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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

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if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

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Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

In after Baud. Damn.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

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Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

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It’s the corruption, stupid.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Republican Venality

Republican Venality

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Strife

by Anne Laurie|  December 2, 20257:34 am| 266 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Trump Crime Cartel

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— Jack Ohman (@jackohman.bsky.social) December 1, 2025 at 8:28 PM

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Sen. Kelly: “President Trump is trying to silence me. Threatening to kill me for saying what is true. And he sent his Secretary of Defense after me. And it's not going to work.”

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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) December 1, 2025 at 4:21 PM

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Bomb threats were emailed to three of Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer’s district offices, the New York lawmaker said, with the sender using “MAGA” in the subject line and writing that the 2020 election was rigged.

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— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) December 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM


[Gift link]

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Jeffries is fighting, you're just choosing not to see it.

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— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke.bsky.social) December 1, 2025 at 9:32 PM

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Millions of seniors and people with disabilities are waiting on the phone for HOURS to get help from Trump's Social Security Administration.

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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) December 1, 2025 at 9:47 AM

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House Republicans have used their majority to do great harm to everyday Americans.
Complete frauds.

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— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social) November 30, 2025 at 7:29 PM

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The phrase “rage bait,” Oxford University Press's word of the year for 2025, refers to online content that is “deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive.” https://wapo.st/3KBpKTH

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— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) December 1, 2025 at 9:00 PM

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: StrifePost + Comments (266)

The New Price of Eggs (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  November 30, 202512:18 pm| 169 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Venality

Democrats overperformed in elections across the country earlier this month, but a result that particularly impressed me was the two Dems who won Georgia Public Service Commission seats. It was a statewide race, always an iffy proposition for Dems in reddish-purple Georgia, and the two candidates ousted Republican incumbents in a landslide.

So what the fuck is going on? I’m ducking the news a lot lately, so maybe I missed an earlier discussion about what drove those victories. But here’s an excerpt from a NYT article on it that was published today:

As loyal Republicans, Reece Payton said that he and his family of cattle ranchers in Hogansville, Ga., had one thing on their minds when they cast their ballots in November for the state’s utility board — “to make a statement.”

They were already irked by their escalating electric bills, not to mention an extra $50 a month levied by their local utility to cover a new nuclear power plant more than 200 miles away. But after they heard a data center might be built next to their Logos Ranch, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, they had enough of Republicans who seemed far too receptive to the interests of the booming artificial intelligence industry.

“That’s the first time I ever voted Democrat,” Mr. Payton, 58, said.

Message sent.

In some of Georgia’s reddest and most rural counties, Republicans crossed party lines this month and helped propel two Democrats, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson, to landslide upsets, ousting the incumbent candidates on the Georgia Public Service Commission. No Democrat has served on the five-person commission, which regulates utilities and helps set climate and energy policy, since 2007.

Across the country, Democrats have seized on rising anxiety over electricity costs and data centers in what could be a template for the 2026 midterm elections.

The article notes that Governors-elect Spanberger and Sherrill of VA and NJ respectively ran hard on the cost of energy and proliferation of data centers. Both won big, Sherrill by an unexpectedly large margin.

No one knows what the most salient issues of the 2026 midterm elections will be. I assume Trump and his enablers will continue to do insane shit nonstop because no one in their party has the will to stop them.

That said, it’s probably a good bet that electricity and data centers will continue to be factors voters will have to weigh. The AI chimera the oligarchs bet our economy on requires copious quantities of both. If anger about energy hogs can shift votes in Hogansville, Georgia, well…

Open thread.

The New Price of Eggs (Open Thread)Post + Comments (169)

How Much Is Vaccine Access At Risk: Pure Speculation Says “A Lot”

by Tom Levenson|  November 24, 20255:56 pm| 35 Comments

This post is in: Healthcare, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality

Over at Inverse Square (my revived personal blog/rantspace) I wrote last weekabout the sheer bullshit involved in RFK Jr.’s commanding the CDC to suggest that there is a real case that vaccines cause neurological developmental harm.

Here’s a follow up that I’ve posted there, on LinkedIn in slightly different form, and now, for those Jackals who might be interested, here as well. Basically it’s an exercise in speculation and perhaps justified paranoia.

Anyway, here goes:

I spent a fair amount of time over the weekend fuming over the combination of arrogance and malign ignorance involved in Kennedy’s latest vaccine before I realized that I was, once again, underestimating the secretary and his allies. What follows is speculation, but I think there is more to this matter than simply raising public doubts about vaccination.

