of the ballroom, which flys in the face of the claims of “gift” and no taxpayer monies.

As the master of piling on, the Felon posted again, saying of presidents: “We are not tenants, who pay rent and do all other things that a tenant must do, we are PRESIDENTS, elected by the people of the United States States of America, and have many rights, including the right to fix, renovate, secure, protect, and beautify the White House grounds.” This, of course, brings to mind the words of my mother, namely, the only taste the Felon has is in his mouth. I will leave it at that because why try and unpack the illogic of Don Donny.

Early last week it was reported that the U.S. has used “virtually all” of its highly accurate long-range missiles that can strike accurately from a safe distance. Sources told the journalists from Reuters doing the reporting that the dwindling missile supplies could make it more difficult for the U.S. to deter Russia and China. The report suggested that the shortages contributed to the Felon’s decision not to resume massive strikes against Iran. Of course because accepting reality would be anathema to the Felon, in the wee hours after the report, he denied the report and claimed “[t]he U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history. The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long term jail sentences will be sought!”

Despite the Felon’s claim, the Washington Post reported that General Bone Spurs exploded at Pull Up Pete over the issue. Sources told the journalists that at the cabinet meeting the Felon held at Camp David last Friday, he appeared to confront Pull Up Pete with his concern that he had been misled about weapons shortages. The journalists reported that the Felon is increasingly frustrated with Pull Up Pete, who was enthusiastic about striking Iran and helped to convince the Felon it would be a quick victory. As I noted last week, Pete had to point a finger because heaven forbid he take on any responsibility, so he blamed Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg, the private equity billionaire who is pushing Congress to pass a $1.5 trillion military budget while at the same time he is overseeing the newly created Economic Defense Unit (EDU) in the Defense Department. The EDU is directing government investment in private sector defense contractors and has cut deals for the government to start taking equity stakes in those businesses.

It has been widely reported that replenishing the munitions stockpiles Pull Up Pete and General Bone Spurs have depleted will take years and will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Given the administration’s penchant for avoiding issues, it has been reported that the Felon has ordered investigations into who has been leaking information about the weapons shortages. The real problem with this failed administration and its lack of looking beyond their own Pinocchio noses is that U.S. intelligence assesses that the depletion of U.S. munitions has made it more likely that Russia will try to fracture the NATO alliance in the next few years by attacking a NATO nation.

Finally, as the Felon continues to pursue voter suppression efforts, this is a time to look back and see how someone who cared about all Americans acted. In 1957, when he was Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson called for the protection of Black voting, saying: “This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.”Upon signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he said to the American people: “I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”

These ideals are what we should all fight to insure. If we have to fight a Republican Congress with the sort of incompetent Cabinet personnel for 2 more years, I fear what those final 2 years of the reign of Don Donny could mean for our future. This is not a chicken little moment, because if they maintain control of all of our government, then the sky will clearly be falling. We cannot let that happen. Now is the time to push harder, to fight with greater focus, and to stop the Felon, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.

For some unknown and clearly unproven reason the idea that tax cuts were a reliable solution to grow economic growth became Republican dogma that have been the GOP’s ethos for 46 years….and counting! In a fit of tantrum-like irrationality Republican leaders have taken the provably false position that taxes do not build the country, but destroy it. Notwithstanding the rising national debt, that ideology continues. In 2017 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered income tax rates across the board and offered most tax relief to the wealthy and corporations, became 45’s signature law. But those cuts eroded the revenue base of the U.S. government, sending the debt soaring. Yet somehow rejecting reality and facts, in July 2025, Republicans passed the Big Boondoggle, making permanent the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations they passed during 45. They offset some of the costs of that measure with dramatic cuts to programs that help the American people, including Medicaid and SNAP.

Even with those offsets, economists estimate that the Big Boondoggle will add more than $4 trillion to the national debt in the next 10 years. When you add the war with Iran, the national budget is being stretched unlike it may have ever been. When real action is required, all that this administration can do is offer up another trope, another well-worn platitude, namely, that cutting waste, fraud, and abuse will solve the growing debt problem. With the devil still in the details, defining that 3-headed hydra is where the rubber meets to road.

It would seem that even with his Party’s control of Congress, the Felon turned to his favorite faux-legislative move and signed 2 executive orders yesterday targeting birthright citizenship. One was intended to prevent non-US citizens from giving birth in the United States in an attempt to gain citizenship for their newborns, and the second order expands the definition of who does not qualify for birthright citizenship. If you are interested in seeing the terms of the EO before it, too, gets challenged in court you can find it on the White House website. He is clearly trying to find that place that the Supreme Court left an opening for on this issue, but a reading of the EO will yield more litigation.

When Don Donny is not giving away the Treasury, or starting unprovoked wars, or upsetting alliances, he loves to do things that hurt people. He clearly spent his childhood doing awful things to weaker people and small animals. In his latest FU move, the administration announced that it would move forward with a plan to eliminate hundreds of federal regulations governing Head Start, in what advocates fear is a push to gut a 61-year-old antipoverty program aimed at helping the nation’s most impoverished young children. The proposed plan would remove most of Head Start’s 133 pages of federal requirements for math and literacy curricula, class sizes, medical screenings, home visits. Even a requirement that children brush their teeth after meals would end. What this move is about is more cutting of programs that help the less fortunate in our society; consider this another of his let them eat cake moments.

