Jackie Gerdes

[Democrats @TheDemocrats]

@StephenM shut up you ugly fuck

[Mitch Jackson, Esq. @mitchjackson]

Fun fact for the $10 billion lawsuit crowd.

The IRS leak that exposed Donald Trump’s tax returns happened between August 2019 and November 2020.

405,427 other taxpayer returns were also leaked.

Trump was president. His own pick, Charles Rettig, ran the IRS. The contractor who did it, Charles Littlejohn, worked on a Trump-era IRS contract and is now serving five years in federal prison.

On January 29, 2026, Trump sued the IRS and Treasury for $10 billion over a breach that happened on his watch, under his commissioner, by a contractor his administration paid.

He is suing the federal government he ran, for failing to stop a leak that occurred while he was running it.

The taxpayer foots the bill either way.

[Jackie Gerdes @hakger]

I’ve been screaming about this for years, set a small tax rate on ALL income

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Chief Justice John Roberts hit with SURPRISE DISBARMENT complaint over undisclosed $20M conflict of interest.

John Roberts has spent two decades attempting to position himself as the Supreme Court's institutional conscience — the careful steward protecting the Court's legitimacy.

Now, a bombshell investigation reveals he may have been protecting something else entirely: his household's $20 million in income from the very law firms arguing cases before him — and an independent journalist named Christopher Armitage is filing a disbarment proceeding against the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because of it.

The facts are not in dispute. Roberts's wife Jane earned $10,323,842.70 in documented commissions over seven years at a legal recruiting firm — placing senior lawyers at firms that then argued hundreds of cases before her husband's court. For sixteen consecutive years, Roberts mislabeled this commission income as "salary" on his mandatory federal disclosure forms. He omitted his wife's equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years, later attributing it to "inadvertence." He never recused himself from a single one of the 500-plus cases argued by firms paying his household.

Richard Painter — chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, the man who prepared Roberts for his confirmation hearings — said Roberts "fudged the details, misleadingly describing his wife's earnings as salary." A legal ethics professor retained by a whistleblower concluded the false characterization is "incorrect as a matter of law."

Federal statute is unambiguous. Title 5 makes willful false disclosure a civil violation — $50,000 per count. Title 18 makes knowing false statements to the federal government a felony — five years per count. Title 28 mandates recusal when a spouse has a financial interest in firms before the court. Roberts appears to have violated all three, repeatedly, across two decades.

In response, Roberts designed the Court's first ethics code himself — and engineered it to have no enforcement mechanism, no complaint process, and no sanctions authority. The Brennan Center called it "designed to fail." He declined a Senate Judiciary Committee invitation to testify, citing separation of powers.

Now, Armitage has filed the disbarment complaint and is inviting every American to do the same. The DC Bar accepts public complaints. The address is 515 Fifth Street NW, Building A, Room 117, Washington DC 20001. The relevant rule is DC Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(c). The relevant statutes are 28 U.S.C. § 455, 5 U.S.C. § 13106, and 18 U.S.C. § 1001.

Clarence Thomas took luxury vacations. Samuel Alito took private flights. John Roberts took law firm money through his wife's commission checks and called it salary for sixteen years.

The system they built assumes nobody is paying attention, but not only is Christopher Armitage paying attention, but the rest of us are too.

Please like and share this post if you believe the Chief Justice of the United States needs to be above reproach!

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Experts SOUND ALARM after Trump issues memo that could allow his staff to delete millions of White House emails in violation of record preservation laws.

The timing alone should set off alarm bells. The Trump administration is currently being challenged in court over its preservation of government documents. And this week, it issued new internal guidance that a leading archives expert says gives White House staff "license to do the exact opposite" of preserving records.

The memo, issued by White House Counsel David Alan Warrington to Executive Office of the President staffers, represents a "significant departure from historical practice" — Warrington's own words. It quietly rewrites the rules around which communications need to be saved and how.

University of Maryland professor Jason R. Baron, who specializes in archives and the law, read the memo and sounded the alarm immediately. The new guidance, he told the Washington Post, provides nothing that "prevents the White House from directing the transfer or destruction of White House records, including tens of millions of emails, either before or after the end of the president's second term in office."

The key sleight of hand is buried in the language. The memo says EOP components are "free to retain" previous record-preservation policies. As Baron points out, that also means they are free not to. Text messages now only need to be preserved "when they are the sole record of official decision-making" — and staffers are merely "encouraged" to memorialize those exchanges in another format rather than preserving the original exchange directly.

Translation: if someone decides a text isn't the "sole record" of something, they can delete it. And nobody has to take a screenshot.

Federal law is unambiguous. Presidents and their staff are required to preserve records related to government activity and turn them over to the National Archives at the end of each administration. Warrington’s memo, however, doesn't clarify whether these records will actually be turned over, and doesn't specify how Trump or Vance will personally preserve their own records.

This is the administration that used Signal to discuss active military strikes in a chat that included a journalist. The administration that has fired numerous inspectors general. The administration that is fighting records requests in court while issuing internal guidance that makes destruction discretionary.

"While paying lip service to the need to preserve White House records," Baron said, "the memo actually gives EOP staff license to do the exact opposite." Nixon erased 18 minutes of tape. Trump's team may be preparing to erase tens of millions of emails.

Please like and share this post if you believe the American people have a right to know what their government did — even after it leaves office.

[Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 @mtgreenee]

I am shocked that some of my former Republican colleagues on the Oversight Committee are supporting pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Epstein survivors are adamantly against her receiving a pardon as she was one of their main abusers next to Jeffrey Epstein and they say she is a serial liar.

