Carlos Alemán

Family man. Texas Ex. Hook Em 🤘 Love to enjoy good food, a good drink, and the occasional cigar. Pro Democracy

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

CONFIRMED: CBS News reports the DOJ redacted information from the Epstein files that was already publicly available, including a photo of Steve Bannon that had long existed online.

After CBS inquired about the redactions, the department quietly unredacted the photo and portions of two emails.

That raises an obvious question:

Why redact it in the first place?

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

Trump on his bullsh*t ballroom:

"I don't need it through the Senate. I'm paying for it myself. I don't know what they're talking about, giving a billion? I don't need money from the Senate; I'm putting up my own money."

WTAF: Trump stole $352M for Secret Service training and used it to build the ballroom after failing to bully the Senate, trying to fire the parliamentarian is now GASLIGHTING and straight-up lying.

[Really American 🇺🇸 @ReallyAmerican1]

Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s crusade to purge women and people of color from our Armed Forces has never been subtle.

But today, a New York Times exposé revealed exactly how far he’s gone to dismantle the careers and achievements of our finest servicemen and women.

More than a dozen military insiders — both active duty and those already purged — spoke to the Times anonymously to unmask a horrific ongoing attack.

They detailed a process used by Hegseth and his team to halt senior officer advancements for reasons completely unrelated to merit, job performance, or fighting wars.

Hegseth’s efforts are part of a quest to advance his white-and-male centered worldview, facts, history, and actual service be damned.

In the absence of any such evidence, insiders confirmed that he has used his position to withhold promotions from qualified, decorated veterans. The Times cited several enraging examples:

• Last fall, Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll to remove two Black and two female officers from a 29-person promotion list. Driscoll repeatedly refused, citing their decades of exemplary service. In March, Hegseth bypassed him, removed their names, and sent the modified list to the White House.

• In total, Hegseth has removed 32 officers from Air Force and Navy one- and two-star promotion lists. He also pulled the only Black officer and the only female officer from a Marine Corps list, leaving their promotions in limbo.

• Vice Adm. Sara Joyner, a highly decorated three-star fighter pilot, saw her advancement stalled over a 2021 Navy recruiting ad where she said, "I’m not just a girl with a dream. I’m a sailor with one." Hegseth deemed the line a "big problem." Joyner has since retired.

• Rear Adm. Stephen D. Barnett was recommended for a promotion after successfully managing the aftermath of a massive Navy fuel spill in Hawaii. Hegseth blocked his advancement after Barnett participated in a Navy-sponsored Pride event back in 2018.

It is an outrage to watch a media personality whose greatest battles have been with hangovers intentionally harm the careers of people who risked everything to keep America safe. Hegseth’s actions are insult to all who have served and a risk to national security.

[Image: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov]

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

The humiliating Iran deal requires the U.S. to come up with a $300 billion reparations payment to Iran. That's more than Iran's entire GDP.

Trump says taxpayers won't pay for it.

1/ So I compiled a helpful list.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

KAY: There is no commitment in this MOU for Iran not becoming a nuclear state in the future

REP. MIKE TURNER: It actually expressly states that -- 'the Islamic Republic confirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons'

KAY: Which was the first sentence of the JCPOA, but that was backed up by an inspections regime

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

Here’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in April announcing the end of the military’s mandatory annual flu vaccine requirement, calling it “Not rational.”

[Rep. Jamie Raskin @RepRaskin]

Congress never voted to bulldoze the White House or for a dollar to build Trump’s golden Ballroom for the Epstein class (or anyone else). But now we learn that Trump’s bad architecture obsession is costing us all $600 million. Turn your illegal Qatari jet over to the people and we’ll sell it for $400 million and we’ll take the rest out of other illegal emoluments and slush funds, including the $1.776 billion fund for insurrectionists, and the Board of Peace, another unauthorized Trump fund bankrolled by money misallocated from the State Department.

[Chris D. Jackson @ChrisDJackson]

📺 SEE IT: President Biden handled Medal of Honor ceremonies the way he handled the presidency: steady, competent, dignified, and never making the moment about himself.

Trump, meanwhile, fumbled with it like he fumbled the country: awkward, confused, exhausting, and somehow making a simple task feel like a national crisis.

Where the hell is Jake Tapper’s emergency age panel when we actually need it?

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

TWEEPS: Republicans want to slash Social Security.

