You have to read this.
Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House and replaced it with a private ballroom funded by corporate donors. Now we know what they got for it.
More than half of the publicly identified donors to that $400 million project won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion in the 6 months after they gave. Most of those same companies also had federal enforcement actions against them suspended by the Trump Administration during the same period.
There is no honest word for that other than corruption.
https://t.co/r40hZyargd
Netanyahu knows Americans are sick of funding Israel’s wars. So now he’s working with Congress to hide military aid inside Pentagon co-production deals.
That means MORE U.S. tax dollars for Israel, with even LESS oversight.
Not gonna happen!
This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.
The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.
And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.
Record-breaking temperatures.
A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.
The response?
Yank out the instruments and walk away.
That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.
For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.
The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.
That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv
This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.
The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.
And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.
Record-breaking temperatures.
A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.
The response?
Yank out the instruments and walk away.
That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.
For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.
The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.
That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv
Republicans: Abortions are murder!
Also Republicans: Children dying from malnutrition, lack of vaccines and healthcare is perfectly acceptable as long as we can lower corporate tax rates by 1%.
This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.
More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.
And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.
Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.
The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.
Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.
We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.
https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl
Trump promised not to “touch” Medicaid.
Now he is cutting it by $1 trillion and taking health care away from patients with cancer, AIDS and other life-threatening diseases to pay for tax breaks to the top 1% and his wealthy campaign contributors.
Unimaginable cruelty.
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
The New World Screwworm, a grave parasitic threat, has just been detected in US cattle for the first time since it was eradicated in 1966.
The parasite's revival comes after Trump and DOGE slashed funding for Screwworm monitoring programs.
This cartoon isn't an exaggeration—not even 1% an exaggeration.
Weeks ago it seemed this far-right Supreme Court would still block any map intentionally authored to be racist.
We just learned that that's no longer true.
We have reentered Jim Crow, and it's a national disgrace.
BREAKING: Donald Trump calls JB Pritzker a “dumb, stupid slob.”
Just a reminder that JB Pritzker just balanced the Illinois budget with a $0 deficit AND has signed relief for groceries and gas.
Trump is a 5th grade bully who apparently needs to look in the mirror.
My wife retired from the military during Trump’s first presidency after 22 years of service.
Trump’s letter of appreciation was signed using autopen. They had to blow the signature up, which made it look pixelated. It was garbage.
…which is where she put it as soon as we got home.
I sent @BarackObama a letter request two months before her retirement ceremony because that’s the last leader MSgt. Shead served under.
…it showed up in our mailbox the morning after she retired. It was PERFECT timing.
It’s been framed and displayed for guests to see. 🇺🇸🫡
“So anyone who comes over knows what a real President does for service members, even after leaving the White House.”
- My Wife
Scott Pelley issues new statement after being fired by CBS for opposing their pro-MAGA bias:
“New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.
Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done.
Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”
America is at war.
Trump’s decision to put our country at risk by handing the nation’s top intelligence job to a random political lackey is reckless, insulting, and dangerous.
Oh for F’s sake! It’s insurance! Healthy people don’t need it…UNTIL THEY DO! That doesn’t make them not legit. These goons have never lived in the real world.