Instead, it seems to me that this could be a significant advance in a campaign to ban many maybe all vaccines in the US—not by legislation or administrative rulings, but stealthily, death by one tort at a time.

Remember: just a week or so ago, The CDC’s vaccine and autism page told Americans that there was no connection between vaccination and neurological damages. Now that same page asserts that “The claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”°

That’s scary, and will likely further undermine public faith in vaccines. But that may not be the primary goal behind the shift. This is still very much a connect-the-dots story, not one with documentary proof, but there’s a scenario in which this shift becomes a big part of how the anti-vax movement eliminates access to some or many vaccines in the United States. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but do remember that old bitterly funny line: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t all after you.

To see what might be going on, start by going back to the last time there was an existential threat to vaccination in the US. In the latter half of the 1970s and into the 1980s there was a ginned up controversy over a possible connection between the pertussis (whooping cough) component in the combined diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) shot that led to infant brain injury. There was no such connection, but under the law at the time, vaccine makers could still be sued—and lose—based merely on the coincidence in timing between vaccination and the emergence of neurological symptoms. The judgments that followed led one manufacturer after another to stop making DPT vaccines in the US. By 1985, only one company was left and it looked very likely that the inoculant would disappear from the US.

In response, Congress created the current vaccine injury reporting and compensation system, shielding vaccine producers from unlimited liability. The move was made to ensure sure we didn’t go back to those in-living-memory days when too many American parents had to bury a child who had died of a disease that by the ‘80s no one should have confronted.

Flash forward to this year. RFK Jr. has already announced his plans to “fix” the vaccine compensation system.‡‡ The next step is to re-expose vaccine makers to unlimited lawsuits, with plaintiffs’ cases bolstered by the CDC’s nod and wink that a vax-autism connection can’t be ruled out.

The step after that? The same as in the 1980s: vaccine makers will make the hard-eyed business judgment that the market ain’t worth the risk…and vaccines will become difficult if not impossible to source in these United States.

That’s speculation, of course: prediction is hard, especially about the future. But here’s one more morsel: during his confirmation hearings, Kennedy, refused to commit to not profiting from any future vaccine litigation. Every decision Kennedy has made so far on vaccine policy increases the odds that someone will make bank of such lawsuits.

In my mind’s eye I can see Mr. Kennedy staring with predatory satisfaction at a mirror, asking the age-old question: Why not him?

The thread is open. Maybe someone in the comments can make me feel that my dread is misplaced.

Image: William Hogarth, The Bench, c. 1758

Sources:
*https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-kennedy-cdc-vaccines-autism-4747916739c4bfeadaa7f209e81bae3d
°https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/autism.html?s=09
‡https://tomlevenson.substack.com/p/no-virginia-and-everywhere-else-in
ººhttps://ourworldindata.org/grapher/pertussis-cases-and-deaths-in-the-united-states
‡‡https://www.healthbeat.org/2025/08/20/rfk-jr-vaccine-access-compensation-fund/

How Much Is Vaccine Access At Risk: Pure Speculation Says “A Lot”Post + Comments (35)

Late Night Open Thread: Fraudsters Wohl & Burkman, Back on the Trump Train

by Anne Laurie|  November 24, 20254:10 am| 41 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republican Venality

Jacob Wohl returns. He's now . . . a pardon lobbyist? Wild story.
🎁: wapo.st/4igndux

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— Cristian Farias (@cristianfarias.com) November 23, 2025 at 9:39 AM

Nursing home magnate Joseph Schwartz paid nearly $1 million to right-wing provocateurs Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl — who noted on their lobbying filing that they were “seeking a federal pardon” — per lobbying disclosures. Trump ultimately granted Schwartz a pardon. wapo.st/4igndux

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— Aaron Schaffer (@aaronschaffer.com) November 23, 2025 at 1:54 PM

Real Haterz will remember that Wohl & Burkman have been a chew toy here before (Blogmaster: here & here. Adam Silverman: here, here. Low humorist, moi: here, here, here, here (Nick Fuentes crossover!), here, here, here… )

The Washington Post has an update — “The case of a felon who paid lobbyists nearly $1 million to seek a Trump pardon”:

In April, Alina Habba, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, extolled her office’s role in the sentencing of a former nursing home magnate to three years in prison for defrauding the government of $38 million. The man, Joseph Schwartz, was alleged to have overseen a “collapsed nursing home empire” and “willfully” failed to pay employment taxes, Habba’s announcement said.

Around that time, Schwartz paid $960,000 to two lobbyists “seeking a federal pardon,” according to their lobbying filing...

