They told him he would have to switch to a midnight show despite his ratings being the highest on the network in daytime. So he left.
This is CNN.
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
And not in a good way
This oligarch cover of “All Over the World” won’t be spawning flash mobs. At least not the dancing kind.
Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic:
During an American election, a rich man can hand out $1 million checks to prospective voters. Companies and people can use secretly funded “dark money” nonprofits to donate unlimited money, anonymously, to super PACs, which can then spend it on advertising campaigns. Podcasters, partisans, or anyone, really, can tell outrageous, incendiary lies about a candidate. They can boost those falsehoods through targeted online advertising. No special courts or election rules can stop the disinformation from spreading before voters see it. The court of public opinion, which over the past decade has seen and heard everything, no longer cares. U.S. elections are now a political Las Vegas: Anything goes.
That is not how it works in other countries, Applebaum explains. Campaign spending in European countries is limited by law, and such barricades against the influence of Big Money exist elsewhere. Donor transparency, equal time, rules against hate speech, etc., are intended “to create conditions for fair debate, to build trust in the system, and to inspire confidence in the winning candidates.”
Tech billionaires with enough money to control the weather threaten popular sovereignty. They are aided by a system of cryptocurrencies that can channel dark money into anonymous disinformation accounts across social media. Both have undermined our democracy here and are now at work internationally. What was once a Cold War practice of nation-states surrepetitiously funding foreign political parties is now practiced by an impossibly rich class of transnational oligarchs seeking “agenda setting” power beyond the legal reach of popular will to bring them to heel.
Only one institution on the planet is large enough and powerful enough to write and enforce laws that could make the tech companies change their policies. Partly for that reason, the European Union may soon become one of the Trump administration’s most prominent targets. In theory, the EU’s Digital Services Act, which took full effect last year, can be used to regulate, fine, and, in extreme circumstances, ban internet companies whose practices clash with European laws. Yet a primary intent of the act is not punitive, but rather to open up the platforms: to allow vetted researchers access to platform data, and to give citizens more transparency about what they hear and see. Freedom of speech also means the right to receive information, and at the moment social-media companies operate behind a curtain. We don’t know if they are promoting or suppressing certain points of view, curbing or encouraging orchestrated political campaigns, discouraging or provoking violent riots. Above all, we don’t know who is paying for misinformation to be spread online.
Enter Trump-Vance:
In November, the European Commission fined Meta more than $800 million for unfair trade practices. But for how much longer will the EU have this authority? In the fall, J. D. Vance issued an extraordinarily unsubtle threat, one that is frequently repeated in Europe. “If NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance,” Vance told an interviewer, “why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?” Mark Zuckerberg, echoing Vance’s misuse of the expression free speech to mean “freedom to conceal company practices from the public,” put it even more crudely. In a conversation with Joe Rogan in January, Zuckerberg said he feels “optimistic” that President Donald Trump will intervene to stop the EU from enforcing its own antitrust laws: “I think he just wants America to win.”
I read that twisted use of “free speech” and thought “To Serve Man.” They’re using our own principles against us.
Where once Vladimir Putin was the most prominent player seeking to undermine European sovereignty, Applebaum explains, now it’s über-rich Americans:
… because they don’t want to be regulated—and they may have the American president on their side. Quite soon, the European Union, along with Great Britain and other democracies around the world, might find that they have to choose between their alliance with the United States and their ability to run their own elections and select their own leaders without the pressure of aggressive outside manipulation. Ironically, countries, such as Brazil, that don’t have the same deep military, economic, and cultural ties to the U.S. may find it easier to maintain the sovereignty of their political systems and the transparency of their information ecosystems than Europeans.
In my earlier post, I cited a Laura Clawson comment that “Once again I feel like this reality is brought to us by a writer badly in need of an editor.” For myself, this growth of tech oligarch power resembles the plot of a bad 50s sci-fi flick I saw as a kid. Anne Applebaum suggests it’s spreading all over the world.
