Utopia

Real, but not spectacular. Expert on nothing, smarter in person. Marginally talented golfer. Browns fan since ‘64— I was there! Youngstown born & bred.

[Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) @adamscochran]

To be clear:

* It is ILLEGAL for the federal government to seize state voting machines solely based on Presidential order.

* Federal forces should reject the legal order.

* State forces DO NOT have to yield to federal forces on an illegal order.

* If a judge strikes down the order State forces CAN engage with force to stop the illegal action.

* If a judge is in process of review, and the seizure order is solely based on Presidential directive, it also likely reasonable force for State forces, by order of a Governor to block the seizure of machines until a clear ruling due to the incredible sensitivity of the chain-of-custody of those machines during an election.

Every governor must ready to protect their States’ right to vote.

Both by gavel, and by force if necessary.

[Dittie @DittiePE]

So now the Trump administration is sending out one-time $500 checks to people who bought their health insurance through https://t.co/aT2oRibUoZ and paid the full price because they didn’t qualify for taxpayer subsidies.

In other words, people who’s income is roughly 400% above poverty and could already afford to pay full price for their health insurance are getting a $500 check from the president. And guess when those checks started showing up? October 1. Weeks before the midterm election.

The checks come with a letter from Trump lying about why you’re getting your $500. And here’s the really interesting part: this isn’t being distributed evenly across the country. Of the roughly $475 million being sent out, 71% of it, or $339 million, is going to people in just 13 states.

Those 13 states happen to be major midterm battlegrounds. They contain eight of the nine Senate races and 10 of the 12 governors’ races that nonpartisan analysts consider the most competitive.

Call it whatever you want. I’ll call it what it is: a bribe.

[MeidasClips @MeidasClips]

Katie Phang: "There are two different wars that are being waged. One in the court of law and one in the court of public opinion. Convicted felon Donald Trump and the Trump administration, led by his cosplaying personal lawyer, Attorney General Todd Blanche, is losing on both fronts. There is no two standards of justice."

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

I’ve been screaming about this guy for over a year.

Emil Michael is a broligarch parasite whose only notable experience was being Travis Kalanick’s PR guy when Uber was falling apart.

He’s responsible for all the neo-Nazi & QAnon memes coming from the DOWCTO account.

He is literally there to funnel money from our tax dollars to his friends in the PayPal Mafia. That’s it.

Anduril is run by Palmer Luckey, a midwit nobody who got rich by stealing the design for VR goggles as a teenager, getting funded by Peter Thiel, and selling his junk to Mark Zuckerberg.

The entire military-industrial complex is infested with these corrupt adolescent incels.

ALL OF IT MUST BE ENDED.
ALL OF THESE CONTRACTS MUST BE CLAWED BACK.

So tired of watching them steal our money.

[Kevin Gaughen 🇺🇸 @gaughen]

I’m telling y’all, this motherfucker is planning a false flag. He’s going to kill American citizens to either win the midterms or prevent them from happening, and he’ll blame it on Iran.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Troy Jackson: "As late as 2024, the FBI was circling around Sen. Collins ... then when President Trump came back, his administration dismantled the investigation. Now she votes with Donald Trump 96% of the time. Look, I don't owe Donald Trump nothing."

[Justin Wolfers @JustinWolfers]

Diesel futures fell after Trump announced a “massive” European oil release.⁣
⁣
Then traders read the actual G7 statement, and the entire price move vanished.⁣
⁣
Turns out the massive release was mostly a PR stunt. https://t.co/kETlxJsmVm

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

“DJT cowers from empathy and understanding because he knows they are anathema to his grift. He has always been this way, but most of his life he settled for exploiting people on the margins and of modest means. The pensioners he bussed-in from far flung exurbs in the Northeast to feed their Social Security checks into his Atlantic City slot machines, and then sent them back home, broke, without so much as a comped buffet.

With the advent of reality TV, the margins were delivered to his door. He didn’t need to find more vulnerable customers, he now needed to find a bigger product: politics (why settle for their Social Security checks when you can feed the U.S. Treasury itself into your own family’s bank accounts?).

It is no coincidence that this occurred at the apex of his reality show fame and at the most fruitful period of his decades-long association with the Russian mob as one of their chief money launderers; the guy who was all too happy to fill up his eponymous New York City and South Florida towers with Russian oligarchs fleeing the former Soviet Union, who bought condos through anonymous LLCs and turned them into brothels and poker dens. Trump didn’t mind for a moment as long as he got a piece of the action. Same with his adult children who were involved in every aspect of this operation.”https://t.co/mHN4yBNCit

[Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker @TrumpsPortfolio]

THE CIA'S SECOND-IN-COMMAND JUST FIRED THE AGENCY'S LAWYER AND HIRED HIMSELF

Michael Ellis. Deputy Director of the CIA. This week he walked into the general counsel's office, removed the person whose entire job is to tell the CIA when it's breaking the law, and installed himself in the seat