The lobbyists, right-wing provocateurs Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, noted on the disclosure form that they had been convicted of telecommunications fraud in Ohio in connection with a robocall scheme designed to deter the turnout of minority voters. They also face sentencing next month in Michigan on a similar robocall case and have been subject to millions of dollars in fines in a related case brought by the Federal Communications Commission, according to state and federal authorities. For years, the pair have injected themselves into politics, such as alleging without evidence in 2018 that there were sexual assault claims against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

It is not clear what Burkman and Wohl did for Schwartz. But on Nov. 14, seven months after Habba celebrated Schwartz’s conviction, Trump granted Schwartz a “full and unconditional” pardon.

Liz Oyer, a former U.S. pardon attorney who was fired by Trump in March, said the involvement of the lobbyists — and the huge payment — heightens concern that there is “a special tier of justice for people who can afford to pay.”

She said the Schwartz case is notable because the pardon went against a March recommendation by Trump’s Justice Department, which cited the seriousness of Schwartz’s crime in seeking a sentence of a year and a day. The judge rejected that recommendation and in April imposed a three-year sentence. Schwartz had served three months when he was pardoned, according to his attorney…

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The White House defended the rationale for the pardon in a separate statement. It said Schwartz relied on a third party for the payments at issue. “Mr. Schwartz failed to properly oversee that some funding was used for company operations instead of taxes. No funds were used for personal enrichment and Mr. Schwartz immediately paid $5 million dollars in restitution. Prosecutors initially recommended probation, but the Judge insisted on a sentence of three years — a sentence that is exceptionally harmful to a 65-year-old man already in deteriorating health.”

The statement did not address the fact that it was a prosecutor from Habba’s office who at an April hearing recommended a sentence of a year and a day, or at least something in a range of six to 18 months, according to a court transcript…

Schwartz and his company made national news in 2019, when NBC News reported that Schwartz’s company, Skyline Healthcare, was in serious trouble. It said more than a dozen of its nearly 100 nursing homes had closed, “throwing residents, vendors, employees and state regulators into chaos.” The report, which said the company was run from a small office above a New Jersey pizzeria, called it the story of how “one man built an empire that quickly crumbled, with painful consequences for vulnerable people.”

A subsequent report by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News said the failure of the company affected 7,000 nursing home residents and 15,000 employees, and led some states to change the way such facilities are regulated…

It’s a caring cabal! They’ll do favors for even the smallest, grimiest grifters, as long as those grifters are properly obeisant to the Don…

Coda, less than two weeks ago:

Jacob Wohl is out there somewhere, shedding a single tear knowing he'll never be relevant enough to be ritualistically sacrificed by the right to interrupt a news cycle.

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— Polite Yet Ultimately Malevolent Mailman (@usps.bsky.social) November 12, 2025 at 6:33 PM

Late Night Open Thread: Fraudsters Wohl & Burkman, Back on the Trump TrainPost + Comments (41)

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Pathetic Fallacies*

by Anne Laurie|  October 28, 20255:52 am| 323 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Trump Crime Cartel

(*Wikipedia page)

What we're witnessing with #Melissa is ultra rare in the history of known hurricanes in the Atlantic. This level of sustained intensity and feasting on every joule of ocean heat content without any real disruption is incredible.
Not hyperbole: Jamaica is facing a generational catastrophic event.

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— Steve Bowen (@stevebowen.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 10:23 PM

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As the government shutdown drags on, Democrats push to renew Obamacare subsidies while Republicans debate changes to the law.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) October 28, 2025 at 12:30 AM

… Fifteen years after the Affordable Care Act was enacted, the party remains united in criticizing the law but divided on how to move forward. That tension has come into sharp focus during the government shutdown as Democrats seize on rising premiums to pressure Republicans into extending expiring subsidies for the law, often referred to as Obamacare.

President Donald Trump and GOP leaders say they’ll consider extending the enhanced tax credits that otherwise expire at year’s end — but only after Democrats vote to reopen the government. In the meantime, people enrolled in the plans are already being notified of hefty premium increases for 2026.

As town halls fill with frustrated voters and no clear Republican plan emerges, the issue appears to be gaining political strength heading into next year’s midterm elections…

‘Concepts of a plan’

… Republicans say they want a broader overhaul of the health care system, though such a plan would be difficult to advance before next year. Party leaders have not outlined how they’ll handle the expiring tax credits, insisting they won’t negotiate on the issue until Democrats agree to end the shutdown.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told a press conference Monday that the tax credits are “subsidizing bad policy.” Republicans “have a long list of ideas” to address health care costs, he said, and are “grabbing the best ideas that we’ve had for years to put it on paper and make it work.”…

A looming internal GOP fight
Even as GOP leaders pledge to discuss ending the subsidies when the government opens, it’s clear that many Republican lawmakers are adamantly opposed to an extension.

