Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

The willow is too close to the house.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

So many bastards, so little time.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Morning Open Thread

Friday Morning Open Thread

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— Mike Luckovich (@mluckovich.bsky.social) May 14, 2025 at 2:54 PM

From a Puck email, Abby Livingston on “Johnson’s Reality Bites”:

Speaker Mike Johnson’s “big, beautiful bill” is the largest, most complicated legislative push since Obamacare, which took more than 14 months to pass with much larger Democratic margins in both chambers. We’re not there quite yet—but while Johnson seems determined to meet his self-imposed Memorial Day deadline to get the G.O.P. tax plan passed in the House, reality is beginning to dawn on K Street and Capitol Hill Republicans.

Every step in the process is proving time-consuming and difficult: Freedom Caucus members are signaling that they’re not above pulling their support as a negotiating tactic. As we foresaw back in November, members of the SALT caucus are also playing hardball. And some preferred Medicaid cuts could imperil the seats of vulnerable incumbents such as California’s David Valadao; ditto SALT stinginess for New York’s Mike Lawler, who’s fighting tooth and nail to raise the deduction.

There’s a growing fear that the legislation moving through the House right now could create new opportunities for Democrats. Republican Andrew Garbarino’s recent admission that he will be politically doomed if the SALT deduction cap isn’t raised touched on a legitimate concern shared by Republicans I’ve spoken with, as well as Garbarino’s Long Island neighbor Nick LaLota. Theirs were not previously thought to be competitive races. Hovering over all these decision points is the perennial concern that Johnson could force his members to pass a bill with unpopular provisions, only for the more moderate Senate to sink it.

They need a catchy title for this.
How about: The Kill the Children, the Old and the Needy to Make the Rich Richer Act of 2025?
House Republicans Push Forward Plan to Cut Taxes, Medicaid and Food Aid

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— davidrlurie (@davidrlurie.bsky.social) May 15, 2025 at 6:04 AM

Reader Interactions

171Comments

  2. 2.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    As I recall, that bill already has a ridiculous name. Isn’t it The Great Big Beautiful Bill

    ETA: Also I’m trying not to be drawn into an argument on twitter. I don’t suppose anyone on BJ has expertise in how to do that.

  10. 10.

    Soprano2

    What’s really disgusting about this bill (besides the bill itself) is how the R’s are trying to sell the Medicaid cuts. They are giving people the impression that there are millions of able-bodied people on Medicaid who aren’t working, that those people could go find jobs that give them health care so why do they need Medicaid. I bet more than one of my employees is either on Medicaid or has kids on Medicaid, because we can’t afford to have a health care benefit! These people work hard, and the R’s are saying they shouldn’t have any healthcare benefits. It’s deceptive – the people who don’t work who are on Medicaid will still be on Medicaid after their horrible cuts!

  13. 13.

    Aziz, light!

    I think the only effective message going forward will be this:

    “It’s not left versus right, it’s billionaires versus the rest of us.”

  14. 14.

    schrodingers_cat

    From yesterday’s thread: I found a miniseries based on Lapierre and Collins book, Freedom at Midnight about how independent India and Pakistan came to be, looks interesting.

    Its available on Sling TV for streaming.

    Trailer

    You need to know the origin story of India and Pakistan to understand the bad blood between the two countries.

    If there is any interest we could watch it together and then have a Zoom/s later to discuss it. This is the first season and it has 7 hour long episodes IIRC.

    It is streaming on Sling TV and I think you can get the first month free. This subject has fascinated me for the longest time. And I have done a lot of reading around it. Including reading Gandhi’s assassin’s screed about why he killed Gandhi. The reverberations of Partition still shape both the countries. You can’t understand India and its present government without understanding the partition.

  17. 17.

    Ben Cisco

    @Soprano2: It’s MONSTROUS.

    As for the tactic, they’ve been telling all kinds of lies with no pushback from our vaunted media, and the cult will literally believe ANYTHING they’re told, so…

  23. 23.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @MagdaInBlack: you’re right in Arlington heights? I went to elementary through 9th grade while living there… biked up to the nw train into the city for a summer internship when I was 15..