I have talked about voter suppression often because it seems to be the Felon’s raison d’être. He sees that he cannot win a fair election and so he wants to rig the system. In March, the Felon issued an EO that was a naked attempt to clamp down on mail-in voting, as it ordered the U.S. Postal Service to draft new rules refusing to deliver ballots to voters not on federally approved citizen lists, and not to deliver ballots at all in states that refuse to hand over their voter rolls. The mechanics of that could not possibly be a workable solution, but Don Donny is not a details guy. Some might call it “ideating,” but I see it as more of “spitballing,” which is to say throwing out consequential concepts without working through the implications.

That EO has been stayed for months, although there have been legal wrinkles, as one court ruled that the White House doesn’t have this sort of controlling power over elections, while another ruled that because the USPS hasn’t finalized its rules, those rules are not yet eligible for legal challenge. Last month, the administration asked the Supreme Court to lift the stay, arguing that until the rules are in place, states can’t prove they’d be harmed by them. Taking a righteous proactive approach, 23 states and the District of Columbia asked the court to leave the stay in place, arguing that lifting it “would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities.”

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani concluded that the challengers’ claims were not yet “ripe” for federal elections scheduled to take place after Nov. 3, 2026. But she agreed with the challengers that she could review their claims with regard to the upcoming midterm elections because the executive order “created a ‘direct and immediate dilemma’” for them. Talwani barred the federal government from implementing the provisions on or before Nov. 3, 2026, in the District of Columbia and the 23 states challenging the provisions.

On the other side of the argument, the federal government and a group of 12 states, led by Alabama, that had joined the case to defend the order asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit to put Talwani’s order on hold. But the 1st Circuit declined to do so, noting that neither the federal government nor the 12 states “defend[ed] the legality of the EO.” The court of appeals also rejected any suggestion that the challengers did not have a right to sue or that the case was not yet ripe. The consequences of the EO, that court wrote, give states “no practical choice but to respond to the EO now.” That outcome is, of course, exactly what the federal government hopes to achieve. Its explicit argument is that the court shouldn’t just rule in their favor, but should do so with haste since how else will they be able to get the new voting regime up and running in time for the midterms? “Absent a stay,” Solicitor General John Sauer argued, “there will not be sufficient time to obtain appellate relief before the November election.”

If the justices were to agree, it would be a recipe for instant election chaos. Democratic states would immediately be presented with a terrible dilemma, namely, do they submit to a partial federal takeover of their elections, including handing over their voter rolls to Pee Wee German and his henchmen for some vague federal purpose, allowing the White House final administrative say over who gets a ballot mailed to them and who doesn’t? Or do they resign themselves to carrying out their elections in November without the assistance of the Postal Service, essentially giving themselves over to the “no mail in ballots” world that Trump has actually wanted all along?

Fortunately, and I don’t want to get too far over my skis, but election results from earlier this week offer a glimmer of hope that Americans are calling bullshit on the Felon’s game plan. One great example was with voters in Missouri resoundingly rejecting a Republican proposal to eliminate the state income tax and to replace missing revenue with a higher sales tax. The vote was not close: 83.3% of voters opposed the measure while only 16.7% were in favor, despite the fact that groups in favor of eliminating the tax outspent those in favor of keeping it by a margin of more than two to one.

Where things get really scary is when we have a blame game around what is happening at DOD. The Washington Post reported that at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David last Friday, the Felon confronted Mr. Testosterone, demanding to know why he’d apparently been misled about the severe shortages of American missiles. General Bone Spurs thought the problem, in his words, had been fixed. Guess what? It hasn’t. Those shortages, in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, are a big part of why he’s had to pull back from striking Iran. Of course, Pete handled it as one would expect by pointing the finger at his own deputy and said something like “his fault sir!” Kind of an interesting comeback from the guy that talked General Bone Spurs into this war in the first place, promising it would be quick and easy.

Finally, since finger pointing and fact-less claims rule the day in this administration, the Felon (along with much of his party) hates American cities, and isn’t open to hearing anything good about them. In line with the disdain for history of facts, he and his followers seem to have an image of what life is like in our cities that is 40 years out of date. A recent example of this fantasy as reality moment came in a tangent about “blue cities” where he declared: “What do they have in common? They’re all dirty. They’re filthy, dirty. Their streets are dirty. Their streets smell. Their storefronts are broken. Their trees are all gross. Everything about the place is dirty.”

Unpacking this rant makes it clear that he wasn’t talking “blue cities,” it was an attack on American cities in general, since almost all major cities (9 of the top 10, with 95% of their combined population have Democratic mayors). And as usual, try to imagine any public figure saying something similar about rural America. When was the last time the Felon walked the streets of any American city? So while Republicans go all in attacking the Democrat on trans issues, for example, and get answered with a simple, devastating message that Republicans care more about bathrooms than they do about fixing your potholes, Americans are seeing the truth. The message Democrats must exploit is to be responsive to what people actually need. If we can drag the conversation back to what really matters, like trying to survive an economy the Felon has decimated, that’s how you push back on the administration and make a change, after all, what better time than now?

Get up. Stand up.