“At least among Republicans, there’s a growing sense that just maintaining the status quo is very destructive,” said Brian Blase, the president of Paragon Health Institute and a former health policy adviser to Trump during his first term…

Also pathetic, and fallacious:

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that he's not "100% sure" if active duty service members will be paid at the end of the week, as the government shutdown continues.

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— PBS News (@pbsnews.org) October 27, 2025 at 3:57 PM

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you’re the fucking speaker of the house, you interminable dipshit, this is literally your job to know

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— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:07 PM

the asymmetry between what dems are expected to speak to and republicans are expected to speak to drives me insane, dems were expected to know the detailed results of biden’s last colonoscopy while republicans openly lie about what day it is, solely because they can

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— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:13 PM

It’s wild to me that the “traditional masculinity” people love being lied to and insulted by this little gremlin with the most irritating, shit-eating smirk I have ever seen

— We can BBs (@bf4u.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 10:23 AM

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Let’s be clear: the administration is choosing not to tap emergency funds available to provide critical food assistance for families in need.
Their own shutdown plan — which they recently deleted — confirmed they could. Read it for yourself:

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— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar.com) October 27, 2025 at 3:13 PM

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For me argentina is the easiest one because there's 40 million people on SNAP and we're giving milei 40 billion. "The president could give every hungry family a thousand dollars right now but he's giving it to argentina instead for no reason at all. He hates america"

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— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 1:10 PM

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SNAP is probably the most effective federal dollar we spend in terms of long term domestic economic outcomes.
that isn’t why you should support it; you should support it because it is a moral imperative to feed the hungry.
but it’s why even a growth-oriented ghoul shouldn’t oppose it.

— ghost malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 9:21 PM

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this isn’t dooming, necessarily, but barring extraordinary means, these outcomes are already decided. this is the path the republicans have chosen for the nation.

— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:47 AM

there are so many terrible outcomes now that are baked in, no matter what the republican party does. this will be a very hard winter.

— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:45 AM

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Pathetic Fallacies*Post + Comments (323)

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Pastor Mike, Serving A Congregation of One

by Anne Laurie|  October 26, 20256:50 am| 336 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Trump Crime Cartel

Democrats should hold a press conference and announce that if Mike Johnson has no interest in running the House they'd be happy to do it for him

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— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) October 25, 2025 at 8:25 PM

I assumed Speaker Johnson was just preternaturally grateful that Trump’s tantrums handed him a position he’d never have been able to achieve on his own merits, but maybe there *is* something to the rumor that Trump has a blackmail hold over him. Even the NYTimes is getting suspicious — Annie Karni, “Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself”: [gift link]

… Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to put the House on an indefinite hiatus that is now stretching into its second month while the government is shut down is the latest in a series of moves he has made that have diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership at a critical moment.

It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling.

“I’m the speaker and the president,” Mr. Trump has joked, according to two people who heard the remark and relayed it on the condition of anonymity because of concern about sharing private conversations with him.

Mr. Johnson has done little in recent weeks to contest the point…

His strategy of indefinite hiatus means that Mr. Johnson has not engaged in the typical political theater that speakers often employ during shutdown fights to jam the party out of power: scheduling tricky votes on bills to reopen parks or pay certain categories of federal workers, like agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection.

Democrats had been bracing for him to do so. But instead, he has spent much of the shutdown appearing daily at news conferences at the Capitol, hammering them for refusing to fund the government and making the case that Republicans need not negotiate. He is insistent that the House has nothing to do but wait for the stalemate to end. And he defends a growing list of extreme moves by Mr. Trump.

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Let’s all remember how successful Newt Gingrich’s 1995 shutdown was for him, and his party. (Not as though Johnson might be dreaming of a future ambassadorship to the Vatican, is it?)

The absenteeism, people around Mr. Johnson said, is a strategic calculation that the best way to keep his unruly rank and file in line is to place them on an extended leave.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who often serves as a sounding board for Mr. Johnson, said in an interview that if the House were in session, “other issues will begin to clutter this up, and there is some small danger that some Republicans might begin to have a mixed message on the shutdown.”

In fact, such dissonance has already begun bubbling up even with everyone working remotely. The divide among Republicans over whether to extend expiring health insurance subsidies — Democrats’ central demand in the shutdown fight — has highlighted a political vulnerability for the party.

