Monty Mason

William & Mary ‘89

[Jeff Norman @dcsplicer]

Timelapse of Monday evening’s moonrise over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. #MDwx

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This Forbes investigation is a must-read.

Donald Trump pulled in roughly $1.4 billion from crypto in 2025, plus more than $200 million from real estate, and faced a projected tax bill north of $500 million. So his company donated the "development rights" to his Jupiter, Florida golf course to a land trust, argued the course was a natural habitat worth protecting, and kept right on running the club. Forbes estimates the write-off could land around $825 million.

He has done this at least five times since 2005. New York's attorney general alleged two of those appraisals were inflated. In Doral, he claimed a deduction of up to $323 million, more than double what he paid for the entire resort.

A month after the Jupiter deal, he sued the IRS. The settlement his own Justice Department signed bars claims against him over matters that "could be pending," language that appears broad enough to cover this year's taxes. A federal judge found the case was brought to manipulate the judicial process. And the man now running the IRS, who took the job as this deal was being assembled, has a home backing onto those same Jupiter fairways.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Nobody should be able to use the presidency to write his own tax bill.
https://t.co/0MzmPI2AE3

[Monty Mason @SenMMason]

In case you wonder what might be coming out of Washington regarding election results - take a minute with this one. You can’t make this stuff up but they do.

DOJ sues to block Alaska from certifying Senate race winner if Republican narrowly loses https://t.co/bsK2KQEBWV

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

As I said when it first saw it, the grotesque ad @VivekRamaswamy is running is most revealing about Vivek. He launched it at @amyactonoh.
But his decision to exploit her personal tragedy will go down as a flagrant act of political self-harm.

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

"Hope built this place...and hope still lives here."
This is a beautiful, impactful message and video from @JamesTalarico.
He is playing against the hateful tenor of our times, and betting on Texans to reject an onslaught of hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads, paid for by @ElonMusk, @MAGA Inc. and others on behalf of Ken Paxton.

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

Stop what you are doing because you need to read this.

Billions of dollars in oil trades were perfectly timed to Trump’s decision to back off attacking Iranian power plants.

Trump announced the reversal just 15 minutes after those trades were placed. Stocks surged while oil prices plummeted, setting up whoever placed those bets to make a fortune.

Career analysts at the CFTC, the agency responsible for policing these markets, did exactly what they were supposed to do: they started digging.

And what they found was serious enough to refer the trades for a potential insider trading investigation. That is, until a senior advisor to a Trump appointee shut it down.

Congress needs answers about who made these bets, who had advanced knowledge of Trump’s decision, and why political leadership at the CFTC stepped in.

[Rep. Don Beyer @RepDonBeyer]

Opposition to Trump's vanity arch is growing.

I applaud Arlington County’s legal challenge, which rightly confronts the Administration’s illegal attempts to bypass legally required processes to assess the project’s impacts on the local community.

Trump wants to avoid these assessments because everyone knows what an honest study would say: this arch is a costly boondoggle that would increase traffic and decrease air safety for the local community.

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

It’s funny how the people who say we’ll never have Sharia law in the United States are the ones banning books, taking away women’s reproductive healthcare access, trying to control the media, and are salivating for public executions.

[Admired Leadership @AdmiredLeaders]

You don't have to be a @ChicagoBears fan to find something to love about Mike Ditka.

____
From Jim Nantz on the This is Football podcast on @OmahaProd talking to @bykevinclark

[Greg Ip @greg_ip]

Scott Bessent, at his confirmation hearing in Jan/2025 to be Treasury Secretary: "the tragedy going on in Ukraine is one of the greatest tragedies of my adult life ... I believe that the sanctions [on Russia] were not fulsome enough. I believe that the previous administration was worried about raising US energy prices during an election season... if I'm confirmed and if President Trump requests ...I will be 100% on board for taking sanctions up."
Mark Warner (D-VA): "I very much appreciate your willingness and I hope you will be an advocate for keeping those sanctions on and actually advancing them even further."
https://t.co/kceZaeZdKf

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Another way to think about Trump announcement today: If he increased US diesel imports from Canada by 4%, he would gain as much fuel as from this Russia deal. But the Canadians are global super-villains, so who wants to buy from them when you could enrich Putin instead?

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

This is the least surprising and most outrageous story.
@POTUS ORDERED the government to run ads during the final weeks of the Midterms, extolling HIM as a crusader against "socialists, "communists" and other miscreants.
$20 million in taxpayer money on THAT, just as his cuts in health care, food assistance and other programs that will raise costs kick in.
Smart? No. Legal, probably not.
But the ego must be fed!
https://t.co/Ri31c5Q7Ws via @NYTimes

[Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla]

@atrupar

[Monty Mason @SenMMason]

”He said, 'You know what, Abraham? This is not who we are as a country, with everything going on. Despite all our flaws, there are good people in this country.'

"Jim Ukrop was the testament to the goodness of the people in this country," Ackah said.

https://t.co/Xmk6pGy4qg

[Monty Mason @SenMMason]

Thank you Jim Ukrop for the many lessons in how to be. So many of us will never forget what you shared and expected from us. We won’t let you down.

Jim Ukrop’s legacy: He helped build Richmond — and thanked it at the end | Guest column https://t.co/61x5Tjh88z via @RTDOpinions

[Antony Blinken @ABlinken]

President Trump is now offering Iran sanctions relief and access to frozen funds in exchange for concrete steps on its nuclear program.

Sound familiar?

It’s a lot like the nuclear deal President Obama negotiated, which I worked on and which Trump tore up in his first term and replaced with nothing.

A big reason we ended up in this failed war of choice.

[Barry R McCaffrey @mccaffreyr3]

Trump UN speech was brutal. Crude. Send them to Hell? Who talks like that? He believes he is without the legal and political constraints of our democracy. A dangerous man. History will excoriate those who allowed this to happen.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Barack Obama at his last press briefing with reporters, 2017:

"I have enjoyed working with all of you. That does not, of course, mean that I've enjoyed every story that you have filed, but that's the point of this relationship. You're not supposed to be sycophants. You're supposed to be skeptics. You're supposed to ask me tough questions. You're not supposed to be complimentary, but you're supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power."

[Andrea Mitchell @mitchellreports]

This is an important fact check

[Joe Biden @JoeBiden]

Twenty-five years ago today, we lost 2,977 souls and in the years since, thousands more to illnesses caused by the attack on our country.

This morning, Jill and I hold close the families who carry that loss every day. We honor the heroes of September 11th: the firefighters and police officers who rushed into the towers and the Pentagon, the passengers who fought back over Shanksville, and the generation that stepped up to serve in the aftermath.

Even now, we remember the greatest lesson of one of our nation's darkest days: at our most vulnerable, unity is our most powerful strength.

We will never forget.