Bucky

❤️Nature/Golfer/Hockey Fan/I believe in science/Facts matter/Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does. #votingrights #standuptocancer

[Moe Davis (U.S. Air Force, Retired) @ColMoeDavis]

Here’s 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.

Here’s an excerpt from the article and a free link to the entire piece:

“Ahead 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.”

. . . . .

“One 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.”

https://t.co/HvoK9qva0H

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Ossoff: "Citizens United was the most destructive court decision in modern American history. It's unleashed a flood of secret money, corporate money, billionaire money on both sides. Donald Trump's rise is a symptom of this deeper disease. Our task is not just to contain his wickedness, but to cure the rot that gave rise to it."

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

🔥 @dossdiscourse: “If you don’t want people to be curious about socialism capitalism has to work a lot better… Trump says we’ll never be a socialist country, yet he just asked for $11 BILLION for farmers because his ‘capitalism’ is killing our agriculture.”

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

WWII Veteran and Purple Heart recipient Robert Hilliard:

"Next week I'll be 101 years old. In February 1944 when I was 18 years old I was inducted into the army and what they taught me to do there was to kill people who set up detention camps. Can you imagine how I felt earlier this year when they announced that one of the future detention camps would be at that same camp landing in Florida? We have a fascist, a fascist government, that allows innocent people to be put in detention camps and incarcerated."

Source: @tomaskenn

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

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. That’s their most important policy position right now.

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: Mike Johnson paints this as though it’s some partisan witch hunt. But if you don’t want to be prosecuted for crimes, don’t do crimes.

And he’s talking about running a protection racket. And we are already seeing that this Trump administration has run what some have called one of the largest pedophile protection programs in American history.

And so when Mike Johnson tells a group of wealthy donors, I'm the only thing standing between you, and a consequence that should rattle at the conscience of every American.

What he wants to do is create—or rather, not even create, because it’s already been created—but protect a class of impunity in America that says, “You can commit whatever crime, and so long as you pay a check to us, we will protect you.”

And that is a model of extortion in American politics. And you know what? That’s their pitch.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

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.

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING:🔥Rampell: “…but the bigger problem is that this is Trump’s modus operandi. He uses emergencies all the time as an EXCUSE for every imaginable violation of laws and norms. He wanted to deport people with no due process so he declared an immigration emergency. He wanted to tariff everything you buy and give handouts to big oil and coal, so he declared an economic emergency. He wanted to invade Venezuela so he declared a drug emergency. Knocking down the East Wing, handing out no bid contracts to cronies, putting soldiers on the streets of U.S. cities. Any time Trump wants something done that requires a vote of Congress or scrutiny from regulators, he just declares another emergency. So, as elections grow closer and voters grow even more frustrated with a president who obsesses over the trappings of his office, as they get squeezed by his policies, what emergency powers might he claim next?”😳

[Andrew @CornFedAndrew]

Speaking another language at home does not mean someone cannot speak English. NYC’s own data says about 49% speak another language at home, while roughly 23% have limited English proficiency. Miller combined two different statistics because apparently English is only sacred when he is not butchering its meaning.

And Stephen Miller lecturing anyone about language and belonging is rich. He looks like a haunted substitute teacher who got promoted for reporting kids to the principal.

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

Sen. Peters: "Yes or no, if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposed rule?"

Postmaster General David Steiner: "Under our proposed regulation, no."

[Mallory McMorrow @MalloryMcMorrow]

One billionaire family controls the bridge that carries 25% of all U.S.–Canada trade.

The good news? There's a brand new public bridge right next door (and Canada paid for the whole thing).

The bad news? Donald Trump won't let it open.

Here's the story:

For more than a decade, Michigan and Canada worked together to build a new public crossing right next to it — six lanes over the Detroit River, named for a Canadian-born Red Wings legend, built by thousands of union workers. Canada paid the entire bill. Michigan co-owns it. It's finished. It’s a shining example of international cooperation and collaboration, with a tremendous return for both sides: more jobs, faster trade, and lower costs.