If Trump gives her a pardon, it sets up a very potential quid pro quo. She will owe Trump and she will lie to protect people he ask her to.

Instead the DOJ and local prosecutors with jurisdiction should be prosecuting the rich powerful elites who raped and trafficked these brave survivors when they were just teenagers and young vulnerable women.

Why is this so complicated???

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America.

A Syrian billionaire needed U.S. sanctions lifted so he could cash in on $12 billion in reconstruction contracts.

In an attempt to influence American foreign policy, he proposed a Trump-branded golf course, cut Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump into a multibillion-dollar real estate deal for a resort in Albania, and had someone physically deliver a stone engraved with the Trump family crest to a Republican Member of Congress with instructions to take it to the White House to get the President's attention.

Trump threw his weight behind repealing the sanctions. They were lifted. The contracts are moving, the Trump family’s deals are expanding, and not a single Washington Republican is willing to say a word about any of it.

This is a corruption of everything the office of the presidency is supposed to stand for, and the American people deserve to know about it.
https://t.co/A4lQE3ktoG

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨BREAKING: The Trump administration has fired 113 immigration judges since last January… without due process, explanation, or stated cause.

And this isn’t just unusual… it’s almost unheard of.

Immigration judges are typically protected by strict hiring and removal standards, meant to preserve independence in the system.

So, seeing this many removed, in such a short time, is raising serious alarms.

Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge in San Francisco, told the New York Times:

“On Nov. 21, I heard my afternoon case. It was a family of four Indigenous Guatemalans, a mother and father and two children. They were refugees who had suffered physical abuse. The father’s leg had been broken, and his brother had been killed. They were targeted for their race and ethnicity. They had a fear of persecution, based on past persecution, which the government didn’t rebut.

I granted them asylum. DHS waived the appeal. My last words on the bench to that family were: You’ve been granted asylum in the United States. That decision is final. Welcome to the United States.

One of the kids — I think he was in fifth grade — jumped up and clapped his hands together.

Later, I went to my office and signed onto my computer and found out I’d been fired. I was escorted out without time to print the letter they sent.”

This is why what the Trump administration is doing has never been about “the worst of the worst” or “doing it the right way.”

It’s about who the government believes deserves to be here… and who it decides doesn’t.

And when you follow that pattern long enough, it stops looking like isolated decisions, and starts looking like a system built around white supremacy.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

I feel sick to my stomach waiting around today to see what atrocity Trump has in mind for the people of Iran this evening. It's hard to fathom that our other elected leaders aren't able to check him in any meaningful way. It's really an indictment not just of the electorate but of our whole system of government. We're ruled by a mad king.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

"Do you support Israel's 'right to exist'?"

It's a 'gotcha' queston and I debunk all the BS surrounding the 'right to exist' propaganda right here:

[Lorraine E-Van-Off @LorraineEvanoff]

Fucking outrageous. And highly illegal.

"Trump has grifted his entire life. Now he’s just taking it.

The State Department transferred $1.25 billion in foreign aid to Trump’s Board of Peace, pulling $1 billion from international disaster assistance, $200 million from peacekeeping operations, and $50 million from international organizations.

Money that Congress authorized for hurricanes and refugees, moved without a congressional vote, into a fund that Trump created by executive order and controls personally. When reporters asked the State Department about it, a spokesperson said they had nothing to announce at this time.

The Board of Peace has one defining characteristic. Trump controls it forever. He named himself chairman for life. No audits. No transparency requirements. No conflict of interest rules.

Countries pay $1 billion into a fund he runs to get a seat at the table. It has transferred nothing to Gaza, disclosed nothing about its spending, and received $1.25 billion of your disaster relief money without a word of explanation.

When he leaves the White House he keeps the fund. That is not a loophole. That is the design."

He’s Not Grifting Anymore. He’s Just Taking It. https://t.co/eYb5g4g9bR

[Just Jack @7Veritas4]

You can be opposed to the Iranian regime AND the reckless bombing of their school kids and civilians.

You can support the troops AND be opposed to sending them into senseless wars.

You don’t have to be antisemite to decry the Israeli regime’s genocidal rampage in Gaza and Lebanon.

Don’t get sucked into false binary choices.

Don’t let morons and zealots impose their idiotic view of the world.

[Jackie Gerdes @hakger]

@7Veritas4 When is this madness going to end

[Jackie Gerdes @hakger]

@StephenKing Don’t tease me like that!

[Osaretin Victor Asemota @asemota]

We don't know how dangerous this guy is yet.

[Jackie Gerdes @hakger]

@4TaxFairness @joncoopertweets Citizens United will be the downfall of our democracy, this needs to be overturned

[Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸 @Amy_Siskind]

I had an experience today that I haven't been able to shake. I was waiting in line at Walgreens behind an elderly woman who was trying to decide between different sized bags of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (what she could afford). She was rummaging around her bag looking for coupons or credits. She said her nephew was coming to visit from Virginia, and they didn't have these there, and he loved them. I asked her if I could please pay, she accepted and slowly starting walking out with the help of the Walgreens cart for support.

After I paid, I asked her if I could help her to her car, and she shared that her nephew was coming up to see her before he got deployed to the Middle East. He is in the navy. She wanted to give him his favorite treat before he left. She is of course worried.

This broke my heart. All of it. The inequity. Who we send off to wars. And who, in this case, is sending them.

We have a 5x draft dodger making these decisions. He is unbridled, undisciplined and a know it https://t.co/2jfKeHDMy3 the news is likely that he will use ground troops - for what? What are they giving their lives for? This woman's nephew, and so many sons and daughters might never come home.

Please remember the human side of what is happening. I can't shake this interaction.