Cary Randolph🌻☮️

A bit tired but still ready to fight

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

Remind us- what do Republicans think should happen to immigrants who commit fraud?

We’ll hang up and listen

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

If you were mad about Obama giving Iran $1.7 billion (of their own frozen money) to get a nuke deal...

...then surely you're pissed that Trump gave Iran $14 billion of your money while you are at war with them.

Right, MAGA? You hypocrites.

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Epstein File Search @epsteinsearchin]

Senator Wyden found JPMorgan Chase failed to report over $1 billion in suspicious transactions linked to Epstein.

He asked Treasury Secretary Bessent for the records.
Bessent refuses.

DOJ is blocking the files. Treasury is blocking the money trail.

[Jim Acosta @Acosta]

“Here is the breaking news… the news is broken.” My message before a hearing held by @SenAdamSchiff in CA for stopping Trump’s march toward state-dominated media in America. The news doesn’t belong to the oligarchs. It belongs to us.

[Furkan Gözükara @FurkanGozukara]

Absolute bombshell. The US Treasury Secretary admits on live TV that they are unsanctioning Russian and Iranian oil just to manipulate global prices and save their own economy after starting a disastrous war. The hypocrisy of Washington is fully exposed.

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

HHS Secretary RFK Jr: The polio vaccine “killed many, many more people” than polio ever did.

Fact check - Radioactive garbage

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨BREAKING EXCLUSIVE:

MAGA billionaire donors are about to MELT DOWN as Senator Mark Kelly unveils a plan to ELIMINATE federal income tax for Americans earning under $46,000 - and slash taxes up to $161,000.

And here’s what rich Republican donors don’t want you to see:

It’s fully paid for by people making over $1 million a year.

Not working families.
Not the middle class.

The millionaires and billionaires sitting on more wealth than they could ever spend.

Kelly laid it out to CTA Media Network’s Joe Gallina:

"billionaires…have more money than they… can spend in multiple lifetimes while we have people (who) can't afford a place to live and can't send their kids to college and never go on vacation.
It’s just not right.”

This isn’t a tweak.

This game-changing bill takes a sledgehammer to a broken system - and forces a reckoning with the affordability crisis Donald Trump made worse.

[Human☮🇺🇸🇺🇦🇺🇸🌊 @4HumanUnity]

Cornyn’s leaving out the key part. Mexico and Northern Ireland require voter ID, but they also provide free, universal IDs and automatic registration. We don’t. Especially months before mid-term election.

Here, strict ID laws mostly block poor, elderly, and minority voters to stop fraud that barely exists. That’s not election integrity, it's cheating.

[Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta @malcolmkenyatta]

DOGE didn’t do shit but steal our social security numbers.

[Conspiratorial Templates @mynamehear]

Americans pay around $5 trillion in federal taxes each year and what do we get for it? Healthcare? State-of-the-art infrastructure? High-speed rail? Top-notch social services?

Nope. We give it to billionaires and defense contractors and live in a broken down country.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Six months before bombing Iran and closing the Strait of Hormuz, the Trump administration fired all the State Department oil and gas experts.

The people who modeled exactly this scenario.

The ones with contacts at Gulf energy ministries.

Now nobody knows who to call.

You cannot make this up.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ https://t.co/pF0GCP6txX

[Acyn @Acyn]

Question: I'm a waiter at a local restaurant in Queens, a full time college student who sleeps an average of four hours a night and is still thousands in debt. How is a war in a country half the world away funded by the taxes pulled from my check, helping me in any way?

[Rep. Melanie Stansbury @Rep_Stansbury]

Washington DC is not the President’s personal real estate empire. Our public buildings belong to the people. 

The courts need to put a stop to the President’s backdoor efforts to remake our nation’s national landmarks and ruin our collective history. 

That’s why I introduced the Federal Facilities Protection and Oversight Act—to protect our historic federal buildings and ensure no president can demolish or remake them on a whim. Because our heritage belongs to all of us!
https://t.co/byBVf06Uzb

[Senator Mazie Hirono @maziehirono]

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Seven times.

That's how many times Democrats have tried to fund TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard.

And every single time, Republicans have refused. They would rather protect ICE's lawlessness than protect our communities.

How despicable.

