Talarico: The fact that politicians, including Ted Cruz, are throwing embarrassing, cheap nicknames at their political opponents instead of focusing on improving Texans’ lives—that is that's everything that's wrong with our politics.
It looks a lot more like professional wrestling, right? You've got these old guys lathered up in their fake tan, throwing cheesy nicknames at each other. And those nicknames, they don't lower the cost of groceries.
"prove it works. pick a niche you know nothing about and sell something before midnight."
someone in my telegram dropped this after calling info products a scam. 39 people watching the screenshare.
so i shared my screen. "you pick the niche."
"pet grooming."
i've never groomed a pet in my life.
here's what happened in the next 4 hours.
hour 1: searched reddit and facebook groups for pet grooming problems. same question kept surfacing everywhere. "how do i groom my dog at home without them completely losing it." found it in 19 minutes.
hour 2: opened a google doc. wrote 11 pages answering that one question. pulled the actual info from reddit threads and youtube grooming videos. wrote it like i was texting a friend who just got their first puppy. finished in 68 minutes.
hour 3: uploaded to gumroad. $27. made a cover image in canva that looked like it was designed during a power outage (4 minutes). posted one tweet from a fresh account with 0 followers describing the problem. dropped it in 2 facebook groups for dog owners. didn't spam. answered a few real questions first then mentioned the guide naturally.
11:40pm. gumroad notification. $27 from a woman in ohio i have never spoken to in my life.
the girl who challenged me went quiet for about 10 seconds.
"ok. what the fuck."
the guide wasn't polished. the cover was embarrassing. the writing was fast and rough. none of it mattered because one specific question had one clear answer and i put it directly in front of people who were already asking it.
that PDF has done $340 since then and i haven't opened the file once. from pet grooming. a niche i still know nothing about.
i wrote out the exact method i ran on that screenshare. the problem-finding process, the speed-writing structure, the ugly-launch approach that skips everything people waste weeks perfecting, and how to get your first sale within 48 hours of having the idea. 11 pages.
free.
RT + comment BACKEND and i'll send it (must be following so i can DM)
This is a devastating interview.
Scott Pelley tells the NYT that Bari Weiss directly put a “thumb on the scale” for Trump over the killing of Renee Good.
Here’s his explanation of exactly what happened.
I just recorded a 35-min video on how to sell $100K+ AI solutions into underserved market segments that literally no one is pitching right now
The exact strategy to leverage credibility and consistently close sophisticated buyers
Even if you have no case studies, experience or track record
RT + follow & comment "VIDEO" and I'll send it to you
This is Ken Paxton's mugshot.
He was indicted on 3 felony counts for investment fraud.
He was reported to the FBI by his own staff for bribery.
He was impeached by his own party for corruption.
Now he’s the Republican nominee for US Senate in Texas.
Together we will stop him.
I drafted a settlement between the President of the United States and the United States of America. The plaintiff and the defendant report to the same person. I need you to hold that fact in your mind while I explain everything else, because everything else is procedure, and procedure is comfortable, and comfort is how this works.
You'll understand completely. And then nothing will happen. That's also how it works.
I need to be precise because the precision is the point.
The case caption reads: Trump v. Internal Revenue Service. The plaintiff is Donald J. Trump. The defendant is a federal agency under the executive branch of the United States government. The executive branch is led by the President of the United States. The President of the United States is Donald J. Trump.
I told you to hold that fact. Now you see the rest.
The process works.
The lawsuit was filed in January 2024. Southern District of Florida. The complaint alleged that the federal government failed to protect confidential tax return information that was illegally disclosed by an IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn. Littlejohn accessed Trump's tax data and gave it to journalists. He pleaded guilty. He received five years. The underlying crime was real. The information was real. The illegal leak was real.
The lawsuit claimed $10 billion in damages.
I will now tell you what happens when a president sues his own government for $10 billion.
Nothing happens. That is the first thing. The lawsuit sat for two years. It accumulated docket entries. It generated billable hours. It did not go to trial. It did not need to. The lawsuit was not designed to win in court. The lawsuit was designed to win in settlement. And the entity that decides whether the government settles a lawsuit is the Department of Justice. And the Department of Justice is led by the Attorney General. And the Attorney General was appointed by the plaintiff.