  28. 28.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Gloria DryGarden: I am a transplanted farm kid. Grew up in north central Illinois, wee bit north of where the Illinois and Fox Rivers meet

    But yes, I am exiled in Arlington Heights now

  29. 29.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Baud: roflmao

    Laughed so loud!

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: does tik tok have a way to set it so people can’t comment? I know blue sky does, but you have to set it for each comment before you post it.

  30. 30.

    Librettist

    Peak Nancy Pelosi vs. a stooge for the petrochemicals lobby that even Republicans don’t like or respect. Media is grading Speaker Mike on the GOP curve.

    Other than the “I gotta type something” bs, they’re not holding onto the House, with the only likely chance being if assmouth croaks.

    Speaking of the devil, he looked terrible addressing the troops in Qatar; like he had been reheated in a microwave.

  31. 31.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @MagdaInBlack: I’ll look at a map. I didn’t drive yet, just rode a bike, or took a school bus. We lived a few blocks from Arlington heights boulevard and central and Kirchhoff. When I was there they had just put in woodfield mall.
    im sure it’s all houses where we met by a swamp, and picked raspberries, and violets, and played with milkweed fluff, etc..

  35. 35.

    chemiclord

    Sometimes, I wonder if that is the hope that some GOPers have when they push shit; that the Senate will kill it, and they can reap all the benefits of not destroying the country while getting all the support of their electorate that wants to see it destroyed.

    The problem is that the true believers have taken over, and are demanding total compliance.

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    It’s going about the way I expected – everyone’s claiming they’ll blow it up if they don’t get what they want.  But, unfortunately, they’ll probably end up passing something horrible because they know this is their last, best shot to break everything and give trillions to people who don’t need it.

    Grr..

    We have to keep fighting them because, as Vindman said, here right matters.

    Meanwhile, crypto is the future!  It protects you from the tyranny of overbearing government!!

    What’s that??  No, not like that!!:

    Masked men jumped out of a white-panel van in Paris this week, attempting to snatch a 34-year-old woman off the street. The woman’s husband fought back and suffered a fractured skull, according to France24. The woman continued resisting long enough for a bike shop owner named Nabil to rush out swinging a fire extinguisher, which he hurled after the departing van as the attackers finally fled. The entire altercation was captured on video.

    The woman was identified as the daughter of a “crypto boss,” and her attempted kidnapping is part of a disquieting surge in European crypto-related abductions—two of which have already involved fingers being chopped off. The last major abduction happened in Paris only two weeks ago, and it ended with French police storming a house in the Paris suburbs and rescuing a crypto mogul’s now-four-fingered father.

    The attacks have spooked the industry, which has called, somewhat ironically, for enhanced protections from the government. Reuters notes that the issue has been escalated all the way to the top of the French government, where Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau announced plans this week to “meet with French crypto entrepreneurs to make them aware of the risks and to take measures to protect them.”

    […]

    :-/

    Beware of magic beans – in federal tax bills and everywhere else.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Gloria DryGarden: I am on the northern side, near Rand and Palatine Rd.

    We are fortunate to have a lot of Cook County Forest Preserves, so much of your swamp is still intact, to the west of here.

    p.s. McMansions are endemic here tho.

  39. 39.

    Gloria DryGarden

    I really like the suggested title up above –

    catchy title for this. How about: The Kill the Children, the Old and the Needy to Make the Rich Richer Act of 2025?

  40. 40.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @MagdaInBlack: oh, those forest preserves. Field trips, but also bike rides to them. So fabulous.
    we had a little shaded glade with a swampy pond, half a block away. And then a willow grove and a soybean field. Walked by it to school, for 3-4 years. Hung out in there so much. Pocket Paradise.

  41. 41.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Also I’m trying not to be drawn into an argument on twitter.

    To paraphrase WOPR: Strange game. The only way to win is to not play to begin with.

    More succinctly: Leave Twitter.