(h/t DJ)
More headlines we’re sure to see
Donald Trump is already making America “great again” … for lowlifes.
This first gentleman’s demise predates Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons, but he might have received one if he’d still been in jail. Plus, if he’d owned a GMC Denali, it would now be a McKinley, January 4:
A man who fired an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant in December 2016 while claiming to investigate the “pizzagate” hoax died this week after being fatally shot by police during a traffic stop in Kannapolis, North Carolina.
On the night of Jan. 4, Edgar Welch was a passenger in a 2001 GMC Yukon that was stopped by officers, Kannapolis police said Thursday in a news statement.
The traffic stop was conducted after officers linked the vehicle to Welch, who was wanted at the time on an outstanding arrest warrant, police said.
When officers recognized Welch and moved to arrest him, he produced a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at one of the officers, police said, and after refusing commands to drop the gun, two officers opened fire on him.
“Florida Man” revisited, January 22:
A Florida man who prosecutors alleged attacked police with an explosive device during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — and whose case was dropped following President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons and commutations issued Monday, was arrested Wednesday on pending federal gun charges, according to court records.
Daniel Ball, 39, was taken into custody Wednesday morning, according to an arrest warrant, on a separate indictment returned by federal prosecutors in Florida last summer that charged him for unlawfully possessing a gun as a felon.
“Indiana State Police did not provide additional details,” January 26:
An Indiana man who was recently pardoned for his participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was shot and killed during a traffic stop by a sheriff’s deputy Sunday.
Matthew Huttle, 42, was involved in a traffic stop at 4:15 p.m. by a Jasper County sheriff’s deputy, authorities said in a news release. It alleged that Huttle resisted arrest and was found to have a firearm on him.
“An altercation took place between the suspect and the officer, which resulted in the officer firing his weapon and fatally wounding the suspect,” the release said.
Still wanted after all these years, January 27:
A Houston man who was pardoned by President Donald Trump after being convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was released from a federal prison last week but is now wanted in Harris County on a pre-existing charge of online solicitation of a minor.
Andrew Taake, 36, was sentenced to six years in prison in June 2024 after pleading guilty to assaulting officers with bear spray and a whip-like weapon during the attack in Washington D.C. Taake was released from a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, on Jan. 20, after he and more than 1,500 others involved in the insurrection were pardoned by Trump on his first day in office.
[…]
On Monday, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare confirmed in a statement to Houston Public Media that Taake is still wanted under a pending state warrant for the alleged online solicitation of a minor in 2016.
How many of the Trump “very special” 1,500 will be back in headlines and/or obituaries in the coming months?
Please review Digby’s post from last night about Donald Trump’s freezing of “all federal grants and loans, domestically and internationally.” Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck remarks ominously, “If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason, then there’s not much point to having a legislature.”
Then again, maybe that’s Trump’s point … or ultimate goal. Is this just the start?
He’s obviously nuts. I can’t even imagine what that’s all about.
But get a load of this.
Trump has apparently frozen all federal grants and loans, domestically and internationally—hitting the pause button on what may potentially amount to hundreds of billions of dollars of money appropriated by Congress for a dizzying array of specific, pre-ordained purposes.
From constitutional lawyer Steve Vladek tonight. I’m sharing the whole thing because I suspect you may need a thorough explainer. I know I did:
The move was announced in a cryptic and thinly reasoned two-page memo that went out over the signature of Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. And the consequences are potentially cataclysmic—for virtually all foreign aid (including the distribution of HIV drugs in poor countries); for medical and other scientific research in the United States; for tons of different pools of support for educational institutions; and for virtually every other entity that receives federal financial assistance. (The memo excludes funds paid directly to individuals, like student loans or Social Security—although it offers no principled basis for the distinction.)
