Will o’ the Wisp🗽⚖️ (@stormborndragon.bsky)

PragmaticOptimist🦄Performer🎤🩰 SAG/AEA🎭InsatiablePhilomath📚UnabashedLiberal🗽MemeThief🐾DataSciNerd🧬Ally🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Empathy🫂BLM✊🏼Laughter🤣Compassion❤️

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Sheldon Whitehouse's letter isn't a press release with adjectives attached. It's an eighty three page appendix of internal Kennedy Center documents, emails, and photographs, backed by firsthand accounts from multiple former project managers willing to put their names behind what they saw. That's the kind of paper trail that doesn't happen by accident.

The specifics read like a checklist of what corner cutting actually costs. Steel columns rusting through fresh paint. A reflecting pool that may need to be torn out and rebuilt entirely. An eight million dollar contract to replace the concert hall floor awarded, with no bidding process, to a firm with no prior experience working on concert halls. And the detail that captures the whole operation in miniature, a brand new bathroom floor torn out and redone because the president didn't like the tile color.

Whitehouse's letter alleges the rush wasn't about serving the institution at all. It was about having renovations finished in time for Trump to accept a FIFA Peace Prize on site in December, timeline pressure imposed for a television moment rather than sound construction practice. A national memorial to a assassinated president, run like a private vanity renovation with a hard deadline set by ceremony instead of engineering. That's not an aesthetic complaint. That's public money spent badly because the schedule answered to spectacle instead of substance.

[MM  @adgirlMM]

Since 2025, 60 individuals have died while in the custody of ICE.

10 people have been fatally shot, including three U.S. citizens.

None have been thoroughly investigated, and no agents have been held accountable.

Trump has turned America into a shithole country in 2 years.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Sternly-worded letter, followed by fundraising texts, incoming.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Donald Trump’s sons invested heavily in the military contractors that Donald Trump is now giving government contracts to.

This is what insider trading and corruption looks like.
https://t.co/ojda1nXExg

[Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance]

How fortunate for these two that Daddy can pardon them on the way out the door. Those around them may be less fortunate…

[Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker @TrumpsPortfolio]

There’s a real story in the Trump-sons defense reporting — but get the number right. It’s not “$3.2 billion netted.” It’s roughly $3.7 billion in federal funds flowing to ~10 companies tied to Don Jr. and Eric

[Rick Wilson @TheRickWilson]

Weird, right? It's almost as if...and ride with me here...Trump is a lying liar who lies.

[Cuckturd @CattardSlim]

Yep. These are tire tracks in the reflecting pool. Sediment has built up on the indents.

You can see where the front tires turned in unison.

10 years prison for Trump!

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

The Acting Attorney General is an unethical lawbreaker whose head is so far up trump’s ass he no longer understands the difference between right and wrong.

@DAGToddBlanche will be investigated.

And if the facts warrant, he will be prosecuted by a future Administration.

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

I absolutely LOVE all these L's the court is handing trump, especially THIS one with the tax immunity, because the courts basically told him hell f*cking NO, you clown.

BONUS: His lawyers, including Todd Blanche, being referred for sanctions. What a lovely day!🙏

[Barb McQuade @BarbMcQuade]

Senate needs to grill Todd Blanche on slush fund, Epstein files, firing DOJ employees, and targeting Trump rivals, but most important is his vision for AG. Does he plan to follow the rule of law or act as Trump’s puppet? My thoughts in @opinion.bloomberg.com

https://t.co/oEBXpdEkVo

[Senator Dick Durbin @SenatorDurbin]

I’m announcing today that Liz Oyer and Dani Bensky will be the Democratic witnesses in opposition to Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination.

Liz Oyer served as the Justice Department’s nonpolitical pardon attorney. She was fired by Blanche for refusing to rubberstamp gun ownership rights to Mel Gibson, a convicted domestic violence abuser and friend of Donald Trump.

Dani Bensky is a brave survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific crimes. Her name has been included in multiple batches of released Epstein Files, due to Todd Blanche’s failures. She’s attempted multiple times to redact her information without success.

They will offer compelling testimony about the dangers of Todd Blanche weaponizing the Justice Department in service of Donald Trump, rather than the American people.

[Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews]

ALERT: More trouble for Todd Blanche today. Attorneys for @KatiePhang ask Judge Emmet Sullivan to issue a $1000/day fine against Blanche until Blanche adheres to court order to release more Epstein files

(Blanche refused to do so by July 2 deadline)

[julie k. brown @jkbjournalist]

So powerful that it hurts.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

The Paramount-Warner merger is illegal. The 2nd and 5th biggest studios combining. 200M subscribers. Prices will go through the roof.

But free speech will die too. Because the owners have cut a deal with Trump to silence his critics.

State AGs need to step in and block it. Now.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Proud that New York is one of 12 states suing to stop Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros.

This is not a merger that serves the public. It would hand one company nearly a third of the movies and cable channels Americans watch, raise prices for streaming and cable, endanger the livelihoods of thousands of New York artists and entertainment workers, and threaten to shutter theaters across our city.

New York's workers helped build this industry. They should not be sacrificed for the sake of further corporate consolidation.

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: I said this a couple of weeks ago: I would not be surprised if, when ICE funding started up again, we would start to see more civilian deaths at the hands of ICE. And that’s exactly what has happened.

When you open the trenches with all of this money that Republicans have now funneled to ICE without any oversight, you’re going to see abuses of power. That’s exactly what’s happening.

Notice that we didn’t see things like this happening with the same degree of regularity when we froze ICE funding. And now that it’s been opened up again, we’re seeing multiple incidents.

[Maine @TheMaineWonk]

His name was Joan Sebastian Guerrero.

- He was here legally.
- He was authorized to work.
- He had Social Security Number.
- He was NOT target of ICE investigation.
- DHS: He did NOT try to kill ICE agents.

He was executed in front of his 3 year old daughter.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

This morning in Biddeford, Maine, a 26-year-old man said goodbye to his wife and daughter and left for work. Moments later he was dead, shot in the head by ICE agents, the second man ICE has killed in six days.

ICE is killing our neighbors. ICE cannot be reformed. Abolish ICE.