  42. 42.

    narya

    @schrodingers_cat: I’d be interested if it showed up somewhere I’m already paying to watch. I had a couple of professors in grad school who had spent a lot of time in India (and drove through the Khyber Pass at one point early in their career); I took multiple classes with them, so picked up some bits. (I even met the minister of Karnataka at one of their parties!) And one of my handball friends lived through partition. He’s Zoroastrian, so wasn’t as directly involved in some aspects of that, but he still remembered it even though he was a kid at the time.

  43. 43.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Aziz, light!:

    “It’s not left versus right, it’s billionaires versus the rest of us.”

    I agree, followed with “Eat the rich before they eat your children!”

  45. 45.

    Ohio Mom

    @Soprano2: I am not convinced that if this bill goes through that all the disabled people currently on Medicaid, particularly on Medicaid Waivers, will be able to stay on Medicaid and keep their Waivers (Waivers pay for things like group home staffing, day programs, transportation, etc.).

    States can tighten the requirements to make people ineligible. I won’t bore everyone with the details.

  48. 48.

    Luther Siler

    Even by typical “arguing on the internet” standards, arguing on TikTok is uniquely horrible.  The app’s threading is terrible and you have fewer characters than a Tweet; it’s impossible to follow a conversation half the time even if you’re trying to be pleasant.

  54. 54.

    suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Also I’m trying not to be drawn into an argument on twitter. I don’t suppose anyone on BJ has expertise in how to do that. 

    Ignore! You don’t have to engage in any argument you’re invited to.

    I remember watching a clip of Keanu Reeves saying that he refuses to argue with anybody about anything. He said, “If you say 2 + 2 = 5, I’ll say, you’re absolutely right, have a nice day”. It’s been my north star for a while now and it’s awesome. I’ll happily discuss things productively, but the people who want to Start Shit get ignored.

  58. 58.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Aziz, light!:

    “It’s not left versus right, it’s billionaires versus the rest of us.”

    American voters never seem to get that angry at the billionaires who run & often their lives. They save their rage for the families whose children get free lunches at school.

  59. 59.

    RevRick

    @rikyrah: This is mainly aimed at working mothers, caring for children at home, while juggling a part-time job. How can she squeeze in the 80-hours/month requirement?

  61. 61.

    suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    This person accused me of not reading the book I was posting about. 

    That falls under the category of Starting Shit.

    There’s also a meme there about pancake/waffle discourse. The internet is full of it, even the BJ comment section. It’s another form of intentional bad faith, IMO.

  62. 62.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @suzanne: I was an English professor, so not reading a book I was talking about would be an unprofessional action. It’s hard for me not to react to that even though I’m no longer acting as a professional

  64. 64.

    Matt

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    American voters never seem to get that angry at the billionaires who run & often their lives

    We can’t have candidates campaigning against billionaires, what if it makes Mark Cuban sad?

  67. 67.

    jonas

    @Soprano2: Not only that, what they’re really doing is saying “hey, we’re just clawing back money from the states; if they kick you off Medicaid because of that, it’s not our fault.” Goddamn assholes know exactly what they’re doing. If it wasn’t punishing/harming poor people, they wouldn’t be doing it. Classic tell.

  68. 68.

    prostratedragon

    I had missed this:

    This should be bigger news:

    ICYMI – Project 2025’s puppet master Russell Vought just replaced Elon as head of DOGE.

    People still in denial & believe Trump knew nothing about Project 2025, need to explain why he just handed the keys to the whole damn thing to its architect. He is the plan. Wake up.

    archive.ph link to WSJ

    He’s starting with the military. Got to keep that treason plot in focus.

  69. 69.

    Harrison Wesley

    @schrodingers_cat: That’s a really interesting idea, and it sounds like the series is well worth it. Will suggest checking it out to my friend when I’m over there this evening.

  70. 70.

    gene108

    @Soprano2:

    What’s really disgusting about this bill (besides the bill itself) is how the R’s are trying to sell the Medicaid cuts. They are giving people the impression that there are millions of able-bodied people on Medicaid who aren’t working, that those people could go find jobs that give them health care so why do they need Medicaid.

    In Medicaid expansion states able bodied people on Medicaid already work. The stupid thing with Medicaid pre-Obamacare is if you were sick, got better by having access to treatment via Medicaid, and wanted to work, you would likely lose Medicaid because it was only for the destitute. Working part time at Wendy’s would raise your income beyond what Medicaid allowed, and would cost you your healthcare. It created a no win situation for people.

