🐬 barbaradees

I live on the florida gulf coast..and love it...I despise the GOP, it is the party of sexism, racism, corruption, and treason and traitors ..period..🐬 🌊🌊🌊🐬

[Richard Rubin @RichardRubinDC]

@elwasson Tillis says Cassidy is working with parliamentarians so anti-fund amendments are written to retain the 50-vote final passage threshold.

[Tara Setmayer 🌻 🇺🇸 @TaraSetmayer]

🚨Remember Schedule F where Trump could fire career civil servants at will?

Well, it’s back. He just removed civil servant protections from 8000 federal employees so he can fire them if they don’t do his bidding. I explain in more detail on my Substack “Uncompromised”

H/t @MilesTaylorUSA

[Tyler McBrien @TylerMcBrien]

NEW: A stunning new project from @lawfare's Katherine Pompilio finds that 97 Jan. 6ers who received clemency for their role in the Capitol riot then got arrested, charged, and/or convicted with subsequent crimes—a number much higher than previously reported.

[Teddy Schleifer @teddyschleifer]

We obtained a filing from the IRS that shows that there is a new Trump "lawfare" fund with $36 million to help Trump people push back on investigations and lawsuits.

Here's how the fund describes itself in filing obtained by @kenbensinger.

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

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

[Lesley Abravanel 🪩 @lesleyabravanel]

TRUMP EPSTEIN PEDO FILES: "I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop." https://t.co/Ib5cGUjAZn

[🐬 barbaradees @deesbarbara]

https://t.co/H7ViObIY51

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Trump’s budget director Russ Vought is the most dangerous person you’ve never heard of.

And he just proposed turning every federal grant into a loyalty test.

His plan would make funding for cancer research, housing, transportation, and public health depend on one thing: whether it “advances the President’s policy priorities.”

Not whether it works.

Not whether Congress authorized it.

Whether it pleases Trump.

This is the appropriations power. It belongs to Congress and to the people.
To my Republican colleagues: where are you?

Congress passed this funding. You voted for it.

Vought is telling you to your faces that your votes do not matter, that he and his enablers will override the law whenever it suits them. Every day you stay silent, you give away the institution you were elected to defend.

Grow a spine.

This is not about left or right.

It is about whether Congress still exists as a coequal branch, or whether we have quietly surrendered the purse to an unelected hack who holds the Constitution in contempt.

History will remember who stood up and who looked away.
https://t.co/2yHKBTNLbj

[ABC News @ABC]

Melinda French Gates will expand her giving to improve women’s health globally, pledging another $215 million to support contraceptive access and maternal care, as well as initiatives aimed at middle-aged women, including further study of menopause. https://t.co/t1uZECKti8

[The Associated Press @AP]

BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court allows Alabama to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year's elections. https://t.co/sNYRPFD8Jn

[House Judiciary Dems @HouseJudiciary]

Bill Pulte abused his power at the Federal Housing Finance Agency by teaming up with Palantir to trawl through mortgage records and force the Justice Department to file bogus criminal charges against the President's perceived political enemies. Now Trump is tapping him to serve as Director of National intelligence, where he can abuse even more powers, like FISA's Section 702, to spy and surveil Americans on a far greater scale. 

Congress must reform FISA and put federal judges, not Palantir Pulte and Kash Patel, in charge of protecting Americans' personal data.

[Furkan Gözükara @FurkanGozukara]

🚨 BOMBSHELL! Top journalist Rachel Maddow exposes a massive DOJ coverup. A federal judge caught Trump administration prosecutors redacting grand jury transcripts to hide their own gross misconduct.

The US Attorney illegally contacted grand jurors. Total corruption!

[ABC News @ABC]

Two Honduran immigrant children have been unlawfully detained at a youth facility in Virginia for more than 300 days, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday. https://t.co/NmOSkKrXRY

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

Bill Pulte has run America’s Federal Housing Finance Agency for little over a year, mostly in blessed obscurity. Now he is the country’s top spy—a position he is strikingly unqualified for https://t.co/maat4usns8

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: “We are not moving forward” with the $1.8 billion compensation fund for those claiming they were victims of government weaponization, the acting attorney general Todd Blanche said. “Period.” https://t.co/m8fANZbgmy

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

The General Staff of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces urges citizens and residents not to approach or touch any debris, shrapnel, or unidentified objects that may result from intercepting hostile aerial targets, following tonight’s ballistic missile attack by Iran.

[Stefan Bethlenfalvay @SBethlenfalvay]

🚨 ‘Americans will be less safe’: Alarm as Trump *PICKS LOYALIST* as Intelligence Chief. "Bill Pulte, who does not have any national intelligence experience, is nicknamed ‘Little Trump’ among some." By Sam Levine @srl https://t.co/mvccIblbGc

[Stefan Bethlenfalvay @SBethlenfalvay]

🚨 "Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Bill Pulte the acting director of national intelligence has set off alarm bells in Washington, as a staunch Trump loyalist with little government experience who has shown an eagerness to retaliate against the president’s political rivals..."

[Reuters @Reuters]

US court blocks Pentagon from removing transgender troops, for now https://t.co/FIjcLYIVUg https://t.co/FIjcLYIVUg

[Adam Mockler @adammocklerr]

What we all suspected just got confirmed.

@chrisdmowrey