The freeze purports to be temporary—and only “to the extent permissible” by law, whatever that means. Thus, the Vaeth memo directs all agencies that administer affected funds to submit detailed lists of projects suspended under the new order by February 10. Those agencies in turn must assign “responsibility and oversight” to tracking the federal spending to a senior political appointee, not a career official. But there is no guarantee that the spigot will be turned back on in two weeks; and in the interim, the withholding of so much money will almost certainly cause irreparable harm to at least some of the affected parties even if it’s fully restored at the end of the “pause.” Thus, even if this measure is a stopgap (and that’s debatable at best), it’s one that is likely to cause numerous crises all its own.
Even as the Trump administration has embarked upon a flurry of controversial initiatives over the past week, I’ve been reluctant to swing at every pitch. But this action belongs in a category unto itself. In essence, the Trump administration is claiming the unilateral power to at least temporarily “impound” tens of billions of dollars of appropriated funds—in direct conflict with Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and in even more flagrant violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA).
When, not if, recipients of the frozen funds sue to challenge agencies’ compliance with the Vaeth memo, it’s a virtual certainty that the Trump administration will argue that the ICA is unconstitutional and that the President has inherent constitutional authority to impound. That argument is a loser, but it’s a good bet that it’s going to be up to the Supreme Court to say so—and probably a heck of a lot sooner than we might have predicted as recently as yesterday.
A Brief Overview of Impoundment
The question of whether a President can refuse to spend—to “impound”—funds Congress has appropriated for a designated purpose is one that has come up every so often in American history, albeit not on this scale. Sometimes, Congress passes statutes that give at least some spending discretion to the President. But absent such authorization, the prevailing consensus has long been that Congress’s power of the purse (the Spending Clause is the very first enumerated regulatory power that the Constitution confers upon the legislature) brings with it broad power to specify the purposes for which appropriated funds are to be spent—and that a broad presidential impoundment power would be inconsistent with that constitutional authority. If the President can accomplish Congress’s intended goal by spending less money, that’s one thing. But simply refusing to spend the appropriated funds because the President is opposed to why Congress appropriated the money in the first place is something else, altogether.
Even the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which tends to err on the side of the President in these kinds of separation-of-powers disputes, concluded in 1988 that the overwhelming weight of authority “is against such a broad power in the face of an express congressional directive to spend.” As OLC explained,
There is no textual source in the Constitution for any inherent authority to impound. It has been argued that the President has such authority because the specific decision whether or not to spend appropriated funds constitutes the execution of the laws, and Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution vests the “executive Power” in the President alone. The execution of any law, however, is by definition an executive function, and it seems an “anomalous proposition” that because the President is charged with the execution of the laws he may also disregard the direction of Congress and decline to execute them. Similarly, reliance upon the President’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Article II, Section 3, to give the President the authority to impound funds in order to protect the national fisc, creates the anomalous result that the President would be declining to execute the laws under the claim of faithfully executing them. Moreover, if accepted, arguments in favor of an inherent impoundment power, carried to their logical conclusion, would render congressional directions to spend merely advisory.
Thus, even without the Impoundment Control Act, the kind of across-the-board impoundment the OMB memo is effectuating, even temporarily, should pretty plainly be unconstitutional.
But the Impoundment Control Act appears to resolve the illegality of this move beyond dispute. Enacted in response to an unprecedented volume of impoundment efforts by President Nixon, the Act creates a procedural framework within which the President can attempt to impound certain appropriated funds. Specifically, the ICA creates a fast-track procedure for Congress to consider a President’s request (a “special message”) to rescind funds he identifies for reasons he specifies.
Under the statute, the President may defer spending those funds for up to 45 days following such a request (which, it should be noted, he hasn’t made yet).But if Congress does not approve the President’s rescission request within 45 days of receiving it, then the funds must be spent. What’s more, the ICA specifically exempts certain appropriated funds from even the ICA’s impoundment procedure—those that are “required” or “mandated” to be spent by the relevant statute. At least some of those funds are necessarily encompassed within the pools of funds frozen by the Vaeth memo.