    Explaining to people that the working poor use Medicaid as their health insurance will be hard.

    It’s like the old stereotypes about welfare being abused by people who don’t want to work will never die, even when those laws have changed.

  72. 72.

    Geminid

    From Turkish Middle East Eye correspondent Ragip Soylu:

    Batshit crazy story here.

    Some Trump circles allegedly discussed [plan] to assasinate Syria’s Al-Sharaa, according US Senator Shaheen’s really public comment.

    Senator Jeanne Shaheen commented on the story to Joel Rayburn, the nominee for Deputy Secretary of State for the Middle East at a Foreign Relations Committee.

    Soylu linked to a story by Sean Marthews for Middle East Eye:

    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordans-king-warned-us-against-assassinating-syrias-sharaa-trump-meeting

    The meeting referred to was the one Wednesday morning in Riyadh, between Trump, al-Sharaa and Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman. It sounds like Senator Shaheen heard it from King Abdullah when he visited Washington earlier this month. That makes me wonder if Abdullah made the trip in order to warn against this stupid and extremely dangerous idea.

    Ed. The link doesn’t work. I will excerpt some of this article later because it is a wild story. I’ll try linking again when I do.

  73. 73.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @suzanne:  I’ll happily discuss things productively, but the people who want to Start Shit get ignored.

    There is a lot to be said for this because a lot people just take stupid positions because it gets them attention.

  74. 74.

    WTFGhost

    Just think: before Trump, this sort of bill is what we thought of as “breathtakingly evil.”

    Now, we have masked, unidentified cops seizing people with impunity, and vanishing them without ever giving them a chance to speak to a judge, and the president pretending we have the authority to remove life, liberty, and property from citizens without due process.

    The threshold for “breathtakingly evil” changes when new evils take your breath away.

  76. 76.

    West of the Rockies

    May I use this forum to mention how much I detest Mike Johnson?  What a smug, pious, grotesque little dweeb.  He lies with a smirk that should be removed with a vintage Tyson haymaker.

  81. 81.

    schrodingers_cat

    @narya: Its made in India by Sony LIv so it is not as easy to find here. I am reading the book now before I watch it.

    I heard somewhere that Mountbatten opened his personal correspondence to Lapierre for this book. That book is widely available so it could be a book club.

    There is a season 2 coming out later this year

    @Harrison Wesley: Thanks!

  83. 83.

    jonas

    @prostratedragon:  ICYMI – Project 2025’s puppet master Russell Vought just replaced Elon as head of DOGE.

    Trump flat-out LIED, over and over and over about whether he was going to use P25, or even knew about it. Imagine if a Democrat had done something similar. The MSM would be in a complete meltdown. Is it asking too much for them to tear themselves for two seconds away from the current Scandal of the Century™, namely the story about Biden’s health (which has now replaced the previous Scandal of the Century™, Hunter Biden’s peen, which replaced the earlier Scandal of the Century™, Hillary’s emails, which superceded the previous Scandal of the Century™, namely Bill’s peen, etc.) and pay just as skosh more attention to the guy who’s the actual current fucking president and how he straight up LIED during the campaign?

    Pissing into the wind I know. But fuck. Never has the curve Republicans get graded on vs. Dems been more bloody obvious.

  84. 84.

    Geminid

    @prostratedragon: There’s been a concerted anti-Sharaa propaganda campaign going on for months. I’ve seen it on social media, and Syrian expert Charles Lister has warned that some members of the Trump administration were buying into it.

    In addition to the alleged assassination plan, the Middle East Eye article refers to stories that some administration officials intended to slow-walk the sanctions relief Trump promised for Syria. Separately, I’ve seen reports that Tulsi Gabbard and Sebastian Gorka in particular are hostile to President Al-Sharaa. I know that Gabbard has long expressed hostility towards Turkiye, which is Al-Sharaa’s long-time supporter.

