Debra Vaello ☮️🌊🟧

Retired Texas teacher, Democracy Defender, Voter Registrar

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

Cramer: "There's are people who are not doing well in this country, and I am surprised you are not addressing those people…who have seen SNAP benefits decline, who have higher gas prices because of the war in Iran."

Hassett: "We care about everybody."

Cramer: "Oh?"

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

The President is not well. He can’t stay awake at important White House events and cabinet meetings.

@WhiteHouse needs to come clean about why trump takes so many trips to the hospital and why doctors keep giving trump cognitive tests.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

Things your legal department has to do when you are a propaganda outlet peddling lies for a corrupt regime nonstop… Fox is poison…

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

"Ken Paxton is the embodiment of MAGA - and everything that's wrong with it."

From impeachment to corruption to adultery to pedophile protection to election denial, I deep-dive into Ken Paxton's record & why he is unfit to sit on a schoolboard let alone in the Senate.

Receipts:

[Big Bad Bear @CoxHerb]

Paxton is unfit to be a dog catcher.

[Gigi @Gigi_chienergy]

The screwworm program wasn't charity, it was a $10 million fence that kept a billion-dollar problem from eating our own livestock alive. That's the thing with most USAID funding: it looks like "aid," but it's really cheap self-defense. Solve a problem there, and it never lands on our doorstep. But sure, let a bunch of guys who can't define DEI without Googling take a chainsaw to it. They didn't stop to ask, "Will this cut hurt us too?" Unless that's the point, burn it all down and call it efficiency.

As usual our inept agriculture secretary, blaming the Biden administration as usual, instead of offering a solution to the problem they created.

Texan here

A screwworm infestation is a nightmare for cattle, causing horrific wounds and economic devastation. For Texas, the situation has escalated dramatically in the last 24 hours with the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in over 60 years! This could have been avoided!

Infested animal can kill a cow in less than two weeks.

Treatment is extremely difficult and time-consuming, requiring the painful removal of every visible larva and deep disinfection of the wound. Ranchers no longer have much experience with this labor-intensive process, and there is currently no approved pharmaceutical treatment to make it easier.

This has triggered a massive economic threat. The USDA estimates that a widespread outbreak would drain an astonishing $1.8 billion from the Texas economy alone in livestock deaths, labor, and medication expenses.

How will this affect you? Tightening supplies will drive already high beef prices higher.

[𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 @politicsusa46]

I’m proud to have been a longtime mutual follower of @jamestalarico

Let me say I am NOT a religious man and I have little time for organized religion. I was born a Roman Catholic, but never found refuge in the Catholic faith.

Having said that, when I first heard James speak, he spoke immediately to my life values and I instinctively connected with his ‘people first’ political values.

He has remained consistent in his beliefs because they represent who he is and that’s why I know he’s resonating with everyday Texans. He knows how to articulate the argument for his candidacy because he speaks from his heart and that is a rare thing in politics today.

Washington will be better for having his presence in the US Senate.

🎥 TikTok - https://t.co/Cie8JnH0Sk

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Jake Lang, who beat Capitol police officers with a baseball bat on January 6, spent four years in federal prison on an 11-count indictment, got pardoned by Trump on day one, and was recently running for U.S. Senate in Florida, was arrested Tuesday night in Frisco, Texas on a criminal trespass warrant.
He hopped a fence into a high school stadium to film what he claimed was dried blood from a stabbing, then posted it online for clout.
Since his pardon he has also been charged with felony property damage in Minnesota for destroying an ice sculpture, charged with threatening a Capitol police officer, showed up outside a mosque in Plano holding a severed pig’s head, threw chocolate coins outside AIPAC while doing a Nazi salute, and dragged a goat on a leash to a protest against a Muslim mayoral candidate. For real though!
Trump pardoned this bastard. He is currently in the Collin County jail complaining about his mattress.
The pardon was 136 days ago. VIA~~Eric Blackerby

[Adam Schiff @SenAdamSchiff]

I asked Senate Republicans who among them thought Trump’s slush fund was a good idea. None replied and silence filled the chamber.

I then offered Republicans a chance to shut it down by voting for my amendment.

They chose not to. They are simply too scared of crossing this corrupt president.

[GOP Ls @GOP__Ls]

🚨 Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted of smuggling more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

Trump gave him a full pardon.

[Sara McGee for Texas HD 132 @SaraForTexLege]

This is obscene. Pay attention, Texans. When you open your crippling property tax bill, just remember that Elon Musk doesn’t get one at all.

[Debra Vaello ☮️🌊🟧 @DebraVaello]

Bi

[FactPost @factpostnews]

Unearthed footage shows Elias Irizarry, who was recently appointed to a top counterterrorism job, climbing through a Capitol window on January 6th

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

My job is made easier when trump officials say ridiculous things in the face of incontrovertible facts.

But @SecRubio didn’t just lie to Congress. He disrespected the American people. He thinks we are stupid and will ignore what we see with our own eyes.

November is coming.

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

Yesterday Donald Trump tripled the size of his personal political army inside the government. Illegally. And almost no one noticed.

Here's what happened:

He signed an order converting ~8,000 of the most senior career officials in government into employees he can fire for any reason, or no reason at all.

These aren't rando's. They're the directors, chiefs of staff, and the people who write the rules or decide who gets federal money, i.e. the lieutenants right below his political appointees.

Until yesterday, they answered to the law. Now they answer to him.

A president normally gets ~4,000 political appointees. People he can bring into government and fire at will. I was one of them at DHS. You serve at his pleasure, full stop -- so if you're gonna speak truth to power, you're prepared to quit (or get fired if he doesn't like it).

The rest of the federal government is PROTECTED from firing if they tell the truth.

But Trump just stripped those protections. Adding 8,000 more people to his personal army. Overnight. Without asking Congress.

With the stroke of a pen, those people now serve at the pleasure of the president. They're "his" people, whether they like it or not.

And the chilling effect is real. An official who can be fired this afternoon for "subversion of presidential directives" (the order's own words) doesn't need to be hand-picked to know what's expected of him or her.

The threat does all the work.

By the way, this order is illegal. The law only lets Trump reclassify jobs when "necessary" in exceptional circumstances. And this blows an 8,000-person hole in the merit hiring / firing system created by Congress.

Without permission, Trump has created a whole new category of stormtroopers inside the Executive Branch.

If this doesn't get challenged in court, you're going to see the U.S. government become a very different place.

Here's the full story: https://t.co/mJzrvzhxGR

[Blue Georgia @BlueGeorgia]

Today, Jon Ossoff offered an amendment to stop insurance companies from denying or delaying medically necessary care.

Republicans blocked it.

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

This is remarkable. Trump is giving Pulte, who lacks the statutory qualification (national security expertise) for the DNI job the position so they can manufacture another stolen election charge, or perhaps try to justify halting them altogether. It’s out in the open.

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

At 4am, Senate Republicans gave the greenlight for the IRS to drop ALL investigations into Trump and his family.

That means if Trump is evading taxes, we’ll never know.

I have a bill to make this illegal. And I won’t stop fighting to get it done.

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

Wow. 🙌

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Rep. Angie Craig demolishes Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins: "Joe Biden is no longer the president. Mr. Trump is. Your party controls Congress. You own these numbers at this point. I'm sick of hearing you blame an administration from a year and half ago. You own every single bit of this."

[John Hudson @John_Hudson]

A new Post analysis finds the video showing the Trump administration’s recent Pentagon appointee clambering into the Capitol on Jan. 6