REPORTER: Will you insist on voter ID as a condition for disaster aid for California?
MIKE JOHNSON: We have been lamenting the lack of voter security there for some time. We were deeply concerned in this last election cycle and we saw 3 of our seats frankly slip away from us in California.— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 27, 2025 at 3:29 PM
“Our seats”? They weren’t yours, they’re California’s and California voters get to decide without your whining.
— Anita Creamer (@anitacreamer.bsky.social) January 27, 2025 at 10:18 PM
And he’s got a lot of competition, when it comes to the worst possible excuse for a legislator. They’re throwing themselves a party because it rained this morning, solely due to the benevolence of Their Guy in the White House. One week of f*ck-ups and foul play, and we’re in Louis XIV territory.
It rained. California always had water. It was never “off.”
— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) January 28, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Congress appropriated the funds. It was an unaccountable — and not even confirmed yet — Project 2025 hack who halted them.
— Amanda Marcotte (@amandamarcotte.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Russ Vought, the private citizen who has not even been confirmed as OMB head?
— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Good for Tim Kaine:
Kaine: "The president has two Republican houses. If he wants to cut the budget, he's go majorities in both houses. He could just work with them to do it the lawful way…that he's not doing that means he doesn't have confidence that the GOP leadership will go along with the extremity of his actions"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 28, 2025 at 4:21 PM
War for Ukraine Day 1,070: The Butcher’s Bill from Last Night’s Drone Attacks
Eolirin
I’m hearing a Judge has already frozen the order, for the time being at least. A lot will come down to what the SCOTUS ultimately does.
This should be a wakeup call to the business faction part of the GOP. Let’s see if they’re willing to grow a spine. (I’m not holding my breath)
Citizen Dave
I somehow made it to today before seeing this new press secretary person, Karoline blah blah. She is 27 years old. A new mother. Brought up Catholic in New Hampshire. (I read her wikipedia)
She is an intoxicating mix of derision and stupidity. It is truly amazing and bizarre. How our press can stand this I cannot comprehend.
Leto
*insert 30 Rick meme:
Lemon: what a years it’s been!
Jack: Lemon, it’s only been a week.
Eolirin
@Citizen Dave: Our mainstream politicial press is a mix of derision and stupidity too. She should fit in just fine.
Chief Oshkosh
Were there follow-ups to these pablum statements? (I can’t watch vids right now).
dmsilev
@Citizen Dave: That cross she’s wearing suggests that she’s nervous about Stephen Miller biting her neck.
Villago Delenda Est
“Lack of election security” means “ZOMG Dems are kicking out asses clear to the Himalayas! We have to do something!”
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: The threatened tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors ought to get the attention of techbros and corporate types, if they have any brains at all (which to be fair, is unclear)
zhena gogolia
Listening to five minutes of Pete has made me feel a little better. (from 7 days ago, granted)
West of the Rockies
There’s a Department of OMitB? Cool
Sorry. Channeling my inner Oliver Putman or Mabel Mora.
frosty
Tiedrich: “I can’t believe that this lazy fuck was golfing while our brave soldiers were putting their lives on the line in California.”
He’s good!
RevRick
When white bread Sen. Tim Kaine says Trump’s actions are illegal, you just know that the NYT and WaPo will hound GOP Representatives and Senators to find out if they agree Congress should be abolished.
Wait…I’ll come in again…
ArchTeryx
@Eolirin: If they strike down the Impoundment Control Act, they’ve basically handed Trump a (previously unconstitutional) line-item veto – with no override mechanism. Then it’s Katie bar the door. Let’s hope they aren’t that far down the rabbit hole.
Eolirin
@Steve LaBonne: Potentially freezing $3 trillion of money from getting into the US economy with a badly drafted EO is not the sort of thing anyone should want if they want to have a US market to sell goods into.
Old Man Shadow
He’s betting that Congress will be good company yes-men and not stop him.
It is a good bet.
ArchTeryx
@Old Man Shadow: They shouldn’t have to. They already passed the Impoundment Control Act several Congresses ago, and it is still in force. Learn that one – you may hear it a lot before this is done.
Eolirin
@ArchTeryx: If they do, we are seeing constant indications that the drafters of these EOs have no idea what they’re doing or what the consequences of their actions are, and there will be a smoking crater where the US economy used to be.