[Lynnez 🌊♥️🇺🇸 Rib Gone Rogue @RibGoneRogue]

Jesus. In the past 13 months, he’s already fired…

The Navy Chief of Staff
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
The Head of the Navy Seals
The Naval Operations Chief
The US Navy Reserve Chief
The Head of the US Cyber Command
The Head of Defense Intelligence
The Coast Guard Commandant
The Air Force Chief of Staff
The Air Force Vice Chief of Staff
The top of AF Global Strike Command
The top legal officer of the Air Force
The top legal officer of the Army
The top legal officer of the Navy
The top legal official of the CIA
The head of the NSA
The chief of Army Public Affairs

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

“It has been revealed in recent weeks that Howard Lutnick’s sons are buying up tariff- related debt for twenty cents on the dollar through their stewardship of Cantor Fitzgerald in Lutnick’s ‘absence’; thereby enacting a financial windfall - now that Trump’s unconstitutional and unjustified tariffs have been struck down by SCOTUS.

Profiting off of trade policies Lutnick himself enacted as Commerce Secretary, this isn’t so much a conflict of interest as it is a middle finger to all that is decent. Something the Lutnick family has a lot of experience with, going back to 9/11 and Howard’s long friendship and business ties with his next door neighbor, Jeffrey Epstein.

Birds of a feather that helped Trump together, Lutnick’s fundraiser for Trump in May 2019 is central to the sex trafficking and predation coverup. I have screamed about it since I stood on the sidewalk outside his East 71st Street townhouse and watched a nearly blind Steve Wynn alight his limo and head to the now Commerce Secretary’s front door, a few feet from Epstein’s own, ready to pony up to protect a pedophile and a predator.

Trump was of course in attendance too, and was well indoctrinated in the nefarious and amoral activities which occurred on both sides of the common wall Epstein and Lutnick shared. It takes a village to keep such depraved things going on for so long.
The Epstein files are slowly revealing what many of us already knew.

Trump and his associates considered themselves above the law - and had collected enough kompromat on their fellow deviants - that as long as men like Bill Barr and corrupt Supreme Court judges existed, they would get away with their crimes.

The audacity with which they operated and the breadth of their crimes is staggering - and the collusion and favors granted them, from those wishing for their own positions of power, is a crime in and of itself.” https://t.co/KX5D4NN1V6

[Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) @adamscochran]

The F-15 “friendly fire” claim is either *lie* or a US command failure. But something is OFF.

After talking to experienced military sources, here’s how we KNOW the reporting is cover:

* Kuwait uses three types of air defense system:
>Patriot
>Improved HAWK
>SHORAD

A SHORAD type air defense would not reliably take down an F-15.

An improved HAWK *could* hit an F-15 BUT because a hawk requires constant radar illumination, the pilot would be alerted to the lock by radar detection, could deploy chaff, activate ECM, and take maneuvers against it. So a hawk striking 3 planes is deeply unlikely.

The Patriot system can reliably strike targets like an F-15, and so we know it’s likely this was the system used.

* Patriot systems rely on multiple ID types to engage a target:

>Radar track behavior rules (it only shoots at things that act like a missile)

>IFF signature (a broadcasted automatic signature between fighter craft and ground systems)

>Link-16 (an integrated system for IDing friendlies in the air space, that is shared via integrated command)

>Air tasking order data (the equivalent of an issued flight route)

* F-15 broadcast an IFF that Patriot batteries can detect when the proper encryption key is shared with allies.

* Kuwaiti Patriot batteries support Link-16 integration with US data when properly shared.

* Our agreement with Kuwait to operate regionally requires sharing all Air Tasking Orders in their air space.

* After a single friendly fire joint emergency command orders would need to be shared with Kuwait.

In order for Kuwait to hit 3 F-15 with Patriot friendly fire in one night would require ALL of the following:

* We didn’t share IFF encryption keys or ID data with them, or were not broadcasting IFF.

* We did not share Link-16 data with them, or Link-16 broadcast capabilities were destroyed.

* We did not share Air Tasking Orders with them.

* We did not share emergency alerts with them after the first ejection took place.

* The area was under extreme barrage of missiles FAR more than reported.

* There was no AWACS data sharing, or no higher level C2 node integration, or these were damaged.

So either:

1) We made an operational decision to ignore our standard practices and leave an ally in the dark, not share data and risk American lives

OR

2) The Iranian attack was *far* more successful than the US let on, and damaged critical ID and comms infrastructure of US assets in Kuwait.

Either way, we are not getting the real story from the US side here.

People with contacts in Kuwait, or active command, should be asking serious questions about this blunder.

As it likely points to a gaping hole in US defense that puts our service members at serious risk!

[Grant Stern  @grantstern]

Congress was already moving to restrict Donald Trump from invading Iran last week.

He had to know it.

[Pablo Manríquez @PabloReports]

Catholic Bishops File Supreme Court Brief Calling Trump's Birthright Citizenship Order "Immoral" https://t.co/J6ofKs0yp9