On May 18, 2026, the plaintiff filed a voluntary dismissal with prejudice. The defendants had not filed an answer. I will be precise about why. An answer triggers the court's substantive jurisdiction. Without an answer, the case exists as a procedural shell. The plaintiff can collapse the shell at any time. My instruction to the Civil Division was three words: do not answer. Under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i), when the defendant has not yet answered, the plaintiff can dismiss his own case without the court's permission. The dismissal was self-executing. The court's jurisdiction ended on the merits the moment the paper was filed.
But the dismissal was not the settlement. The dismissal was the wrapper. Inside the wrapper was an addendum.
The addendum contains this language: The United States of America "RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES" the plaintiffs and is "FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED" from pursuing certain claims against them.
I drafted that language on a Wednesday in Room 4407. I used a yellow legal pad. I wrote the words RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES in capital letters because capital letters make language permanent. Lowercase language can be reinterpreted. Uppercase language cannot. I have been a lawyer for nineteen years. I know what permanent looks like. It looks like capital letters on a government settlement document filed in a federal court in Florida.
Let me tell you who is covered.
Donald J. Trump. Donald Trump Jr. Eric Trump. The Trump Organization. All trusts. All subsidiaries. All parent companies. All sister companies. All affiliated individuals. All related entities.
The language does not name an individual. The language names a structure. The structure is: anyone connected to the plaintiff by blood, marriage, employment, equity, corporate filing, or affiliation. I drafted it broadly because I was asked to draft it broadly. I was not asked by the plaintiff. I was asked by the Attorney General. Who was appointed by the plaintiff.
The settlement also contains a formal apology. The United States of America apologizes to Donald J. Trump for the unlawful disclosure of his tax return information. I drafted the apology. A government apologizing to its own chief executive for the actions of a contractor who has already been convicted and sentenced to five years in federal prison. I have been a lawyer for nineteen years. I have never drafted an apology from a defendant to a plaintiff. But then, I have never seen the plaintiff and the defendant report to the same supervisor.
The process works.
Now let me tell you about the fund.
$1.776 billion. The Anti-Weaponization Fund. I want to start with the number because the number is the part that makes me proud.
$1,776,000,000. One billion, seven hundred seventy-six million dollars. Derived from one man's five-year sentence for leaking tax returns. That is $355 million per year of Charles Littlejohn's imprisonment. One crime. One conviction. One billion seven hundred seventy-six million in remediation. I find the ratio instructive. I will not insult you by pretending the number is coincidental. The number is 1776. The year of independence. The year they declared that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We put that year in the dollar amount because even a slush fund requires a flag. The number is not an appropriation. The number is a brand. I wrote it in the margin of my first draft with a red pen and a note that said: "Too obvious?" My Deputy said: "It's perfect." He was right. Nobody objected. The number passed through seventeen layers of review and not one person said the word "obvious." They said "aspirational." That is how you know it works. When the propaganda is too loud to be propaganda, it becomes patriotism.
Source of the funds: the Judgment Fund. This is the second thing that makes me proud. The Judgment Fund is a permanent, indefinite appropriation administered by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service at the Treasury Department. Created by Congress as a standing pot for paying court judgments and DOJ settlements. The key feature: payments from the Judgment Fund do not require a case-by-case congressional appropriation. No vote. No hearing. No debate. No floor speech. No amendment. No member of Congress standing behind a microphone asking where $1.776 billion came from and where it is going.
The Judgment Fund paid $1.7 billion to settle the Iran Claims Tribunal in 2016. That payment generated congressional hearings, front-page controversy for months, and a presidential campaign talking point that persisted for years. Our $1.776 billion required one addendum to a voluntary dismissal in one district court. I find ours more efficient.
The money materializes from a permanent account. It moves to a fund. The fund has a board. The board decides who receives it. That is the full pipeline. Three steps. No votes.
Let me tell you about the board.
Five members. Appointed by the Attorney General. The Attorney General was appointed by the President. The President is the plaintiff in the lawsuit that created the fund. One board member is chosen "in consultation with congressional leadership." Consultation is not confirmation. Consultation is a phone call. The President can remove any board member without cause. Without cause means without explanation. Without cause means at will. The board serves at the pleasure of the man whose lawsuit created the board.