Ironically, as the GAO has long explained, adherence to the ICA is thus the only legal way for a President to impound appropriated funds. President Trump clearly hasn’t followed that procedure here (again, for much of the funds at issue, he couldn’t). But that pathway hasn’t stopped those who have been clamoring for President Trump to take this kind of action from arguing that the ICA is unconstitutional—by purporting to limit the circumstances in which the President can otherwise exercise a unilateral, constitutional impoundment power (that no one else believes exists). Again, there may be contexts in which the President can impound modest chunks of appropriated funds—but only because (and pursuant to how) Congress has authorized it under the ICA. And there’s just no argument that that’s what has happened (or that that could happen) here.
Impoundment and This Supreme Court
It stands to reason that, unless this directive is quickly rescinded (and perhaps not even then), there will quickly be lawsuits by those who were entitled to the frozen federal funds challenging agencies’ compliance with the Vaeth memo on both constitutional and statutory grounds. (Even relatively narrower views of Article III standing would look favorably upon plaintiffs who had been relying upon frozen federal funds.)
Such lawsuits would almost certainly move quickly—perhaps generating some kind of injunctive relief in which lower courts order the relevant agency officials (that is, the officials responsible for disbursement of the specific funds withheld from the plaintiffs) to cease withholding appropriated funds. Those rulings, in turn, would likely provoke Trump’s Justice Department into seeking emergency relief from intermediate appeals courts—and, eventually, from the Supreme Court itself.
It’s too soon to say, at this juncture, exactly which case will get to the justices first. But the longer the Vaeth memo stays on the books, the more likely it is that some dispute arising out of it will reach the Court very quickly. Indeed, I wrote shortly after the election that this Supreme Court term could very well end up being dominated by emergency litigation involving Trump administration policies. I had thought, until yesterday, that the birthright citizenship executive order would get there first. But given that that lawless nonsense isn’t supposed to go into effect until next month (and has already been blocked by a lower court in the interim), impoundment may well beat it to One First Street.
More than just getting there first, the impoundment issue also presents an even more fundamental question about the structure of our government—one that goes beyond even the enormous moral and practical implications of the birthright citizenship issue. If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason, then there’s not much point to having a legislature.
That’s also why I’m not as skeptical of this Court being hostile to a broad claim of presidential impoundment power as I suspect many readers are—even after the broad embrace of Article II power in last summer’s presidential immunity ruling. For as much as this Court has embraced the “unitary executive” theory of executive power, impoundment has never been a central feature of that school of thought—as reflected in, among lots of other places, the OLC opinion referenced above. It’s one thing to believe that the President must have unitary control of the executive branch; it’s quite another to believe that such control extends to the right to refuse to spend any and all money Congress appropriates. (One can see at least some view of the significance and breadth of Congress’s appropriations power in last term’s ruling in the CFPB funding case—which Justice Thomas wrote, and from which only Justices Alito and Gorsuch dissented.)
And even for judges and justices who might be somewhat more sympathetic to nuanced impoundment claims, the Vaeth memo … ain’t it. Instead of a carefully calibrated argument against the compulsory nature of a specific appropriation, the Vaeth memo is a clumsy (“Marxist”?!?) broadsword. Perhaps it’s so transparently harmful, preposterous, and unlawful that we’ll see the administration walk it back in the coming days. If not, it stands to reason that the Supreme Court will have to settle the matter within the next few weeks—and that even this Court is likely to oblige.
WTF?????
Update– In case you were wondering about President’s Loopy’s comment about the water:
The DOJ is now going to be MAGA or else:
The Justice Department is firing more than a dozen key officials who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team prosecuting President Donald Trump, after Acting Attorney General James McHenry said they could not be trusted in “faithfully implementing the president’s agenda,” Fox News Digital has learned.
McHenry has transmitted a letter to each official notifying them of their termination, a Justice Department official exclusively told Fox News Digital.