Harrison Wesley
So Trump turned the water on in CA? I bet they also believe him when he tells them that stuff running down their backs is rain.
ArchTeryx
@Eolirin: The drafters are probably all Project 2025 people. Wrecking shit is what they are there for. But this particular one is very sloppy, because it actually has a chance of major blowback on them. They don’t yet know if the SC(R)OTUS will support their Dear Leader all the way or not, and killing the Impoundment Control Act might well create such havoc that pitchforks and torches come out.
Melancholy Jaques
The Democratic response needs more & louder screaming & stronger language.
These are bad people doing bad things. Say so in words that dullards understand.
They don’t care whether Trump has confidence that the leadership of the GOP will go along with the extremity of his actions. The great mass of voters don’t even know what that means.
John S.
@Chief Oshkosh:
Seriously. Did anyone in the White House Press Corpse bother to follow up on what magic water Trump produced?
Karoline Leavitt is a real piece of work.
Poe Larity.
Why couldn’t they just give Sarah Palin press secretary? At least it would be entertaining.
That is if Baghdad Bob isn’t available.
BellyCat
She much inside baseball. Who knew that’s how Democracy Would Die ™? JFC…
Eolirin
@ArchTeryx: Yeah but the project 2025 people and the business Republicans are not perfectly overlapping groups. A lot of Republicans did not take the more extreme things seriously. They do not seem to be effectively in control of the situation here. That a step like this was attempted, and in this fashion, should scare the fuck out of them.
This is a level of crazy close to defaulting on the US debt. That they started walking it back almost immediately shows there’s still some people that aren’t that level of crazy in the loop. But damage done there.
Eolirin
@Melancholy Jaques: Yes, because the US electorate is totally going to start paying attention to Dems because they’re more shouty.
Bleh. They’ll pay attention when their services actually get cut off and not a minute sooner.
ArchTeryx
@Eolirin: Yep. Because the Impoundment Control Act, IMHO, is one of our two remaining guardrails before literally nothing will stop the nazification of the country.
Eolirin
@ArchTeryx: What I’m really trying to say is, if you’re trying to gut the Impoundment Control Act, you don’t do it like this. Because if you do it like this you break a ton of a shit that makes everyone in the country call for your blood and throws the US into a great depression level economic crisis.
This is not how you go about an Orban style take over. We would lose to an Orban style take over so that’s kind of good news. Maybe. This is far more dangerous to people being able to eat though, so that’s a problem.
This is cultists getting too high on their own supply and disregarding reality to the point that they’re jumping off tall buildings thinking they can fly. Unfortunately they’ve tied the rest of us to them.
trnc
What actually happened is that the Army Corps of Engineers restarted some major water pumps after 3 days of maintenance.
Melancholy Jaques
@Eolirin:
They’ll blame Democrats if Democrats are not sufficiently shouty. Remember, the general public doesn’t know who the Democrats are or what they stand for.
Eolirin
@Melancholy Jaques: They’ll blame Democrats regardless, but with Republicans being the ones actually in power, enough will vote anti-incumbent for us to win, if we still get to have elections that matter.
And it’s not just the general public, apparently; people like the Pod Save America crew don’t seem to think the Democrats stand for anything either. I don’t think being more shouty about it actually helps. The media environment is toxic on every level. Dems will get blamed for not being solution focused or too partisan. We literally cannot win that argument. We just need to get the people that don’t listen to any of it anyway to not vote for Republicans.
I think we get more traction just pointing at the Chaos and going “do you want more of this?”
Harrison Wesley
@Melancholy Jaques: If a Democrat shouts in the middle of Our Liberal Media, will anybody hear it?
Bill Arnold
@trnc:
In other words, Trump turned the water off, then turned it back on again in three days, and is bragging about turning it back on.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My wife is listening now to Jim Acosta’s video from today. We need a news organization that consists of people who have resigned from cable or newspapers from just the last few weeks.
middlelee
@Citizen Dave: I am so fucking sick of blondes wearing crosses in the Republican world.
The Audacity of Krope
@Bill Arnold: Just like TikTok.
Czar Chasm
As a constituent of his…
Fuck Tim Kaine.
He voted for Hesgeth.
Eolirin
@Czar Chasm: He did not.