They want us too distracted by trump's Iran war to recall Mike Johnson got caught on a hot mic admitting it

Can we get 1,000 fast RTs and replies with #HandsOffSocialSecurity?

Please and thank you. 🙏💪

[Acyn @Acyn]

Schumer: This is not the art of the deal. This is the art of surrender. Trump didn’t get peace through strength; he got payoff through weakness.

Americans got almost nothing we wanted and needed, and Trump gave away the store. The Iranians took him to the cleaners. Look what they’re getting.

They got more control of the Strait. They’re getting a $300 billion payoff. We Democrats are not going to vote for it. No one should vote for it. This money should be used at home, where it’s needed to reduce people’s costs, not as a payoff to the Iranians.

The Iranians still have their missiles. Oil prices and gas prices will stay higher for a long time. Basically, Iran got just about everything it wanted, and we got nothing.

So the bottom line is that this is a fiasco. It’s a disaster. Trump proved himself to be a terrible negotiator, and it’s obvious why. He never knew why he entered the war to begin with. He never told the American people. He never told the world.

And it’s probably because he was worried about the Epstein files and his bad record on health care and costs. He wanted to divert attention, but he had no aim, no goals, and as a result, America and the world suffered from one of the worst deals that Trump has ever put together—one of the worst deals that we’ve ever seen in United States foreign policy.

Everything ought to be made public. Secret side deals—knowing Trump—are probably even worse than what he’s made public already.

It is so bad that even Republicans who cringe and knock their knees before criticizing Trump have no choice but to say what a bad deal this is.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Watters: They got on President Trump for building monuments to himself, and then inviting entertainers to come sing. He was doing that for the American people. Obama built a monument literally to himself and then had U2 come and sing and the liberals love it.

Jessica: Every president has an opening ceremony. We'll watch when Trump opens his and he'll have Vanilla ICE And Kid Rock and you guys will say we've never heard such a beautiful rendition.

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

🚨 TRUMP SPARKS DIPLOMATIC CRISIS WITH ITALY: Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has canceled his planned June 21–22 trip to Washington after President Trump insulted Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, claiming she “begged” for a photo with him at the G7 and that he “felt sorry for her.”

Meloni released a video firing back at Trump’s comments, calling them “completely fabricated.”

“I am frankly appalled,” she said. “I don’t know why the President of the United States behaves this way towards his allies.”

She added that Trump appears to show more accommodation toward “the enemies of the West” than America’s allies and concluded by saying: “Italy and I never beg.”

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Ossoff on Trump calling him "Os(jerk!)off" -- "I didn't think it was his best work as far as nicknames go. But more to the point, he is increasingly unstable. And I think it flows the fact that he is globally humiliated from this failed war."

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨BREAKING: ICE and DHS lied about ANOTHER “weaponized vehicle” incident.

Earlier this week, ICE claimed that during a “targeted vehicle stop” in New Jersey, an “illegal alien” weaponized a vehicle against an ICE agent, striking the officer and causing the agent to fire their weapon.

ICE said the operation was a targeted arrest of Friedrich Castillo-Ormeno, a Peruvian immigrant, who is violating a final order of removal.

There’s just one problem…

Castillo-Ormeno had already self-deported THREE MONTHS earlier.

DHS had already verified his departure, and confirmed he was back in Peru, even paying him through the CBP Home program.

So, that means… ICE put out a statement saying they were conducting a “targeted vehicle stop” for a man the government, itself, had already confirmed was not in the country…

Then tried to paint him as a criminal, even though he had complied with his final removal order, and is no longer in the country.

But that’s only the first part of this issue…

If ICE agents were conducting a “targeted traffic stop to arrest Friedrich Castillo-Ormeno.”

When…

-Friedrich Castillo-Ormeno was not in the country.
-and the van was not registered to Friedrich Castillo-Ormeno.

Then why did agents surrounding a random van, on a public roadway, and demanding the driver roll down his window?

Because the Fourth Amendment exists…

And it’s becoming harder to ignore the patterns surrounding ICE agent’s use of deadly force…

The agents are usually targeting the wrong person… they aggressively surround them, and escalate before they’ve explained what’s happening.. causing them to attempt to flee.

Imagine being pulled over, surrounded by masked, armed agents, told to comply, threatened with having your window broken… all while still not being given a clear reason for the stop.

That’s a situation that causes panic… it causes fight-or-flight.

And it’s exactly why those constitutional limits exist in the first place.

So why aren’t we holding these agents accountable?