  86. 86.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: This is the time-honored death spiral of means testing. First you complain that a benefit is going to people who don’t need it, so you cut it to only go to the “truly needy”. Then you complain that it creates perverse moral incentives and pit the people who just barely don’t get it against the people who do. If you play it right you can manipulate the people into whittling it down to nothing through crabs-in-bucket instinct.

  87. 87.

    Harrison Wesley

    @schrodingers_cat: Glad you posted this. Growing up in Dhahran I had both Indian and Pakistani neighbors and schoolmates, so I’m looking forward to seeing the series.

  88. 88.

    schrodingers_cat

    Contd from 81.

    The blame game for the partition still continues.

    India blames the British and Jinnah

    Pakistan blames the Congress especially Gandhi and Nehru

    RSS blames the Congress, especially Nehru and Gandhi

    Also the relations between the Muslim League and the Congress in the provincial assemblies which were elected in 1937 remind me of the debates that the Democrats and the Republicans are currently having.

  89. 89.

    WTFGhost

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Much like bored children taking contrary positions when not kept under control… it really does suck when people don’t act in good faith.

    @gene108: One way to scorn those people is to say “oh, come on, Medicaid was for people who could never afford insurance. It’s so expensive now, no one gets it, without a hell of a good job. The working poor will never get a job with health insurance, now.”

  90. 90.

    Timill

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I heard somewhere that Mountbatten opened his personal correspondence to Lapierre for this book.

    More likely to be the Mountbatten family than Mountbatten himself, as he was killed by the IRA in 1979 and the book appears to be 2017.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @suzanne: One of my rules for not prolonging arguments is that once the major participants broadly agree on the substance of the case, the meta-argument of whether I was right all along is not worth pursuing.

  94. 94.

    Jeffro

    Am I correct that a lot of the “Big Beautiful Bill”s provisions don’t kick in until 2028 or 2029?

    It’d make sense…trumpov just wants to coast along, epically lining his pockets, for the next few years.  It’s not like he cares about what happens to whichever sucker the MAGA GOP nominates in 2028.

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Remember that many of the comments out there aren’t by humans.  Likes were especially bad for a while, it could be that they’ve started being more argumentative as well.

    Hang in there.

    (Sometimes I compose a reply and then delete it before posting it.  It provides a little bit of satisfaction.)

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    Jeffro

    @Chief Oshkosh: more succinctly: Leave Twitter

    110% this.  First they shadow ban you, then they let the neo-Nazis in, and then you leave.

    I have been getting the occasional troll on BlueSky as well, but it’s just so much easier to ignore or block them.

    I am starting to think Facebook is shadow-banning posts that link to anti-trump articles.  It’s not as bad (yet) as Twitter was getting, but it’s there…might have to just leave a comprehensive “trump is a Russian-owned crook and rapist” piece pinned to the top of my page and go back to only posting ‘regular’ stuff.

  100. 100.

    suzanne

    @Matt McIrvin: My rule is not to argue with anybody whose goal is to discredit or insult or defeat their opponent. Part of that is the “small minds discuss people” truism. The other reason is that I’d like both/all sides of a discussion to get smarter. It isn’t a competition.

  101. 101.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro: Facebook has been shadow-banning Katherine Hayhoe’s climate-change posts for years. She has pretty good statistical evidence. She gets positive engagement on Bluesky, negative trolly engagement on X/Twitter, but essentially no engagement at all on Facebook, positive or negative. People aren’t seeing the posts.

    (As I recall, she mentioned that Mastodon is the king of “friendly fire”: people telling her that they agree with her about climate change but she’s doing her advocacy all wrong. That’s the most Mastodon thing ever.)

  103. 103.

    Jackie

    @jonas:

    @prostratedragon:  ICYMI – Project 2025’s puppet master Russell Vought just replaced Elon as head of DOGE.

    Trump flat-out LIED, over and over and over about whether he was going to use P25, or even knew about it.

    Piggybacking onto the above link:

    McKay Coppins: “Behind all the DOGE pyrotechnics, Vought—who serves as director of the Office of Management and Budget—is working methodically to advance a sophisticated ideological project decades in the making. If Musk is moving fast and breaking things, as the Silicon Valley dictum goes, Vought is taking the shattered pieces of the federal government and reassembling them into a radically new constitutional order.”