And this, people, is the sort of thing we have to contend with.
dmsilev
@Czar Chasm: Literally zero Senate Democrats voted to confirm Hesgeth.
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
@Eolirin: Where did that commenter pull that out of? Defense Nazi is the one guy who they ALL voted against.
It’s comments like #36 that make me turn into a misanthrope.
Kay
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
We do. News by the people who had the integrity not to go along. I would start watching again.
HinTN
@middlelee: We’ve got a brand new billboard down this way. It’s one of those (55) FOR TRUTH religious outreach things and it’s such a doozy that I broke out laughing when I read it. To summarize, Jesus is now supplanting God himself. The text asserts that you can learn how and why Jesus made you by reading the bible or, one presumes, calling that handy dandy number.
Darkrose
@John S.: Of course not! We wouldn’t want to distress the nice white lady with hard questions like she was a common Karine Jean-Pierre, now would we?
cain
@Eolirin:
That’s what we did during his first term and given that quite a number of people still voted for this clown.
The voters need to be exposed to more dysfunction before they turn tail. If he continues like this .. by July it’s going to look very grim.
Thor Heyerdahl
Just like a toddler telling their parents that they peed in the toilet all by themselves.
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
Weird thing, Dolt 45 claimed previously, that the “tap” was in Canada,
So did he send the US Army to invade Canada and turn the tap back on?
Should somebody ask him about that?
Should Canada declare an Article 5 to NATO?
George
@Jacqueline Squid Onassis:
I think it’s a safe bet that liars, psychopaths, and trolls will proliferate on any decent liberal blog, spouting their misinformation in order to ramp up the level of chaos.
Eolirin
@cain: We did win in 2020 though.
Eolirin
@George: They’ll proliferate everywhere, and people who have no idea what’s going on will believe them just enough that we end up with problems.
TONYG
@Eolirin: I think that there is a non-zero probability that Trump’s boss — Vladimir Putin — has blackmailed or bribed Trump into doing this in order to damage the United States economy. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
glory b
@Melancholy Jaques: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, what they DO KNOW is that it’s the party with the black people in it.
That’s all they need to know.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: right?
I imagine Canadians are livid at his
implied entry into your country.
I’m at that choice point where I just breathe, and feel the option to plunge into a vat of incandescent anger. And I don’t jump in, but I note the pool of red, boiling like some kind of inner lava. This can’t be good for the adrenals, but at least I’m not jumping in.
glory b
@Harrison Wesley: Nope.
Then people will complain that they didn’t say anything.
Gloria DryGarden
@Bill Arnold: how dare that man claim credit for it? If it was the army corps of engineers, doing what they planned to do..
Gloria DryGarden
apt. Sadly harsh and cruel, but damnit, so very on point
And we’ve been strategizing how to correct for this. I guess it’s in the works, and I have quite figured out who to follow in all this barrage and change.
Gloria DryGarden
@zhena gogolia: your 7 minutes of Pete Buttigieg has me calmer, and breathing again.
sure beats some of the crude things I might be shouting..
JoyceH
@Jay: He also said the tap was in the Pacific Northwest. The tap is in Howl’s Moving Castle, it just trudges around all over the place.
Susan Einbinder
There is no mechanism to turn the funding back on and organizations are not going to spend any until they are sure they will receive it. So he’s now frozen and is preparing to steal 1/3 of the domestic budget, after he has frozen all foreign funds — including those to Ukraine – which he is also going to steal. What’s worse than the unprecedented lawlessness of each action he takes is the realization that …. there’s no way to reverse things, immediately — at best, each issue will wend its way through the courts, which takes years, while — just higher education alone, NSF gives CA billions of dollars for all kinds of research, and all of that is now up in the air. If it wasn’t real, it might be material for a comedy but seriously, I’m convinced we are totally screwed….
Kay
https://news.yahoo.com/news/rfk-jr-proposed-different-vax-200404192.html
RFK Jr proposed two different vaccine schedules – one for white people, one for black people.
Black people get fewer under his plan. Absolute psychopath.
Baud
@Kay:
So he’s anti-vax but he wants black people to have less. Does that make him pro-black? #GOPLogic
Barry
@Eolirin: “I think we get more traction just pointing at the Chaos and going “do you want more of this?””
we need to blame, or the GOP will say it’s all the Dems’ fault.