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Trump's unqualified new acting spy chief showed up a DAY EARLY, demanding a list of everyone to fire — and asked to take top-secret intel HOME.

Bill Pulte, Trump’s loyalist pick for Acting Director of National Intelligence, isn't even legally qualified to run America's intelligence community. That hasn't stopped him from showing up a DAY EARLY, demanding a list of every employee so he can fire HUNDREDS of them, and asking if he can take the nation's most classified secrets to his house.

According to CNN, Pulte — Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence — stunned ODNI staff by arriving Thursday, a day before Trump said he'd start. He'd already asked for a roster of every single employee so he could "assess whether to fire them," with sources saying he's eyeing CUTS OF HUNDREDS of jobs.

This is a man with ZERO intelligence experience who, before being tapped for the job, didn't even have a security clearance — long considered the bare-minimum prerequisite.

The red flags are everywhere. In his only prior ODNI briefing, Pulte asked if he could bring the President's Daily Brief — among the most highly classified documents in the U.S. government — to his HOUSE. He asked what level of security clearance he had. And he seemed weirdly fixated on whether he gets his own GOVERNMENT PLANE to shuttle between DC, Florida, and Chicago. He even requested a protective security detail before starting the job.

"That was a bit odd," one source noted, with stunning understatement.

So, what actually qualified Pulte in Trump's eyes? Loyalty. As head of the housing finance agency, Pulte sent the DOJ criminal referrals against Democrats who investigated Trump. "President Trump wanted someone who is a true loyalist, who will do what he wants," a source said.

Now Trump has handed him a mandate to gut the intelligence community AND chase his debunked 2020 election fraud lies — a dangerous blurring of the line between foreign and domestic spying that's been forbidden since Watergate.

Even Republicans are alarmed. Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton issued a rare rebuke. One GOP aide complained about Trump's "consistent curve balls out of left field."

A man fixated on planes and security details, who wants to take secrets home and fire hundreds of professionals, now oversees 18 intelligence agencies.

What could possibly go wrong?

Please like and share this post if you think a LOT could go wrong!

[Carlos Alemán @ThatDudeCLos]

@OlenaRohoza

[Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1]

Holy Crap according to what Bloomberg is reporting what Trump & his Administration are telling Americans about his deal with Iran is chock full of BS!

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Trump’s sick bedroom habits and life with Melania EXPOSED in bombshell new book!

Seems that behind closed doors, Donald Trump is pretty friggin’ gross. According to the new book from NYT reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the commander-in-chief’s private White House nighttime routine includes multiple snack disasters, trash strewn all over, soaked bathroom carpets, and staff scrambling to keep the place clean without going bonkers.

Called Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, the new book discloses that staff even had to start monitoring the trash after Trump was allegedly caught throwing out White House sterling silver utensils, about as a clear a case of waste, fraud, and abuse of governmental resources as we’ve ever heard.

The book also claims Trump insisted on having carpet in the bathroom, including near the shower, where staff worried about moisture and mold. Because (and we’re believing Haberman and Swan here) he won't use a normal bath mat like a normal human being, staff is obliged to surreptitiously rotate pieces of matching carpet, drying them out, and swapping them back in.

From there, the journalistic dynamic duo move into the, ahem, bedrooms, reporting that Trump and Melania most certainly do not share one.

In what should surprise no one, they report that Mel has taken the traditional master bedroom, while Trump is relegated to the “second floor living room” next door.

Thus exiled, they write, Trump took keen interest in some cool furnishings of the master bedroom, and moved items Melania had personally selected into his own room, and pooh-poohed the hapless staff when they uncomfortably pointed this out.

“Once, when staff gently reminded the president that he was taking things his wife had personally selected, he made clear he didn’t care,” the intrepid investigators wrote. “He seemed almost to be competing with her – determined to have the better room.”

Er, yes, this is an amusing insight into *chez* Trump, but lest we forget, working Americans are worrying about bills, health care, housing, and democracy itself.

Trump, conversely, is spending his off hours reportedly in combat with his maids over Starbucks bags, Mickey-D’s wrappers, and bathroom carpets, not to mention the art objects he covets from his wife next door.

Does this surprise us? No. Should the likes Donald Trump be President of the United States? No.

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

Republicans gave trillions to the wealthy. Now they say Social Security is "unsustainable." The math doesn't add up because the priorities are corrupt. #HandsOffSocialSecurity

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

I guess the pivot now is to blame our allies for a war we started and lost