Read that again. The man running covert operations is now also the man who approves whether those covert operations are legal. No separation. No independent check. Just Ellis, grading his own homework, in the most secretive agency in the federal government

There is no oversight body watching this happen in real time. No confirmation hearing. No public vote. One trusted Trump loyalist just erased the one internal brake that existed inside the CIA's legal chain

This is the same Michael Ellis who Trump tried to install as NSA general counsel back in 2020 and got blocked for being too political to trust with classified legal judgment

Didn't matter. Trump brought him back anyway. Promoted him anyway. And now he's unsupervised, sitting on both sides of the legal review process for one of the most powerful intelligence agencies on planet earth

Compare that to a career CIA analyst who needs three signatures and a security review just to expense a cab ride

Ellis needed zero signatures to seize legal authority over his own conduct

This isn't a personnel shuffle. This is Donald Trump's pattern, repeating inside the one agency where nobody is supposed to see it happen

Schedule F for the civil service. Loyalty tests for prosecutors. Acting officials who answer only to Trump. And now the CIA's own watchdog function, swallowed whole by the guy it was supposed to watch

When the people checking the power and the people holding the power are the same person, that's not an intelligence agency anymore

That's a black box with Donald Trump's name on the door

And nobody elected Michael Ellis to anything

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

10 years ago today

GOP Sen. Mike Lee: “If anyone spoke to my wife, or my daughter, or my mother, or any of my five sisters, the way Mr. Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn’t hire that person, wouldn’t want to be associated with that person, and I certainly don’t think I’d be comfortable hiring that person to be the leader of the free world.”

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

Y’all are acting like you’ve never seen an octogenarian drug addict who spent decades attacking little girls w/his BFF Jeffrey Epstein while laundering money for Russian mob ask Iran to nuke LA & San Diego to help MAGA midterms while a bunch of cornhusk crackers cheered before?

[scary lawyerguy @scarylawyerguy]

Oh look, another "-gate" level scandal that should result in investigations and, if substantiated, resignations, impeachments, and prosecutions, but will disappear like a fart in the wind b/c the media's fealty to the Constitution goes only as far as its own rights

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

Something unprecedented happened during my visit to the Gulf.

For the first time in 20 years in Congress, I was denied entry to U.S. military facilities and even meetings with military leaders.

An order from Hegseth - that applies to both parties - to hide the cost of the war.

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

It’s true! Melania lied to obtain her Einstein visa and ultimately citizenship by saying she graduated from college when she had not. Barron served as an anchor baby. He was born in March 2006 & she didn’t obtain citizenship until July 2006. She resides in NYC, not at the White House. So, taxpayers are paying for her security there, along with her Cadillac healthcare plan that no one else gets. 🤬 She brought her parents over with chain immigration, something Trump is trying to get rid of.

[X Global @X_Global_tv]

🚨 BREAKING:

US Rep. Thomas Massie says he reviewed 6 Jewish names in unredacted Epstein files that the DOJ illegally concealed.

"Within a few hours, we found 6 Jews whose names were redacted, and they were involved in how the files were presented."

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

Effectively, a desperate Trump is now saying:
"Listen to me!! Listen to MY reality! Only MY reality is real!! Prices are coming down! Inflation is gone! We are a hot country! My polls are excellent! We have trillions in new investment! I know more than anyone! I saved the country! I saved the world! I have a very high IQ! I've done nothing wrong! Stop listening to Fake News! I'll give you $! Put away your eyes and ears and listen to ME!!!"

[Dittie @DittiePE]

Here we go again. Republicans are rolling out the “tough on crime” message for the midterms.

There’s just one little problem with that.

The president who is supposed to be the face of their “law and order” agenda has 34 criminal felonies, pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 defendants. Since then, at least 97 of those pardon recipients have been rearrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes. Seven have been charged with child-sex crimes. And it isn’t just the January 6 pardons.

Trump’s clemency record includes convicted fraudsters and other white-collar criminals whose pardons wiped away restitution, fines and forfeitures to the tune of $3.3 billion.

It’s the same lie they told you in 2024. And look where that got us. So when Republicans tell you they’re tough on crime, maybe ask them about the criminals their own criminal president keeps letting go.

They’ve done nothing for you. in two years, but make your life worse.

Check your registration. Have a plan. Vote. Because your future depends on it.

[Common Sense 🇺🇸💙 @commons96055467]

“We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right Russ?” Trump said, to Russel Vought. Is this dude planning to help trump stop the midterms? Project 2025 has a roadmap. This dude maybe the guy we need to watch. One of the most dangerous man in the US today.

[No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen @NoLieWithBTC]

Trump is declining international election monitors in the United States for first time in over two decades, aligning the country with Russia.

Trump will instead deploy his own election monitors to polling sites across the country.

[Mike Nellis @MikeNellis]

The details of the Tate extradition case are even worse than I expected. Selling sexual content involving a child on WhatsApp. Extreme porn involving a horse and an eel. Human trafficking, isolation, and violence against women and kids. Just awful, weird shit. Lock them away and throw away the key.