So why isn't it open?

Because the Moroun family, who own the rival Ambassador Bridge just up the river, doesn’t want the competition. They spent years and tens of millions of dollars trying to stop any competing international crossing from being built or opening. They lost. So they went to the White House instead.

In January, Matthew Moroun gave $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. Then the billionaire called Trump's Commerce Secretary and, just hours later, Trump suddenly attacked the same publicly owned bridge he praised in his own first term and threatened to block it.
Then, the day before the June 12th ribbon-cutting, the opening was called off indefinitely.

It's corruption so flagrant it would be laughable if it weren't so damaging.

Trump is screwing over Michiganders for the interests of billionaires — holding a finished, publicly owned project hostage to protect one donor's toll booth.

So a finished bridge sits closed, Michiganders keep paying the higher tolls, cars and trucks cost more, and a billionaire family keeps its monopoly.

Mr. President: stop playing games. Open the damn bridge.

[Jared Ryan Sears @JaredRyanSears]

You are pathetic.

You are fearmongering that candidates focused on affordable housing and healthcare, fair wages, workers rights, renters rights, and a government working for the people, not corporations or billionaires, is a scary thing.

MAGA is coming to an end. That is what you really fear.

The incompetence of Trump and a MAGA controlled Congress is staggering.

The economy is bad, life is unaffordable, millions are losing their healthcare, the deficit and debt are rising faster. Republicans own all of that failure.

The midterms are coming.

[Bucky @YLafary]

@nicksortor Lies lies and more lies.

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: “Tonight in the Wall Street Journal: ‘U.S. allows Iran to sell oil in dollars for the first time in decades.’ Yeah, we have to because they beat us in a war and so now we have to pay them to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran won a war against the United States. They retain their missile and drone systems and their nuclear program, they keep their radical theocratic regime in place, they may even get to charge fees for the first time for anybody transiting the Strait of Hormuz, and as of today, they get to start trading oil in dollars for the first time in decades because they won and Trump lost, and so Trump has to pay them, and he’s now been forced to release them from sanctions, and so they are released from sanctions for the first time in decades.” 🤦‍♀️

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

There was a rule when I was in Trump's first term: if a memo had a staple in it, it was too long for him to read.

Life-or-death decisions were cut to one page. Or a half-page. Or less. Bold fonts. BIG pictures.

When you’re wondering why everything’s a mess, remember that.

[Luna @Luna55147371741]

@StephenM

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

OOF: The plaintiffs who unsuccessfully sued trying to stop Trump from renovating the Reflecting Pool have just uncorked a scathing update to the judge

"This is the foreseeable result of defendants’ decision to bypass the consultative process required by law and which must occur before the government can alter our nation’s most sacred spaces"

"It should go without saying, Congress required agencies to consult with experts and public before making changes to historic properties for a reason. The public is now witnessing what happens when, instead, agencies barrel ahead with ill-conceived plans in a hasty manner to meet an arbitrary deadline imposed by the White House"

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Sen. @PattyMurray shades GOP Sen. Susan Collins:

Every single Republican in the Senate helped enable this horrifying reality. You don't get to act surprised the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade when you voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. You are going to own the suffering and pain you've inflicted on the women in this country.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

REPUBLICAN SEN. TILLIS: “What Freakin’ parallel universe did I wake up in? You’re telling me — if it’s true — damaging the reflecting pool lining is something Pirro wants to prosecute… yet they’re releasing people who pled guilty to assaulting officers?”

[GOPTraitorsToAmerica @capnhap73]

@MikeLevin #Trump & #Republicans break the law daily and yet no one is holding them to account. We are a lawless land being destroyed by a dictator. And main stream media fails to adequately convey the severity of this to the public bc billionaires own the news agencies. #WakeUpAmerica