The board sets its own procedures. The settlement document specifies this. The board may keep its procedures confidential. Every ninety days, the board reports to the Attorney General. Nowhere else. No court reviews the board's decisions. No court reviews the board's decisions. No denied claimant can appeal to a judge. The board's determination is final.
I looked for a precedent. I found one. The Keepseagle settlement, 2010. Agricultural discrimination. $680 million. That settlement had a court-appointed monitor. Independent arbitration. Judicial review. Public reporting requirements. Transparency mandates. I read the Keepseagle file on a Tuesday afternoon. I made sure our structure had none of those features. Not because I was told to remove them. Because I was not told to include them. The absence of oversight is not a decision someone made. It is a decision no one was asked to make. I find that elegant.
The process works.
Now let me tell you who receives the money.
Any person or entity that claims to be a victim of "Lawfare and/or Weaponization." That is the eligibility standard. I will read it again: any person or entity that claims to be a victim of Lawfare and/or Weaponization.
The word "weaponization" is not defined in the settlement document. I drafted the document. I chose not to define it. An undefined term is defined by the entity that administers it. The entity that administers it is the board. The board was appointed by the Attorney General. The Attorney General was appointed by the President. The President defines "weaponization" as: being investigated for things he did.
His associates define "weaponization" as: being prosecuted for things they did.
His supporters define "weaponization" as: being held accountable for things they did.
The fund pays people who were "weaponized against." The definition of weaponization is set by the man whose associates are the primary claimants. I did not create a fund to compensate victims. I created a fund where the victim definition is written by the perpetrators.
The criteria for awarding compensation: strength of the claim. Actual damages. Attorneys' fees. Time spent in prison or custody. Any relief already received. The board can provide formal apologies. The board can provide monetary relief.
Officials were asked whether January 6 defendants are eligible. The answer was: they were not ruled out. I appreciated that phrasing. "Not ruled out" is a legal negative space. It commits to nothing while excluding nothing. It is a door left unlocked for someone else to open at a time when the opening generates no headlines.
Let me now tell you the loop. I drew it on my legal pad. Four arrows. A closed circle.
Arrow one: The President files a lawsuit against his own government. Arrow two: His DOJ settles the lawsuit on terms his lawyers drafted. Arrow three: The settlement creates a fund sourced from a permanent Treasury account that requires no congressional vote. Arrow four: The fund's board, appointed by his AG, removable by him, reporting only to his AG, distributes $1.776 billion to people his allies define as victims of a concept his administration invented.
Plaintiff. Defendant. Settlement writer. Fund supervisor. Fund beneficiary. I can draw a line from each of these words back to one office. The line is short.
The process works.
If you owe the IRS — and 5.3 million Americans do, right now, this fiscal year — they can garnish your wages without a court order. They can seize your bank account with fourteen days' notice. They can revoke your passport. They can leave a single parent with $628.85 per week. They collected $77.6 billion from people like you last year. Same building. Same font. Same twelve-point Garamond. Same filing windows. The only difference is: you cannot appoint the person who decides whether to pursue you. He can. He appointed the person. The person decided not to pursue. The form was filed. The process works for you too. It just works differently.
There was a moment. I should tell you about the moment.
A career attorney in the Civil Division. GS-15. Nineteen years. She read my draft on a Thursday. I know she read it because she scheduled a meeting for Friday at 8 AM. The meeting request had no subject line. No agenda. Just: "8 AM. Room 4407. Re: addendum."
She came in with a legal pad. One page of notes. She sat down and she said: "I have a question about the release language."
I said: "Go ahead."
She said: "The breadth of the discharge covers entities and individuals who are not parties to the original complaint. That's non-standard. I want to understand the rationale."
I told her the rationale was settlement efficiency. I told her the plaintiffs had expressed a preference for comprehensive resolution. I told her the AG had reviewed and approved the scope.
She wrote something on her legal pad. She looked at me for a long time. She said: "Okay."
She filed a transfer request the following Monday. Career move. She went to the Environmental Division. Wetlands enforcement. As far from Room 4407 as you can get without leaving the building. She didn't file a complaint. She didn't write a memo. She didn't contact the Inspector General. She said "okay" and she left.
