Jett Keys

Really just a normal girl

[Adam Mockler @adammocklerr]

BREAKING: JD Vance is still following Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate on X.

They have been charged with human trafficking and child pornography.

[CBS News @CBSNews]

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Thursday that Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) five-week absence from Congress and lack of response to Gov. Andy Beshear's (D-KY) request for an update on his health "conveys a very disturbing inability to fulfill his duties."

"I understand that people have a right to medical privacy to deal with their issues, but we do not have the right to disappear from our jobs without explanation," she said. "I don't think any American has ever experienced the ability to just leave your job for over a month with no explanation to your employer."

[Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers]

As Trump returns to tariffs, it's worth checking out what we've gotten from the trade war so far.

[Judd Legum @JuddLegum]

News outlets that covered the US-Saudi nuclear deal without mentioning that Jared Kushner, Trump’s top foreign policy advisor, is getting paid by the Saudi government:

WSJ

NYT

AP

Reuters

CNN

NBC

ABC

CBS

The Guardian

The Hill

Semafor

Washington Post

Fox News

New York Post

BBC

Newsweek

MS NOW

The Telegraph

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

Yesterday, the Pentagon listed 18 service members had died in the War in Iran.

Because 18 had, in fact, died.

Today, their website has 14 service members having died. Four service members were removed from the total.

Why?

Because the Trump admin reduced the number to reflect those deaths "not counting" since those service members were killed after Trump's "ceasefire" in April.

Yes, this is real.

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

NEWS: WV GOP Assistant Majority Leader Elliott Pritt has been arrested and charged with enticing a minor after allegedly grooming a 15-year-old through Roblox and Snapchat, then having her meet him in his classroom.

GOP leadership won't call for his resignation.

[Molly Ploofkins @Mollyploofkins]

Why can't the entirety of the US media figure out if McConnell is alive or dead?

[Jamie Bonkiewicz @JamieBonkiewicz]

Remember when a congresswoman had to bring her newborn to work because moms with newborns weren’t supposed to get special treatment?

So where the fuck is Mitch McConnell?

[Adam Mockler @adammocklerr]

BREAKING: Leaked Andrew Tate texts are looking VERY bad for the Trump admin…

Texts from Andrew Tate reveal that a Trump admin official directly intervened on the Tate brothers behalf in early 2025 to stall the sex trafficking investigation.

“I had word from The Trump admin that theyre on top of things,” wrote Andrew Tate via text.

Tate’s former lawyer, Paul Ingrassia, is now a Trump admin official, and is the one who requested the Tate brothers devices be returned to them.

You may remember Paul Ingrassia from his leaked texts last year in which he said he “has a Nazi streak” and uses old slurs.

JD Vance still follows the Tate brothers on Twitter. Barron is friends him them. All of this happened after Andrew admitted to being a pimp on camera.

This is the Republican Party now. I’m a young dude who loves America, and hates seeing it hijacked by these hateful , abusive, degenerates.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

🚨MARSHA STAFFER: “IT’S GONNA BE HELL. YOU’RE GONNA BE ASKED TO BREAK THE LAW.”

@PhilNvestigates got tapes from INSIDE @MarshaBlackburn’s office showing Marsha + “bald-headed psychopath” Ward Baker illegally make taxpayer-funded staffers do campaign work - and Marsha is lying about the ethics probe.

Full: https://t.co/AHWs7H8dFT

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

Spain edited Trump out of its celebratory photo

[Olivia Julianna 🇺🇸🦅🗳️ @0liviajulianna]

Meanwhile, Ken Paxton is running around Europe with his mistress.

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

He gave Ghislaine Maxwell nine hours. Epstein survivors got almost nothing.
Tell your senators: reject Todd Blanche.
https://t.co/5oXNKE6sm8

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

For months, Senate Republicans said Jack Smith "spied" on Congress and broke the law.

A judge just unsealed the files. Inside: routine phone records—that a call happened, when, how long. No message content at all.

They lied. Here's the proof:
https://t.co/BhytWwXF4T

[Devin Nunes' Cattle Dog 🇺🇦 🇪🇺🇺🇸🇨🇦 🇦🇺 @Kaos_Vs_Control]

Meet Bruce Taylor, of Taylor Farms. This man makes huge contributions to Trump so his lettuce is never inspected. So far, this man has given us E. coli, and cyclospora.

He does NOT allow his lettuce pickers to take bathroom breaks.

Kroger brand lettuce is actually Taylor’s.

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

ICE smashed the window of a disabled Iraq War veteran, on his way to work, pepper-sprayed him, dragged him out at gunpoint, and locked him up for three days without charges.

This is fascism.

https://t.co/du9bv2U4pY confirms that George Retes is a citizen, a disabled U.S. Army veteran who served his country in Iraq.

Federal agents smashed his truck window, sprayed him with chemical agents, detained him for three days, denied him contact with his family, and released him without charges. He missed his daughter’s third birthday while sitting in a cell.