    “Vought’s agenda includes shrinking the government, but it goes deeper than that. His vision of state power would effectively reject a century of jurisprudence and unravel the modern federal bureaucracy as we know it. A devotee of the so-called unitary executive theory, he wants to see the civil service gutted and repopulated with presidential loyalists, independent federal agencies politicized or eliminated, and absolute control of the executive branch concentrated in the Oval Office.”

    The link is to the Atlantic. I’m glad this underhanded sneakiness is beginning to catch the eyes of the media!

  104. 104.

    prostratedragon

    There goes history, repeating itself again.
    Report

    Breaking WSJ:

    The newly appointed head of FEMA acknowledged in private meetings that with two weeks to go until hurricane season, the agency doesn’t yet have a fully formed disaster-response plan. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/fema-hurricane-season-no-plan-39042ee

    Commentary:

    I don’t know what this means, but I’m the one who wrote a fully updated, 624-page hurricane response plan at FEMA that took over 2 years of work and careful coordination among state and federal agencies. He could start by studying that.

  105. 105.

    prostratedragon

    @Jackie:  Maybe in a few days after the a/c starts in my building I will try to figure out just what they mean by “sophisticated.”

  106. 106.

    japa21

    Looking for some suggestions. There is a protest scheduled for Sunday in this area. It is going to be a human chain along Hwy 34 (Ogden Ave in my area) from Aurora, IL to Chicago. The organizers have made it very clear they don’t want any blocking of the roads. It is going to be from Noon until 2 PM.

    Mrs Japa is going to have a sign that says “Stop The Steal of our Democracy”. I haven’t totally decided and looking for recommendations. I have thought of “It’s Not Just Trump. It’s the GOP Enablers”.

    If anybody is interested in participating, this is the link

  107. 107.

    no comment

    Inspired by the comic above, why not call it the Reverse Robin Hood Act? Stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Short, accurate, easy to remember and understand.

  108. 108.

    scav

    @prostratedragon: Well, it’s a tricky decision if you’re going to blame the gays or Biden for any specific disaster or if you’re going to vaguely flap your lips about bootstraps or just wave your hands ineffectively.  So many options!

  109. 109.

    jonas

    @Jackie: I’m glad The Atlantic is on this, but like 5 people read it. As I said above, if a Dem president had ever pulled something like this, every WH press briefing would resemble a rugby scrum at the podium and three or four senior correspondents would have stroked out live on air covering it for days without sleep.

  111. 111.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jonas: ​
      Pedantry time: A rugby scrum is a very organized set piece. You are probably thinking of a ruck or a maul.

  115. 115.

    trollhattan

    Never not be grifting.

    “Donors are being offered a ‘dedicated VIP experience’ at several events that President Trump is planning with the U.S. military this summer,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

    “Those who give to America250, a committee created to support what Trump envisions as a large national celebration next year for America’s 250th birthday, will be given special access to three events… Those include a military parade Trump is planning on his birthday, a ‘military readiness’ event he is leading at Fort Bragg military base with thousands of troops and an Independence Day celebration in Washington.”

  116. 116.

    Jackie

    Independent branch of the government be damned!

    “House conservatives are urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to be more aggressive against President Donald Trump’s political enemies,” Punchbowl News reports.

    “These Republicans want Dr. Anthony Fauci and New York Attorney General Letitia James arrested for what they view as politically targeted efforts to go after Trump.”

    Bondi’s stances: During her confirmation hearing, Bondi – who served on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment case – pledged independence from her personal viewpoints while overseeing the Justice Department. The former Florida Attorney General also told senators that “no one should be prosecuted for political purposes.”

    But with Trump’s mission to go after his foes, Bondi is making some noticeably political moves.

    The Justice Department opened a criminal probe into James last week over mortgage fraud allegations. James won an $450 million civil lawsuit case against Trump in 2023 in which she accused him of exaggerating the value of his business assets.

    Several House Republicans have accused Fauci of lying to Congress and leading a government cover-up of the origins of Covid-19.

