SmittyN

[Rebekah Jones @GeoRebekah]

This may be the image that defines America's 250th birthday.

A woman sits calmly on a Washington Metro train as masked members of the white nationalist and domestic terrorist group Patriot Front surround her.

They covered their faces.

She didn't.

Earlier in the day, Patriot Front marched through the nation's capital carrying Confederate flags and chanting that America must be "reclaimed," the latest expression of a white nationalist movement that has grown increasingly visible, violent, emboldened, and politically influential in recent years.

Their ideology is explicit.

Their courage, apparently, is not.

Not one of them was willing to show his face.

And then there is her.

No mask. No uniform. No fear.

Just an American woman refusing to surrender an inch of her dignity to a group of men who appeared to be seeking exactly that.

The symbolism is almost too perfect.

250 years after the Declaration of Independence, and six decades after Americans marched and died to make its promises apply to everyone, a group of masked white nationalists rode the socialist Metro home in anonymity.

The woman they tried to intimidate is the one America will remember.

The people who hide their faces do not define this country.

The people who refuse to be afraid do.

[Global War Desk @GlobalNewsHQI]

🚨 THIS INTERVIEW TOOK AN UNEXPECTED TURN.

🇺🇸 Reporter: "You've earned millions from crypto while serving in office. Were you aware of those deals?"

🇺🇸 Trump: "Yes. Nothing about it was illegal."

🇺🇸 Reporter: "Federal conflict-of-interest law exists to stop public officials from profiting from government positions."

🇺🇸 Trump: "I'm not familiar with that law."

One question. One answer. Millions are now debating whether America's rules apply equally to everyone.

If any ordinary public official admitted something similar, the legal consequences could have been severe.

That's what fearless journalism looks like. 🎤

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Trump received a 3-year ban from serving as a corporate officer or director of any New York City business because of long-term financial fraud.

[FireFighterDev @fire_starter457]

Trump gave his speech at Mt. Rushmore last night and it’s pretty clear he and Stephen Miller are rolling out communism as the new bogeyman for the midterms. They’re even trying to tie it to immigration (the communist menace is being brought here by evil foreigners).

One problem with this stratagem: it’s been done before.

Another is it’s bullshit.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Yes of course. Fake. Thats the only defense you have to this?

How about condemning it

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

Happy 4th of July to everyone except to traitor maga republicans. 🇺🇸

[Rep. Jamie Raskin @RepRaskin]

Liz Oyer, former Pardon Attorney, describes how Todd Blanche fired her when she refused to do a dangerous official favor for Trump friend Mel Gibson. The actor lost his federal firearm rights after committing domestic violence. Gibson assaulted his girlfriend while she was holding their baby daughter, smashing her in the mouth, breaking her teeth, threatening her with his gun. Gibson asked Trump’s DOJ to reinstate his federal firearm rights despite his criminal conviction. Although Blanche had the power to do it on his own, he tried to force Oyer to give her stamp of approval. Not convinced of Gibson’s rehabilitation or his lack of dangerousness, and knowing that over half of women murdered in the United States are killed by a current or past intimate partner, and the presence of firearms in an abusive household increases the risk of murder by 500%, Oyer refused to have anything to do with Blanche’s dangerous and unethical suggestion. Blanche sacked her.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

DOGE deletes itself on July 4th. It will be remembered as a hugely destructive failure.

Musk promised $2 trillion in savings.

What we got, by DOGE’s own unverified math, was $215 billion. Even that number was never proven.

The costs were atrocious. Nearly 140,000 federal workers pushed out. Veterans waiting longer for care. USAID dismantled while people died overseas as a direct result. 20-year-olds with Red Bulls and no college degrees rummaging through Americans’ most sensitive data.

Musk, the world’s richest man, a federal contractor with billions in government business, auditing the government that pays him, accountable to no voter anywhere. 

Even Musk now says he wouldn’t do it again. The guy who ran it calls it a mistake.

Government reform was there for the taking. Both parties know federal technology is outdated. Both parties know waste exists. Fixing it required serious people working with career civil servants who know where the problems actually are. Instead we got a chainsaw, a photo op, and years of lost expertise we now have to rebuild.

Now Trump’s budget director says there will be no final accounting or receipts. They promised transparency and they’re closing up shop in the dark.
They’re counting on us all to forget.
https://t.co/LhgbGUY2Ca

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The New York Times has done us a service with this story.

Trump keeps rewriting American history to make it a mirror for whatever he wants to do today. History does not validate or justify his gross corruption, his firing federal workers, his reckless tariffs, or much of anything else he’s doing.

Trump claims Andrew Jackson cut the federal workforce to fight corruption. Jackson replaced everyone he fired and hired even more, and historians agree his spoils system promoted vast corruption. 

He claims William McKinley’s tariffs made the country rich. Those tariffs helped failed to prevent a recession, and McKinley himself walked away from that view before he died, calling commercial wars unprofitable.

He wants a version of history that makes all of it sound inevitable and wise.

The facts say otherwise. We should keep insisting on them.
https://t.co/3ZIrkPsnFW

[Rich Montgomery @BeachdogDaytona]

@essenviews Trump originally approved of the bridge construction, but the bridge's competitor, the Ambassador Bridge, owned by the billionaire Moroun family, stands to lose $ millions. So they donated $ 1 million to MAGA Inc. Just after that, Trump blocked the opening. More corruption.

[Kurtis Allen @Brockman001]

@essenviews You forgot to mention the part where the billionaire owner of the existing bridge (who happens to have ties to trump) fought this bridge for years and now stands to lose significant revenue when the new bridge opens, and motorists have a new option.

