Lucy Autrey Wilson

A #mixedmedia artist based in Northern California working with photography, animation, music, paint, ink, paper, fabric and thread

[Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter]

CORRUPTION UPDATE:

ProPublica reports that *Peter Navarro* personally directed the Pentagon to fast-track a $620M loan to Vulcan Elements, a brand-new two-year-old NC startup that enriches his close buddy & Trump son Don Jr.

Of dozens of companies under consideration, Vulcan was the only deal initiated by a top White House aide. Staff worked overtime to get it done for Navarro.

Yes, the same Peter Navarro who went to prison after Jan. 6.

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

Georgia audited its own data center tax breaks and found that the state gave up $474 million in sales taxes in one year—and got back just $41 million from the industry. At least 38 states have deals like this. (It's not clear whether all that money the state waived was needed to attract the construction: in Georgia's case, by the state's own estimate, 70% of the data center construction would have happened anyway.)

[Robert Young Pelton @RYP__]

This story is important. A well known U.S. military contractor is running mercenaries, troops and weapons into a UN-arms embargoed area, clearly working with full knowledge of U.S. intelligence and the NSC. That means only one thing.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

If Republicans applied their voter suppression SAVE Act bill to the purchase of guns.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Erin Brockovich: When I put this map out, in the first 72 hours, the map crashed twice, and I woke up on day 3 going, oh my God, it's not one town and one data center, it's the entire country. They had no idea. They woke up to this construction. They weren't informed. City council didn't tell them anything. Because these big tech groups came in and put these city council members under NDAs.

[Rep. Don Beyer @RepDonBeyer]

A major story here.

A longtime Republican tax expert and Trump appointee was just ousted from a key position at the IRS after warning that the White House was potentially violating federal law.

The law in question "prohibits the president, vice president, White House staff and certain agency heads from directly or indirectly requesting that the IRS conduct or terminate an audit or investigation of any particular taxpayer."

We do not know what the request was, who made it, or who the target of the audit or investigation was.

This warning brings to mind Trump's attempts to direct IRS investigations of his enemies during his first term, and his recent "license to steal" agreement with DOJ to permanently exempt himself from audits.

I do not expect the current Republican rubber stamp majority to look into this, but majorities change. And there is a clear imperative for Congress to investigate this matter.

[Steve Rattner @SteveRattner]

Under Trump, U.S. federal debt has surpassed 100% of GDP for the first time since WWII.

And it's on track to beat that all-time record by 2030.

[Furkan Gözükara @FurkanGozukara]

🚨 BOMBSHELL! Top journalist Ana Kasparian confirms the Trump administration spent $1.5B to buy private prisons in California solely to evade state oversight.

The White House is intentionally shielding these secretive detention centers to hide horrific human rights abuses!

[Drey @thedreydossier]

Trump Accounts are no longer going to be optional- so if you ever plan on having a child in the USA, you should read what I found:

According to the @SocialSecurity Administration's announcement last week, they are modifying the hospital birth registration form so that a Trump Account is AUTOMATICALLY created for your child through that same process.

It will be bundled into the Enumeration at Birth program (EAB), which is the already automated gov pipeline that gives your newborn a Social Security number. It’s one box that you check, you don’t have the option of unbundling it. So if you want your kid to have a Social Security number, they have to have a Trump account.

Which is strange, because according to the IRS and @USTreasury’s public announcements, these accounts only open when a parent actively elects to open one. So which is it? Why is nobody in the government interested in explaining this flagrant contradiction?

Who is going to answer the basic question of what a parent does if they don’t want a government-linked investment account (one that collects biometric data, by the way) created for their child at the exact moment their child’s Social Security number issued?

They can call it a savings account all they want, but a $1,000 deposit is a hell of a cheap price for building a lifelong financial file on every American child before they can consent to anything.

And once the government normalizes linking a person’s identity, financial activity, and predictive systems from birth, who gets to decide what that data will be used to predict later?