No person on American soil should fear being treated this way, least of all a citizen and veteran at the hands of his own government. A nation that can do this to a U.S. citizen and veteran can do it to anyone.

PAXIS helps you prepare for ICE encounters, help friends and family if you are taken, and deal with the aftermath: https://t.co/Hi5Yo2N2N2

[Phil Williams @PhilNvestigates]

Posting this from WKRN because Marsha Blackburn is counting on journalists not asking the RIGHT questions in following up on my story about the ethics investigation of her office last year.

NO ONE is saying that she was disciplined by the Senate Ethics Committee - so she is denying a claim that no one has made. That’s because the Senate Ethics Committee has not disciplined one of their own in many, many years.

Instead, when it finds wrongdoing, the Ethics Committee usually makes the senators fix the problem and promise to never do it again!

Here are the right questions:

If this ethics investigation was politically motivated as you claim, why not release your correspondence with the Senate Ethics Committee to prove that the committee investigated and found nothing?

If you refuse to release correspondence with the Senate Ethics Committee, why should votes not assume that you are hiding something?
@
There was an ethics complaint against you last year for voting for legislation from which you could profit. Will you release any correspondence with the Senate Ethics Committee about that complaint?

There was an ethics complaint against you in 2021 for using your position to help an aide get out of a traffic ticket. Will you release any correspondence with the Senate Ethics Committee about that complaint?

ONE MORE NOTE: No journalist should accept an interview with Marsha Blackburn under the condition that they not ask about the ethics investigation.

[Jett Keys @JettKeys]

@CattardSlim @Martina @VP @JDVance Because you can tell a person’s character by the company they keep.

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Then I asked for a simplified version of the above :

Here it is in plain English. Denver hired UnitedHealthcare to run its employee health plan. Denver pays the actual medical and drug bills itself — United just processes them. That’s what “self-funded” means. The problem is that Denver can’t see what it’s actually paying for drugs.

1. United buys the drug for one price and charges Denver a different price. It keeps the difference. Say the pharmacy gets paid $40 for a prescription. United bills Denver $100. United keeps $60. Denver never sees the $40. The contract says this out loud in three different places — it’s not hidden, it’s just written in language nobody reads. There’s no cap on how big that gap can be.

2. Drug companies pay rebates. United keeps all of them and hands Denver a flat number instead. United collects rebate checks from drug manufacturers. Instead of passing those through, it promises Denver a fixed amount per brand prescription (about $740 in 2023). If the actual rebate was $1,500, United keeps the extra $760. The contract literally says any rebates above the fixed amount belong to United. Denver has no right to know what the real number was.

3. United decides which drugs are “specialty” — and specialty drugs are where the money is. The contract defines a specialty drug as, essentially, “whatever United’s own specialty pharmacy sells.” United also reserves the right to reclassify drugs whenever it wants. Once a drug is labeled specialty and filled at United’s own pharmacy, it drops out of the normal price guarantees entirely. So the most expensive drugs are the least protected.

4. The most expensive drugs of all — the ones given in a doctor’s office or infusion center — have no price guarantee at all. The contract flatly excludes them. Cancer drugs, infusions, injections administered by a provider. Zero pricing protection.

5. Denver can’t shop around, and it can’t leave without a penalty. Denver isn’t allowed to negotiate directly with any drug manufacturer. It must use United’s mail-order pharmacy exclusively. And if Denver hires an outside vendor that steers employees to cheaper drugs or cheaper pharmacies, United can cancel all the pricing guarantees. If Denver ends the drug program early, United keeps every rebate it owes.

6. Denver can’t audit its way out of this. Denver is allowed one audit a year, capped at 300 prescriptions, using a random sample United has to approve. No auditors paid on commission. No computer-based searches for errors. You cannot find a pricing problem across hundreds of thousands of claims by randomly checking 300 of them. The audit rules exist to make sure nothing gets found.

Is any of it illegal? Almost none of it. It’s a legal contract that Denver signed. The one thing that might cross a line: federal law since 2021 bans “gag clauses” — contract terms that stop an employer from seeing its own cost and claims data. This contract says United may let Denver see its pricing information, at United’s discretion. Federal regulators have said that “only if the vendor allows it” language is exactly what the gag-clause ban prohibits. And Denver has to certify to the government every year that it has no gag clauses in its contracts.

The one thing Denver could actually do about it: Colorado banned this drug markup practice, effective January 2025, and self-funded employers like Denver can opt in. It’s an election, not a lawsuit. Somebody should check whether Denver ever filed it.

The bottom line for an HR person: the drug program looks free. There’s no fee for it anywhere in the contract. That’s the tell. United isn’t working for free — it’s getting paid out of the drug prices, and the contract is built so Denver can’t measure how much.

[Joe Scarborough @ScarboroughNow]

Social Security starts running out of money in 6 years, as Republicans keep spending America into record debt. By the end of this term, Trump will be responsible for 35% of all US debt accumulated across 250 years of US history.
https://t.co/1vIvfT5zOI