Multi-layered corruption.

[Jon “Bowzer” Bauman @JonBowzerBauman]

If you don’t see that this is what’s been going on the whole time, you’re really an idiot.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Psaki: Now, in order to put on this celebration, Trump is using $68 million of taxpayer money. At least some of that money is being paid to a company called Event Strategies Incorporated. It's run by a group of Trump allies. We don't know how responsible they are for the 68 million of your tax dollars going towards this event. But so far, that money has paid for a janky ferris wheel plagued by power outages, a couple of tents with chairs in them, a temu version of Trump's planned arch, which appears to be falling apart and seems like it's being held together with a slapdash sealant job and, of course, some bizarre entertainment, half of which seems to just be Trump officials sitting on stage, basically filling the time. So how much of that $68 million actually went to the state fair, and how much to Event Strategies Incorporated did they get to keep for themselves?

[InfoGram @_InfoGram_]

🇺🇸 Donald Trump is going to lift the ban on mailing handguns directly to homes. That helps GrabAGun, the online gun store his son has a stake in. He’d rake in billions.

In any functioning democracy, this would be called massive corruption and He would have faced at least 2 years in jail.

[Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower]

Starting in early 2025, Elon Musk and the Trump administration began terminating USAID's programs and firing its staff — with Musk himself boasting about "feeding it into the woodchipper." One year ago today, USAID was officially dissolved, its remaining programs haphazardly folded into the State Department. Amid all the lies and misinformation that have followed, some facts about what has actually been lost:

• USAID saved more than 3 million lives a year at a cost of less than $10/month per American. That is what was destroyed. On purpose.
• According to Boston University's Global Impact Counter — which tracked deaths attributable to the cuts until it stopped operations in February 2026 — an estimated 781,000 people died preventable deaths in the first year, including 518,000 children.
• Global child mortality (the number of children who die before their fifth birthday) rose in 2025 for the first time in 35+ years — by 200,000 additional deaths.
• USAID's 50-country disease surveillance network — the system that cut outbreak response times from 2 weeks to 48 hours — is gone. We are now watching an unprecedented Ebola outbreak unfold in real time — with the highest first-month caseload and death rate in modern history.
• Programs reaching 93 million women and children were cut 92%. TB programs cut 56%. Water and sanitation cut 86%. Over 2,000 health facilities permanently closed.
• 25 million fewer people received humanitarian assistance in 2025. The overall humanitarian budget was slashed 74% — from $14.1 billion to $3.7 billion.
• 363 million people face acute hunger in 2026. The famine early-warning system that would have seen it coming went dark for five months.
• $1.7 billion in democracy and governance funding (election monitoring, anti-corruption work, support for independent media and civil society) was terminated.
• 360+ independent media outlets lost funding. Hundreds of legal clinics closed.
• Far from saving money, the Trump administration itself has already said the dismantlement will cost taxpayers at least $19.2 billion in cancellation fees, severance, and penalties. That's more than half of USAID's annual budget — spent on destruction and closeout, not support for vulnerable people.
• American farmers, universities, and businesses are among the casualties too. USAID partnered with more than 3,500 U.S. companies and maintained 17 university-based research labs. Its work with U.S.-based contractors and the private sector generated hundreds of thousands of American jobs and multiplied the return on every dollar spent. Those markets and partnerships are gone.

[Mark Bland @markbland]

He’s been a joke since day one—an empty suit with no spine, no principles, and no clue. Congress demands leadership, and he delivers nothing but cowardice and embarrassment. No honor, no backbone, no business being there.

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

💯💯💯🎯🎯

[SmittyN @smittyMSN]

@JenKiggans https://t.co/Xx3JLXExAn

[Dr.Sam Youssef Ph.D.,Ph.D.,DPT. @drhossamsamy65]

⛔️Major Jason Watson is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, a career logistics officer, a NATO officer, and a decorated veteran who volunteered for a 365-day tour in Afghanistan and later served in Kuwait and Iraq.

⛔️He led personnel across multiple countries, managed billions of dollars in military assets, and served as a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator to support fellow service members.

⛔️Defense Meritorious Service Medal. Meritorious Service Medals. Joint Service Commendation Medal. Years of service to this country and to our allies.

[SmittyN @smittyMSN]

@JenKiggans @VP @nas_oceana Here is a true patriot - you, Jen … not even close.

[Dr.Sam Youssef Ph.D.,Ph.D.,DPT. @drhossamsamy65]

⛔️Major Jason Watson is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, a career logistics officer, a NATO officer, and a decorated veteran who volunteered for a 365-day tour in Afghanistan and later served in Kuwait and Iraq.

⛔️He led personnel across multiple countries, managed billions of dollars in military assets, and served as a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator to support fellow service members.

⛔️Defense Meritorious Service Medal. Meritorious Service Medals. Joint Service Commendation Medal. Years of service to this country and to our allies.

[Dr.Sam Youssef Ph.D.,Ph.D.,DPT. @drhossamsamy65]

⛔️Major Jason Watson is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, a career logistics officer, a NATO officer, and a decorated veteran who volunteered for a 365-day tour in Afghanistan and later served in Kuwait and Iraq.

⛔️He led personnel across multiple countries, managed billions of dollars in military assets, and served as a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator to support fellow service members.

⛔️Defense Meritorious Service Medal. Meritorious Service Medals. Joint Service Commendation Medal. Years of service to this country and to our allies.