It is unclear how many officials received that letter. The names of the individuals were not immediately released.
“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” a DOJ official told Fox News Digital. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda.”
These are all non-partisan, career prosecutors who were assigned the job. They are not people who are supposed to be enacting anyone’s agenda. Or they weren’t anyway. Now, everyone in the government is required to be a MAGA hat wearing freak or they’re out.
Edward R. Martin Jr., interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., has asked two top prosecutors in his office to undertake an internal review of its handling of Capitol riot prosecutions, a move that follows a White House executive order to the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to hunt for political bias in their ranks.
In an email to staff Monday morning, Martin stated that he had appointed Denise Cheung, chief of the Criminal Division, and Jon Hooks, chief of the Fraud, Public Corruption and Civil Rights section, to lead a “special project” investigating the office’s charging of more than 250 Capitol riot defendants with obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, a statute the Supreme Court ruled last June was too broadly applied.
“Obviously, the use was a great failure of our office … and we need to get to the bottom of it,” Martin wrote in the email, saying he expected a preliminary report by Friday. A copy of the email was viewed by The Washington Post.
[…]
Martin’s tasking of two of the highest-ranking supervisors in the office of 300 federal prosecutors — the nation’s largest U.S. attorney’s office — to carry out the review is likely to stoke criticism from Democrats that he is helping the Trump administration sow discord in the office, divert prosecutorial resources and punish prosecutors making reasonable legal judgments. Prosecutors’ use of the obstruction statute was approved by nearly all judges who reviewed it before it reached the high court.
All the lower court judges and out of three appellate judges backed the DOJ’s use of the statute. Only the rank partisans on the Supreme Court believed it was overreach and we know why.
It will be interesting if the DOJ tells their prosecutors to go soft in political cases against Democrats going forward. Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Here’s the piece de resistance. Martin himself is an insurrectionist:
But his focus on prosecutors’ charging decisions is likely to cheer President Donald Trump and other right-wing supporters who have called for prosecutors to be prosecuted. Martin, 54, was a “Stop the Steal” organizer for Trump after his 2020 election loss and a board member of a nonprofit group that raised money for Jan. 6 defendants as victims of political persecution; he was a defense attorney for three such defendants, including a Kansas City Proud Boys leader who pleaded guilty to assaulting police with an ax handle.
Wow. Just wow. I guess the idea of conflict of interest has been completely abandoned for all time. (Well, unless it’s a Democrat being accused, of course.)
The Trump administration on Monday ordered former staff members for as many as 17 fired inspectors general to immediately arrange for the return of work laptops, phones, parking decals and ID cards — even as questions remained over whether President Trump broke the law in dismissing independent watchdogs.
Some of the fired officials were seeking to raise alarms about what had happened. Among them was Mark Greenblatt, whom Mr. Trump had appointed as the inspector general of the Interior Department five years ago and who had led an interagency council of the watchdog officials until the new year.
“This raises an existential threat with respect to the primary independent oversight function in the federal government,” Mr. Greenblatt said in an interview. “We have preserved the independence of inspectors general by making them not swing with every change in political party.”
He left the DOJ IG, Michael Horowitz, in place, likely because he’d been quite good to him during his first term. All the rest are gone.
I don’t know what to say about any of this. The Republicans in Congress are completely docile and the Democrats aren’t much better, at least not yet. The media is reporting this but then it goes into the bonfire of other Trump atrocities and we’re on to something else.
At this point, I’m not sure I can even imagine anymore what might be a breaking point. I have to believe there will be something or I’ll go mad. Will a Democratic rout in 2026 even do it? I’m not sure and the way Trump is going I can’t help but wonder what they’re planning to do with elections. Why would they even think of allowing them to be free and fair?
Maybe that’s too dark. It’s just the first full week and they’re feeling drunk with power. Perhaps this will calm down and it will be the usual Trump blather and bullshit. But I am not sanguine.