    Bondi has also started taking action against states and cities that have gone around federal law when it comes to immigration laws. Most recently, she sued Colorado and Denver for offering sanctuary status to undocumented immigrants.

    Justice Department officials didn’t get into the specifics about requests for DOJ action from House GOP lawmakers.

    “This Department of Justice will continue to work closely with members of the House Judiciary Committee as we end the weaponization of government and make America safe again,” said a DOJ spokesperson.

  117. 117.

    prostratedragon

    @scav:

    This heah, which apparently is still ongoing, is pretty wild:

    Screenshots here of an amazing exchange on X. Axios reporter Alex Thompson’s new book on Biden claims (with no sources) that Biden shook DNC chair Jaime Harrison’s hand without recognizing him. Harrison posts “it never happened”. Then Axios editor Jake Wilkins – wow – tells Harrison he’s wrong! 1/

  119. 119.

    Captain C

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: If you absolutely must reply, limit yourself to one, something along the lines of, “wow, it’s really creepy and pathetic that you apparently have so little to do that you think you know more about my own life than I do.  Maybe you should get a hobby, or find some friends.” and then walk away for good.

    But it’s probably better to just ignore them as if they don’t exist at all.

  121. 121.

    Captain C

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    American voters never seem to get that angry at the billionaires who run & often their lives. They save their rage for the families whose children get free lunches at school.

    “Those billionaires work so hard for their money, and besides, I could be one someday!  Them kids are just useless freeloaders.”

  124. 124.

    Captain C

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Generally if someone’s not arguing in good faith and being an asshole, I want to make them feel bad enough about themselves to cut it out and stop bothering people, and trying to find a laser-guided zinger to make them feel small and then ignoring them works best for me.

    Also, you, I, nor anyone else has to justify or explain ourselves to a sea lion not arguing in good faith.

    (link is to the sea lion cartoon/comic)

    (and, thanks!)

  125. 125.

    Jackie

    I see FFOTUS has finally learned about Bruce Springsteen’s rant while holding a concert in the UK!

    “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country,” Trump lambasted.

    If I wasn’t elected, it would have been GONE by now! Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

    Sounds like a threat to me.

  134. 134.

    montanareddog

    @Omnes Omnibus: I see – the horror of Plebs playing a gentleman’s sport so they could get recompensed for their lost wages.

    ETA: my comment does not make sense. I meant Plebs forming a breakaway league so they could get recompensed for their lost wages.

  135. 135.

    Geminid

    @prostratedragon: There’s also malice on Gabbard’s part too, I think. She seems very anti-Muslim. Gorka probably is too. And like I say, the propaganda campaign against the Syrian president and the Syrian Revolution has long and concerted. I think the BBC has reported on it.

    But whoever has been trying to undermine al-Sharaa lost the contest. Trump came down on al-Sharaa’s side, and credited the influence of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince bin Salman and Turkish President. Erdogan, who participated by tele-link in Wednesday morning’s meeting between Trump, al-Sharaa and bin Salman.

    A stable Syria is a critical interest for Turkiye. It is for Jordan also, and what threatens Jordan threatens Saudi Arabia. And Trump takes what Erdogan and bin Salman say very seriously. I don’t think he takes Gabbard or Gorka very seriously at all.

    I’m curious to see what Marco Rubio does about these allegations, since he is acting National Security advisor as well as Secretary of State. Maybe he’ll sweep this affair under the rug. I think right now he’s in Istanbul for the Russia/Ukraine talks.

    Rubio met with Syria’s Foreign Minister yesterday, on the sidelines of the Nato foreign minister summit in Antalya Turkiye. Erdogan’s powerful Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan was also present. Rubio’s remarks showed he was fully behind his boss’s new Syria policy, which he’d better be.

  137. 137.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m so glad all the headlines are about Biden’s dementia.

    After Trump fell asleep at the Pope’s funeral.

  138. 138.

    Captain C

    @jonas:

    Trump flat-out LIED, over and over and over about whether he was going to use P25, or even knew about it.

