I’m leaving the Capitol now at 530am after 19 hrs of votes where Senate Republicans passed $70B for ICE/CBP with no accountability after killings of Alex Pretti/Renee Good and no reforms after chaos at Delaney Hall. Zero dollars to help your family pay bills and high gas prices.
NEWS: A @lawfare report finds that *97* Jan. 6ers who received clemency for their role in the attack were arrested, charged, or convicted of subsequent crimes—a number much higher than previously reported.
Incredible work from Katherine Pompilio:
https://t.co/AJMPxwb1al
🦁 Nashville Zoo is asking the public to help oppose a proposed data center planned on neighboring property.
Zoo officials say they are concerned about potential impacts on animals, visitors and natural resources, and want more information about the project's environmental effects before it moves forward.
READ MORE: https://t.co/aJfnSGD0Sw
Pete Hegseth just removed 7 Navy officers from the service's one-star promotion list. One was reportedly singled out after her name appeared on a website identifying "woke" service members, for serving as a "diversity liaison" two decades earlier. That's not merit. It's a purge.
This is an insane story. The DOGE whistleblower who said that login attempts were made to the NLRB from Russian IP addresses minutes after DOGE got access had his brake lines cut and photos of him walking his dog from a drone taped to his door after Musk attacked him on Twitter
This is putin casually admitting to what can only be described as a textbook war crime, and he’s doing it with a smug smile on his face.
He literally brags about using Ukraine as a human testing ground.
He openly admits that they didn't fire their "Oreshnik" missile at a military test range. Instead, they fired it at populated areas in Ukraine just because it was "convenient to watch”.
Think about that for a second. He sent explosive warheads into communities, and then sent drones in right after just to count the bodies and measure the craters "down to the millimeter" like it’s some kind of science fair project.
But the scariest part is how he ends it. He casually drops that they are collecting this data so they can figure out how to better use these massive missiles in "urban areas”. That is political speak for densely populated cities filled with civilians, apartment buildings, and schools.
It’s pure, calculated terror.
putin: “After all, we... we used to test such systems at testing ranges. But 'Oreshnik' wasn't tested that way. And this wasn't a combat application. In fact, we haven't had a single combat application of 'Oreshnik' over the territory of Ukraine in the full, so to speak, sense of the word.
And the last one—to be completely honest, I will reveal a major, major state military secret to you. We simply struck a location where it was convenient to observe the results. Well, this concerns Bila Tserkva, and it especially concerns... concerns the DPR [so-called Donetsk People's Republic] area within the perimeter of the main fortified area.
Afterward, our drones flew into that area—the target area we had struck—and simply looked at how the multiple reentry vehicles had landed. They calculated everything down to the millimeter, exactly where everything hit.
For us, this is important in order to make future decisions regarding the full-scale deployment of 'Oreshnik' against designated targets. Including within urban areas.”
Pulte referred Lisa Cook and Letitia James for criminal prosecution over mortgage document errors. Scott Bessent committed the same errors. No referral. No investigation. Bessent is in the cabinet.
Same paperwork. Three people. Three completely different outcomes based entirely on who they are to Donald Trump.
That is the man now running 18 intelligence agencies. The willingness to weaponize regulatory authority selectively wasn't a disqualification. It was the job interview.
This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.
More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.
And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.
Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.
The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.
Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.
We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.
https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl
It should be obvious. Cyanide bombs are indiscriminate killers that are as likely to take out pets and endangered wildlife as they are the animals they target.
There’s no place for these cruel devices on our public lands.
People who continue to blame New World Screwworm crisis on the Biden Administration need to stop
The Secretary has had 15 months to prepare a competent response, and despite what some are saying, the response has been lackluster and unserious
Let’s go over some facts:
In order to eradicate the NWS, we need somewhere between 500M-600M sterile flies produced WEEKLY, and we currently produce 100M weekly
There are current mechanisms and technologies that could be deployed IMMEDIATELY in order to produce those numbers that have been ignored by the USDA for the past 6 months
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) which oversees the NWS response is a disaster. There were some competent veterinarians interviewed during the transition willing to serve and reform the bureau who were blocked by the Secretary and her team. Instead they decided to retain the same director from the Biden Administration (ironic) who botched the response to the Avian flu
The tick rider program (people on horseback looking at wildlife and livestock in desolate areas) is completely disorganized, so the “surveillance” mechanisms that continue to be touted are not sufficient enough to detect these infestations in extremely rural areas in the timely manner required to combat this
On top of all this, producers in Texas are being pressured NOT TO REPORT potential cases, and if it wasn’t for some brave people reporting on this current case in LaPryor, it’s possible it would have been covered up
NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARATION NOW
The State of Alabama has scheduled the execution of Jeffery Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, even though his capital jury voted against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
https://t.co/mI7FB8jYEC
Yesterday I told you the government is pulling 900 ocean monitoring instruments out of the water.
Here is the part that should make every American angry, regardless of where you stand on climate.
Congress voted to fund this network. Not once. Twice. The Trump administration proposed cutting it by 80 percent in 2025. Congress restored the money. Proposed the same cut in 2026. Congress restored the money again.
So the administration labeled it a "descope" and ordered the instruments pulled anyway.
That is not a budget disagreement. That is an executive branch telling the legislative branch that its votes do not matter. The public paid for this infrastructure. Congress protected it. One office in Washington decided the public should not have it.
This is the pattern I document in 𝑾𝒆 𝑨𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑩𝒂𝒅 𝑮𝒖𝒚𝒔. It is not about left or right. It is about who decides what Americans are allowed to know about their own planet.
Who should make that call?
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
Stand with us to protect the future of Nashville Zoo.
A proposed 69,000-square-foot data center is planned next to the Zoo, but no environmental impact studies have been conducted. Sign our petition to help protect the animals in our care ➡️ https://t.co/q2ISQnxLBK
It's happening 🚨
House GOP representatives are about to introduce a bill that would completely eliminate subsidized student loans.
They are trying to make it impossible to go to college unless you can afford to pay for it upfront.