As Tim Miller points out in this video,(warning, it’s on X) this indicates that one of the best line of attack against Trump is this oligarchy he’s assembled and which he personally adores. As that 12% approval indicates, there’s a split somewhere in the Trump coalition and it’s pretty clear that it’s between the Wall Street types and the MAGA populists, many of whom are listening to the likes of Steve Bannon. This is a very rich political vein to mine.
Only the best boot-lickers need apply:
Job-seekers hoping to join the new Trump administration are facing a series of intense loyalty tests, with White House screening teams fanning out to government agencies to check for “Make America Great Again” bona fides and carefully parsing applicants’ politics and social media posts.
President Donald Trump has long said he believes the biggest mistake he made during his first term was hiring what he considered to be the wrong kinds of people. Now, aides are working aggressively to ensure the government is filled only with loyalists.
Negative social media posts have been enough to derail applications. Those seeking jobs have been told they will have to prove their “enthusiasm” to enact Trump’s agenda and have been asked when their moment of “MAGA revelation” occurred. One federal employee said they briefly considered buying Trump’s crypto meme coin in case the president’s team asked about their voting record.
I wonder if they looked at this?
Donald Trump is a con artist — and he cannot be our nominee. #NeverTrump https://t.co/3ZYQZraCfNhttps://t.co/8wm9ToY7El
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 27, 2016
I have to say that this made me laugh out loud:
The intense screening has led some federal workers to question whether Trump’s team cares more about loyalty than competence. There is concern that his team is ousting foreign policy and national security diplomats and others who could offer the administration expertise and institutional knowledge at a time of conflict worldwide.
Gee, ya think? Is there anyone who believes that fervent MAGA true believers are the smartest and most experienced people America can find?
An application form on the Trump transition website, for instance, asks candidates, “What part of President Trump’s campaign message is most appealing to you and why?” according to a link obtained by The Associated Press.
It also asks how they had supported Trump in the 2024 election — with choices including volunteering, fundraising, door-knocking and making phone calls — and to submit a list of their social media handles.
One official said he and several colleagues from various agencies had been told that even if they passed the initial vetting process to be admitted into the applicant pool, they would still need to prove their bona fides and convince interviewers of their “enthusiasm” to put in place Trump’s policies, including by providing references from people whose loyalty had already been established.
This official said one colleague who made it to the interview stage was asked when that person’s moment of “MAGA revelation” had occurred.
And look who’s doing the vetting? Shades of the Imperial Life In The Emerald City.
I guess this is what a MAGA meritocracy looks like.
Aerial footage showed tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians carrying their belongings as they made their way along the seafront of Wadi Gaza, on foot, to the north of the enclave. https://t.co/4LnfclDDB3 pic.twitter.com/H31Zl3aSAF
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) January 27, 2025
They’re going home.
Judd Legum notes on BlueSky that Trump’s latest obscene comments about Gaza are actually all about:
On Saturday, Trump announced the he favored the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said.
What is motivating this ugly proposal?
Follow.
The.
Money.
Trump discussed his vision for Gaza on his first day in office, suggesting Gaza could be an ideal for luxury redevelopment. “Gaza is interesting. It’s a phenomenal location. On the sea, the best weather, you know, everything’s good,” Trump said.
Trump said that Gaza has “really got to be rebuilt in a different way” and that he “might” be interested in helping.
In a 10/7/24 interview w/Hugh Hewitt, Trump expounded on his vision for Gaza as a luxury resort. “It could be better than Monaco… It has the best location in the Middle East.”
Trump’s policy of relocating Gazans and redeveloping the country matches a vision floated by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, last year.
Although not in the White House, Kushner continues to advise Trump and “has been advising Steve Witkoff… on his new job as special envoy to the Middle East.”
In a February 15, 2024, interview at Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, Kushner described Gaza’s “waterfront property” as “very valuable.” Kushner said Israel should seek to “move people out” and then “clean it up.”