    IIRC, the FTFNYT reaction was, “Well, he said he has nothing to do with it, so it must be true.  It’s not like he ever lies.  Also, Biden is old and it’s Kamala’s fault we’re ignoring her.”

  139. 139.

    MagdaInBlack

    @zhena gogolia: ….and during an oval office presser with the UK spokesman on the phone…..and during the sit down meet with the Saudi’s. He always gets the snoozes when its not about him.

    Mr Vitality, I tell ya.

  140. 140.

    Jackie

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I saw a snippet somewhere, maybe yesterday? that out of the blue, FFOTUS went after Swift again.

    When he’s finally dead, I hope scientists get the opportunity to study what’s inside his skull and discover a cure to prevent others of the same fate. Same for RFK Jr’s brain. (Of course he has the excuse of having a brain worm, but he was certifiable before that!)

  145. 145.

    Repatriated

    @gene108:
    It’s like the old stereotypes about welfare being abused by people who don’t want to work will never die, even when those laws have changed.

    It’s more insidious than that. After the rules changed and qualification became harder, the fact that some (any!) minorities still managed to qualify was used as “proof” that they got “special welfare” while only non-minorities had to deal with the new strict rules.

  146. 146.

    Captain C

    @Geminid:

    I don’t think he takes Gabbard or Gorka very seriously at all.

    No one should take those two seriously except for purposes of threat assessment.

  147. 147.

    Captain C

    @zhena gogolia: I suspect if the press doesn’t keep fucking this chicken, they would have to admit they put a huge thumb on the scale for Trump (every time), and they know this, and they know it would put the final wound into their myth of objectivity, which is all they have to sell at this point since they have no expertise or reporting skills anymore.

    At least the ones who aren’t too dumb to breathe on their own.

  158. 158.

    Moondoggus

    @Another Scott:

     

    I knew that Crypto Is For Criminals. Fascinating that Crypto Is For Kidnappers is becoming a thing, although is a logical extension of the Ransomware criming.

  159. 159.

    Jackie

    @Matt McIrvin: Haven’t actual Americans already gone through shit returning to the US dealing with Customs? I won’t put it past FFOTUS, Noem, and Bondi to pull a stunt when Springsteen returns.

    Just to show The Boss who’s really “the boss.”

  162. 162.

    artem1s

    @gene108: ​ 

    Explaining to people that the working poor use Medicaid as their health insurance will be hard.

    So we’re basically back to the point where we have people screeching to get rid of Obamacare but leave their ACA alone.
    TBH I think this is going to be a really easy thing to explain to those people who are living on ‘gig economy’ jobs and who work for small businesses who can’t/don’t provide healthcare benefits.

  163. 163.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @RevRick: yes. True that. Except, I really like how the one above that I quoted, spells it out. It’s irrefutable.
    once one recognizes the lying bullshit they pretend about all their actions.

  164. 164.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: Magdi Jacobs has a great thread about how the shivving of Biden was initially set in motion (surprise!!) by the cult of Bernie insisting he was robbed and the mistaken belief that the solution to beating Republicans in National elections was to run hard to the Left.  A narrative/theory that never actually matched voting results.

    Anyways, she concludes with:

    Finally: those who continue to shiv Biden are looking out for their own reputations, trying to out-smart or out-“criticize-my-own-side” each other. They need something to argue about on social media. & so on. Biden was old. He dropped out. We don’t need to make more of it.

    She has another thread from yesterday where she reminds everyone that she’s a published, awarded and peer-cited academic/expert in the field of linguistics, communication and cognition and she never saw any evidence that Biden suffered cognitive decline.  Old, yes.  Nothing even remotely suggesting dementia.

  166. 166.

    Betty

    There are many ugly provisions wrapped into this nasty piece of work. It needs to die and soon.

  169. 169.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Paul in KY: All of the princely states in India (they were around 500 of them) had that choice to make. Not just Kashmir

    You can read V. P. Menon’s book on the Integration of Princely States for more info. The integration of Hyderabad was pretty contentious as well.

  170. 170.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Omnes Omnibus: If you’re trying to identify propaganda campaigns, a good place to start is always by looking at the things everyone is saying and no one is questioning despite spurious-at-best evidence.

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