That's how I know it works. Not because no one objected. Because the one person who noticed asked one question, received one answer, and understood that the answer was the architecture. The architecture doesn't accommodate follow-up questions. She was smart enough to know that. Nineteen years teaches you where the walls are.
I think about her sometimes. Not with guilt. With professional respect. She identified the mechanism in forty-five seconds of reading. Most attorneys wouldn't have caught it. She caught it and she made the correct decision, which was: leave. The process accommodates departure. The process does not accommodate dissent.
There is one more feature. I am proudest of this one.
The fund expires on December 1, 2028. Not December 31. Not January 20, 2029. December 1, 2028.
The term ends January 20, 2029. The fund closes seven weeks before the term ends. Any undistributed money reverts to the federal government. This means: the board has exactly the duration of the remaining term to distribute $1.776 billion to whomever it determines was "weaponized against." If the term ends and a new administration arrives, the fund is already closed. There is nothing to unwind. Nothing to investigate. Nothing to claw back. The money is distributed. The board is dissolved. The records are with the former AG.
I timed the expiration to the term because a fund that outlasts its creator is a fund that can be audited by the next occupant. A fund that expires before the transition is a fund that exists only within the protection of the man who created it. Seven weeks of buffer. Enough time to close the books. Not enough time for an incoming administration to intervene.
The plaintiff is the President. The defendant is the President's government. The settlement was written by the President's DOJ. The fund is supervised by the President's AG. The board is removable by the President. The beneficiaries are the President's allies. The money comes from a permanent appropriation that Congress cannot block. The oversight mechanism is a quarterly report to the AG who was appointed by the President.
I have been told this is unprecedented. I have been told no president has ever settled a lawsuit with his own government to create a fund for his political allies administered by his own appointees using money that bypasses Congress.
I accept the characterization. Unprecedented means no one did it before. It does not mean no one should have. It means no one thought of it. Unprecedented is not a criticism. It is a patent.
Lawfare published an article titled "The President Who Sued Himself." I admired the precision. They stated in five words what my settlement achieved in forty-seven pages. The Cato Institute called it "another slush fund." House Democrats filed a joint letter calling it "self-dealing." A letter is not an injunction. A letter is not standing. A letter is a press release with a congressional letterhead. The congressman in Kentucky who would have filed an actual resolution was removed last Tuesday for $32 million. The timing was unrelated.
Trump received no personal payment from the settlement. I want to be clear about that. The settlement document states that the plaintiff receives no monetary payment or damages of any kind. This is technically true. The plaintiff receives no check. The plaintiff's allies receive a check from a fund the plaintiff's lawsuit created, administered by the plaintiff's appointees, funded by the plaintiff's Treasury, supervised by the plaintiff's AG, expiring before the plaintiff's term ends.
The distinction between "the plaintiff receives money" and "the plaintiff's allies receive money from a structure the plaintiff created" is the distance between prosecution and administration. I measured that distance. It is the width of one paragraph in a settlement document filed in the Southern District of Florida.
The process works.
I was a career attorney before this administration. I will be a career attorney after. The work I did this month will survive any transition. A voluntary dismissal with prejudice cannot be refiled. "Forever barred" means forever. The settlement is not an executive order that the next president can revoke. It is a court filing. It exists in the docket. It is permanent.
The President sued himself. His own DOJ settled on his behalf. The settlement makes his family untouchable by the IRS for existing matters and creates a $1.776 billion fund for his allies that no one voted for, no court oversees, and no future administration can undo.
I wrote it in twelve-point Garamond on government paper and filed it under a case number with a suffix I chose for no particular reason. The process moved through proper channels. The signatures are genuine. The filing stamp made the sound it always makes — a flat, wet thud against cardstock, the sound of a document becoming permanent. Every procedure was followed. Every rule was honored. Every form was completed in the correct font in the correct margin with the correct number of copies delivered to the correct clerk at the correct window.
The Judgment Fund is a permanent appropriation. Funded by tax revenue. Funded by you. You paid for this in April. You will never know who receives the money because the board may keep its procedures confidential. You are the source. You are not the audience.
The process works. I made sure of it.