Pausing here to say if you are interested in accountability journalism about this administration, don’t rely on an algorithm controlled by a MAGA billionaire who works for this administration
Kushner said that the US should pursue “diplomacy” with Egypt and Jordan to convince them to accept more Palestinians.
Kushner criticized Biden for not pressuring Egypt, Jordan, and other countries more aggressively to facilitate a “solution.”
That’s exactly what Trump says he’s doing now.
If Palestinians are removed from Gaza and the land is absorbed by Israel, both Kushner and Trump could benefit financially from its redevelopment.
Kushner just invested a portion of funds he collected from Saudia Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE to develop a new Trump Tower in Belgrade
The new hotel and residential tower is a partnership between the Trump Organization and Kushner’s Affinity Partners. It is located on a site that was bombed extensively by NATO in 1999 and has since been vacant. The Serbian government owns the property.
Isn’t that special?
There is zero doubt in my mind that Trump sees this as a real estate deal and that he and Kushner have dollar signs in their eyes. But they also want the Palestinians out completely. Kushner in particular seeks to ensure that there is no two state solution ever and they think they can get it done by throwing money around to the Arab states surrounding Israel. If they can make a profit at it all the better.
JD Vance: “I want more babies in the United States of America.” pic.twitter.com/Ghg22KjWX6
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) January 24, 2025
That’s JD Vance telling the “March For Life” rally “I want more babies in the United States of America” And he’s going to get them even if it means forcing 10 year old rape victims to go through childbirth.
This is just heartbreaking. Imagine the trauma made all the more traumatic by sadists who want to punish little girls for being raped:
At least 100 Texas children aged 17 and younger got abortions in other states during the first year after Texas banned the procedure, including six aged 11 and under, according to the latest state data available.
The total is a nearly ninefold jump in the number of children getting out-of-state abortions from five years earlier and comes as virtually all abortions have ground to a halt in Texas under a ban that makes no exception for fetal abnormality, rape, or incest. Texas’ age of consent, when a person may legally consent to engage in sexual activity, is 17.
[…]
In the years before the abortion ban took effect in August 2022, between 1,000 and 1,400 Texas minors received abortions in the state annually. There were none in 2023, data from Texas’ Health and Human Services department shows. At least 105 Texas children got an abortion out of state in 2023, the majority of them between the ages of 16 and 17.
The annual data, which was released this fall, is likely an undercount. Texas receives information about out-of-state abortions from a national data exchange called the State and Territorial Exchange of Vital Events, or STEVE, but an HHS spokesperson said not every state provides data on abortions.
The out-of-state data also only covers the first half of 2023. HHS officials did not respond to questions from Hearst Newspapers about why the rest of the data is missing or when it may be published. Data on out-of-state abortions from 2024 have not yet been released.
Look at this bullshit:
John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, did not dispute the data and said that while it’s a “terrifying situation” when a very young person becomes pregnant and represents on many levels a “breakdown in protecting this minor,” the best outcome is a birth, no matter the age or circumstance.
“That doesn’t mean this individual needs to be a parent,” he said. “However, we can’t ignore what abortion is. It is using violence to take the life of a human being.”
No, they don’t need to be a parent, but it’s still necessary for a 10 year old rape victim to go through nine months of pregnancy and childbirth. The cruelty is beyond comprehension.
And it appears that it’s just going to get worse as the right wingers stifle information all over the country and move to outlaw the abortion pills.
With all else that’s going on, we shouldn’t forget that the war on women continues and it includes a war on little girls.
This is Elon Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman in front of the office of Technocracy, Inc. before he was arrested for being a Hitler sympathizer in Canada. Note the map behind him, which is the same as this official map of the “Technate of America.” Does that ring any bells?
Elon Musk’s grandfather Joshua Haldeman was arrested in Canada in 1940 for being a leader of the fascist movement “Technocracy, Inc.” that wanted to make “technocrats” dictators of society.
h/t @jim-stewartson.bsky.social