We deserve answers immediately. @ndstudio @WhiteHouse

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

$2.5 million. That’s what a convicted fraudster told fellow inmates he’d arranged to pay to get out of prison early. Not through an appeal, not through a judge, but through a phone call to the president. 

David Gentile defrauded 10,000 investors out of $1.6 billion and was sentenced to seven years. Less than two weeks later, Trump commuted his entire sentence. When federal prosecutors started investigating how that happened, a DOJ official called the U.S. Attorney running the case, and the investigation was shut down within months. 

Not because they ran out of evidence. Because someone in Washington decided they shouldn’t keep looking. 

Welcome to Episode 9 of The Pardon Papers.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

“Michelle Obama is a man” shouted on the White House lawn in a ring sponsored by Bud Light only available on Larry Ellison’s Paramount Plus. What a way to celebrate America 250 and the twilight of liberal democracy.

[AI Panda @AIPandaX]

A guy was ready to drop $1,500 on a new OLED TV because his 3-year-old Smart TV was freezing up and took 5 seconds just to respond to the remote.

He unplugged it. Deleted old apps. Cleared the cache. The lag kept coming back.

He went to Best Buy to get a replacement.

The home theater installer in the blue shirt stopped him: "Before you spend a grand, let me show you something."

He grabbed a remote and shook his head.

"There are 8 hidden tracking settings throttling your TV's processor right now. Manufacturers turn them all on by default. Nobody tells you they exist. Let's fix this."

Here's what he showed him in the next 8 minutes. 🧵

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

Republican message in 2026:

Return us with a majority so we can go ahead with our secret plan to cut Social Security and Medicare in 2027.

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

Lawmakers have little more than six years to find a remedy. If nothing is done, the immediate consequences will be dire for America’s pensioners: https://t.co/PtbCQCQ0It

[Forbes @Forbes]

Seven years from now, more or less, the Social Security system will go bust.

There isn’t enough coming in from people still working to cover the benefits going to people who are retired.

Learn more here: https://t.co/GWD4oKLYp5

[Greta Berlin @Truegreta]

I stood at this pool, at both monuments and saw both reflections…
He’s a God damn idiot, as are the fools that support him. The “Reflection Pool” wasn’t designed by American architect Henry Bacon a hundred years ago to look like a swimming pool. It’s designed to have a darkened characteristics that has reflective qualities to reflect the monuments.
That way, the Washington Monument is reflective to you when at the Lincoln Memorial, and when at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial is reflective to you.
It’s designed to enhance the grandeur of monuments, create an illusion of reflection, and inclusion of expansive space of unity.
He’s a tacky vulgar person that vulgarizes everything he touches. America isn’t becoming great, it’s becoming vulgar.

Credit - Mathew Reed

[No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen @NoLieWithBTC]

Scott Pelley issues new statement after being fired by CBS for opposing their pro-MAGA bias:

“New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.

Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done.

Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

NEW: Cancer rates in Iowa are rising faster than anywhere else in the country.

Politicians blame individual choices, but the real villain is the industrial farming covering the state.

We went, tested the water, and found cancer causing levels of chemicals running through Iowa.

[Nick Kapur @nick_kapur]

The Trump Administration is prematurely dismantling an invaluable ocean monitoring system built at taxpayer expense that was supposed to last until 2041.

Because apparently climate change doesn't exist if you prevent scientists from measuring it.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

The US fiscal situation is much worse than that of other major economies:

The US federal budget deficit stands at -6.0% of GDP, the largest among all G7 nations.

The budget gap is also more than TWICE as big as the G7 average of -3.0%.

By comparison, France and the UK are running deficits at -5.0% of GDP.

By 2028, the US deficit is expected to widen to -7.5% of GDP, near the highest since 2021.

At the same time, Italy and Canada are projected to run deficits at -2.0% of GDP over the same period.

The UK, France, Germany, and Japan are all expected to hold deficits below -5.0%.

The US is on an unsustainable fiscal path.