It has all created a strange dynamic on Capitol Hill: Mr. Johnson appears to be using the considerable power of the speakership to render the House irrelevant…

In keeping the House out of session, Mr. Johnson is using a relatively new rule put in place by Republicans two years ago. In 2023, they jettisoned a requirement that a resolution be passed in the House to authorize an extended legislative break, effectively handing the speaker power to declare such prolonged recesses unilaterally…

More broadly, Democrats attribute Mr. Johnson’s moves to his unquestioning deference to Mr. Trump, who has an iron grip on congressional Republicans and this week told G.O.P. senators that after they pushed through his marquee tax cut law, “We don’t need to pass any more bills.”

“It is clear that Donald Trump has effectively abolished the House of Representatives,” former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said in a statement for this story.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, recently pleaded with Mr. Trump to come back and negotiate with Democrats because “we know that House and Senate Republicans don’t do anything without permission from their boss, Donald J. Trump.”…

One also gets the impression that Senator Thune is not happy with Johnson’s blatant Trump sycophancy, either — for what little that’s worth. Thune is no intellectual giant, but he’s twice little Mike’s size, and perhaps has been strongly tempted to shove his House partner into a congressional coatroom locker.

I do wonder how much of this you can link to Johnson's rise to the speakership. Thune doesn't have a huge spine, but he's clearly tanked nominees that are unacceptable and isn't willing to just blow up the Senate because trump wants him too.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 25, 2025 at 7:28 PM

Johnson though. Backbencher becoming a speaker because he's a compromise that has no actual support and all the groups would be happy to remove.
He basically only exists at Trump's whim – he's not actually a person who's risen in the house leadership to the position. A figurehead at most.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 25, 2025 at 7:28 PM

Mccarthy at least rose through the ranks and so had an interest in his own position. Johnson is what happens when you give a leadership posting to someone who actually has 0 caucus support. His only way to stay in the job is with Trumps support.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 25, 2025 at 7:39 PM

Johnson, basically, has to effectively get rid of his own power and beg for Trump's favor to remain in his job. His incentives are actually backwards.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 25, 2025 at 7:30 PM

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"I'm not trying to dodge the question," says Mike Johnson, dodging the question.

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— The Briefing with Jen Psaki (@briefingwithpsaki.bsky.social) October 23, 2025 at 10:38 PM

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Pastor Mike, Serving A Congregation of OnePost + Comments (336)

Operation Voter Intimidation

by Betty Cracker|  October 25, 20252:55 pm| 71 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Venality, Assholes

A few weeks ago in an interview I saw on TV, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was asked why Trump is deploying federal troops in Chicago and other American cities. Pritzker said he thinks Trump wants to normalize troops in the streets, in part so he can use a show of force to intimidate voters in upcoming elections that are likely to go badly for Republicans.

The corrupt Department of Justice added another proof point for the Great Khan’s* theory in a press release that dropped yesterday:

Justice Department to Monitor Polling Sites in California, New Jersey

WASHINGTON – Today, the Department of Justice announced that it will monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions ahead of the upcoming November 4, 2025, general election to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law…

At this time, the Department will monitor the following jurisdictions:

Passaic County, New Jersey
Kern County, California
Riverside County, California
Fresno County, California
Orange County, California
Los Angeles County, California

At Attorney General Pamela Bondi’s direction, this effort will be overseen by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division under the leadership of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. The Division will deploy Civil Rights personnel who will coordinate with U.S. Attorney’s Offices.

It’s important to note that both Bondi and Dhillon are 2020 election deniers. Neither is dumb enough to sincerely believe Trump won in 2020; they are rabid ideologues who have proved willing to subvert democracy for partisan gain.

I’m trying to figure out the significance of their using the DOJ’s Civil Rights division for this operation, if any. Is it that employees of that division have been idled since 1/20/2025 since the administration is actively hostile to the concept of civil rights, so that unit has the capacity? Or will they go all the way through the funhouse mirror and allege white votes are being suppressed?

I suspect we’ll see even more corrupt and overtly anti-democratic antics from Trump and his flunkies as the backlash to his unpopular agenda builds. Don’t know what we average citizens can do to counter voter intimidation, except maybe volunteer to transport and/or accompany voters who might be targeted for harassment to the polls, help folks sign up for vote by mail where available, etc.

Please feel free to share ideas. Otherwise, open thread.

*Did y’all hear about that time the Great Khan sacked Las Vegas? As a friend on Bluesky noted, surely he has the mandate of heaven! 

Operation Voter IntimidationPost + Comments (71)

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