Hereās an in-depth New York Times article on how Trump, his family, and his cronies are abusing their government power to line their pockets and using billions of your tax dollars to facilitate their grifting. Note that the $8.9 billion in federal money going to the 14 Trump and Lutnick companies is equal to the entire amount of federal assistance Western North Carolina has received for Hurricane Helene recovery.
Rampant corruption in plain sight . . . and Republicans see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
Hereās an excerpt from the article and a free link to the entire piece:
āAhead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.
It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.
Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.ā
. . . . .
āOne or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal filings examined by The New York Times.
All 14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial assistance from the Trump administration, or have pending permit applications before the Commerce Department, which Mr. Lutnick oversees, The Times found. The total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to public statements by the companies and federal government.ā
https://t.co/HvoK9qva0H
5M fewer people are enrolled in ACA plans compared to the record high reached last year. More than 1M fewer people picked a plan for 2026, and 4M more either disenrolled or failed to pay their premiums and therefore dropped coverage.
Prices in the market skyrocketed after Republicans failed to extend extra financial help for enrollees last year. https://t.co/LvRZwHPsYx
Elias's comparison is the one worth sitting with. When Bill Clinton briefly boarded Loretta Lynch's plane on a Phoenix tarmac in 2016 and they talked about grandchildren and golf - no documented request, no documented outcome, a conversation - the media treated it as a scandal that required weeks of coverage. Trump stood at a podium in Pennsylvania, described personally calling a federal prosecutor to investigate an election while his preferred candidate was losing, and the Pennsylvania federal prosecutor was sitting in the audience being publicly thanked. Elias: none of the reporters present found this worthy of a question.
The normalization that allows that to happen is not benign. When the president describes using the federal prosecution apparatus to intervene in a state election and it registers as a moment of rally color rather than a constitutional question, the mechanism that would otherwise produce accountability has been eroded. That erosion is itself the story underneath the story.
šØ A sitting Maine Republican rep has been charged with domestic violence after allegedly strangling his wife.
Republicans refuse to remove him from office.
This reportingāthe Park Serviceās contractor removed the filters surrounding the Reflecting Pool just before the UFC eventāoffers a lot more logical explanation about why algae bloomed than Trumpās assertion about vandals dumping fertilizer in the pool. https://t.co/DEdrwjHMvr
ICYMI, because you probably did, the Utah Republican Party spent 4.3 million dollars on a campaign to try and gerrymander Utah. In the midst of all of it, they spent a significant sum falsifying the signatures of dead people in order to create enough signatures to make it a ballot measure.
The irony is lost on them, I'm sure
This week someone targeted my family for harm with a false report. Weāre physically OK, but that doesnāt mean we werenāt harmed. I am beyond furious.
Whatever your politics, this is awful, wrong, and can never become normal. https://t.co/72wxaVLzVT
Trump is siphoning off our tax dollars from the Interior Department's budget to lay down granite at the White House and paint statues in 24 karat gold leaf while actual renovations at national parks are canceled. Seems like a scandal to meš¤
Trump ripped up the walkway between the West Wing and the mansion to replace it with polished African granite carved in Italy. "Paid for by me," he claimed. Except that's not true. Taxpayers paid $689,232, per documents obtained by @michaelscherer https://t.co/7l2bkD0MIH
Vance is lying to Maher when he says highly-enriched uranium was allowed to accumulate over 20 years of previous administrations. Obama, with his deal, had Iranian enrichment down to 3.67% max, and Iran only started enriching to 20% and then 60% after Trump tore up that deal.
Just the facts/ no spin or criticism:šš½
āSevereā Ebola outbreak in DRC & Uganda - over 1,100 confirmed cases = one of the largest on record.
U.S. measles at highest YTD levels in over 3 decades - 2,100+ cases so far in 2026.
New World Screwworm outbreak spreading in Texas livestock (first U.S. cases since 1966).
H5N1 bird flu continuing in poultry, dairy herds, and sporadic human cases.
Meanwhile: CDC has lost ~25% of its workforce through cuts, and USAID has been largely dismantled/shuttered.
Thoughts? š¤
MYTH: Healthcare fraud only happens in blue states like California.Ā
Ā
FACT: Trumpās OWN DOJ just released a report finding the TOP 2 STATES for fraud in recent enforcement actions are led by Republican Governors!
Sometimes you have to back up a little bit and think about what things really mean: The top priority of the Trump-led Republican Party is to keep Democrats from voting. Thatās their most important policy position right now.
Ansari: I didnāt think I could be shocked by anything he does, but he was literally handed a bipartisan housing bill that would lower costs on a silver platter. It was such an easy win for him at a time when heās so unpopular because of his cover-up of the Epstein files and this illegal war he screwed up. He couldāve said, āI did this big housing bill,ā and because he is so committed to rigging the election, he chose to blow it all up. Their party is a mess. Trump is a joke.
āFour Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.ā