Upstate, SC. Reformed engineer, hiker, photographer, volunteer. Go outside. Always learning. Advocate for others.
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If the U.S. military isn't going to release details on the justification for killing 11 civilians in a civilian boat who weren't posing a threat to anyone, then we have to conclude the "justification" is: the U.S. military is willing to kill civilians to give Trump social media content.
AOC: If anybody says “this isn’t fair, I'm gonna have to divest all my stocks if I run for congress” maybe you should stay home.
“contract and spread”
Man, they REALLY don’t want to hang that plaque honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan 6. @acyn.bsky.social
As a governor who cares about the well-being of my people, I can’t live in a fantasy land where I pretend Trump is not tearing this country apart for personal greed and power.
Unvaccinated, children, and the elderly altogether. What could possibly go wrong? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/u...
Epstein survivor on Epstein: "His biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump."
The governor of Louisiana can't deploy the FBI or immigration agents, but if he thought New Orleans or other cities needed a National Guard presence, he could do that on his own.
Preventing polio in schoolchildren is slavery. Florida parents, pushback is on you. Freedom measles. Freedom polio, now. Get mad — you don’t have to be polite with extremist nutjobs like this. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...
New Orleans has had the fewest murders through August since 1970. All major crime types are down this year. Relative to 2022: Carjacking -81% Robbery -59% Auto theft -34% Shootings -63% Vehicle burglary -70% So this makes sense. www.wdsu.com/article/dona...
This kind of corruption is as brazen as it gets. Trump is easily the most corrupt President in our country's history. Yet Republicans in Congress are not lifting a single finger to exercise basic oversight. Shameless complicity.
It’s corruption, plain and simple.
McGovern: "You guys think you work for Trump ... Let me repeat -- every single Republican on the Rules Committee voted against releasing the Epstein files. Every single one. We heard last night that all Republicans want full transparency. But that's just not true."
BREAKING: North Carolina’s GOP-led election board and Trump's DOJ announce a deal that would disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters in state elections if they don’t provide additional identifying information. More to come.
Boy, we have moved on a lot from the idea that guns were for hunting, or even personal defense.
As Trump shows his incompetence in foreign policy, we are losing our allies and pushing our enemies closer together. In 8 months, Trump has effectively undone 80 years of American global leadership. We are much less safe under Trump.
Host: There are new calls this morning for RFK Jr.'s resignation, and those calls coming from inside HHS itself. More than 1,000 current and former HHS workers are making this demand in a letter released this morning. They say his leadership has "put the health of all Americans at risk"
Public health experts and advocates have warned that the overhaul of vaccine policies could cause a resurgence of preventable diseases. “We can expect that measles will come roaring back,” a pediatrician said.
Breaking news: Florida will end vaccine requirements to attend school, making it the first state to do so. The state’s surgeon general said every vaccine mandate “drips with disdain and slavery.”
"For so many years, it felt like Epstein's criminal behavior was an open secret." “We’re not going away. We’re not staying quiet. We’re not going to give up.” Annie Farmer (Epstein survivor)
As Measles Exploded, Officials in Texas Looked to CDC Scientists. Under Trump, No One Answered. kffhealthnews.org/news/article...
Gift Article - “Florida moves to end all school vaccine mandates, first in nation to do so Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo criticized school vaccine mandates, which every state has, and likened them to slavery.” wapo.st/4p68Vzy
This level of corruption is not normal or acceptable. Even if we are exhausted by each report of it going further and further, we can never grow numb to it.
“.. Quite a hot mic moment on CCTV in Beijing today as Putin and Xi, both 72 years old, are caught casually talking about living to 150 and maybe forever thanks to organ transplants. (As picked up by Bloomberg.)” (via @yarotrof.bsky.social)
I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s as a proud American, feeling sorry for people in the Soviet Union forced to live under a system of crushing corruption and cruelty. We’re those people now.
Report: U.S. Foreign Policy Hurting American Students' Chances Of Getting Laid Abroad https://theonion.com/report-u-s-foreign-policy-hurting-american-students-c-1819567836/
A country abruptly abandoning its founding principles in a garish way is an interesting premise for a story and then you read it and it's because people got bored and let an old imbecile make all the decisions
* PUTIN: IF COMMON SENSE PREVAILS, THEN WE CAN AGREE ON ACCEPTABLE WAY TO END CONFLICT IN UKRAINE * PUTIN: OTHERWISE WE WILL HAVE TO RESOLVE THIS MILITARILY @reuters.com
A former Fox News producer with history of posting racist stuff on social media — and, each time, prompting a controversy, including getting impeached from student government while in college — now has a gig at the EEOC, the worker protection agency created as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But the other side of that equation is that Congress felt safe granting the President wide discretion on several issues, because they assumed - correctly for a long time - that no one would abuse it the way Trump is abusing it.
“following rumors of his death donald trump held a press conference announcing extrajudicial killings of civilians and plans for a military invasion of an american city” is a perfectly factual headline that could be used to describe what we saw yesterday
“That’s it, plain and simple. Put a bow on it.” @jessicatarlov.bsky.social says the message Dems should carry is Trump and republicans have made life more expensive for regular folks and is cutting their health care, all to cut taxes for the rich and make the rich richer.
An Aug. 29 policy statement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency, will from now on bar nonpartisan groups such as the League of Women Voters from offering voter registration services at the end of naturalization ceremonies. /1
DUDLEY: “.. uncertainty about .. tariffs has risen yet again .. it’ll weigh on investment and hiring decisions .. “.. Businesses will be understandably hesitant to make big commitments when the rules of the game are changing ..” @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
WTF? This is part of the ceremony of citizenship. These people aren’t against illegal immigration, they’re against legal immigration as well, and always have been.
First of all, again, Don't. Stenographically. Print. Lies. In. The. Newspapers. Second, the actual headline should be that this is a massive violation of international law. What is journalism, anyway?
Trump is moving to strip Congress of its power of the purse, using illegal rescissions and secrecy to claw back billions. Republicans mostly stay silent as he hijacks taxpayer funds, pushing the U.S. toward one-man rule.
USDA quietly said Friday it will, after a century, end the Farm Labor Survey (FLS), the only wage survey of ag employers. FLS is a critical input to setting local minimum wages for H-2A visa workers to try to avoid harm to U.S. workers' wages. #LaborDay #EconSky www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/Not...
Kristi Noem bungled a visa deal with Argentina, sending diplomats home humiliated after failing to notify Rubio. The fiasco exposed Trump’s cabinet as reckless amateurs undermining U.S. credibility abroad.
ht: @mattgertz.bsky.social 1. MPD seeks warrant to arrest GOP congressman for allegedly assaulting a 27-year-old woman. 2. Trump-appointed US Attorney's office refuses to sign it. 3. Trump takes over MPD. 4. MPD says investigation is closed. thehill.com/homenews/hou...
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, says he was denied a meeting with career intelligence workers because Laura Loomer objected.
As concerns that Trump could be deploying National Guard troops as a test run for future election interference, we take a look at one law that will impact stationing federal troops at the polls themselves. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...
Reid: Bondi is not a real AG. She just works for Trump. All these U.S. attorneys — what’s her name from Fox (who I hope is sober) — she’s not a real U.S. attorney. She works for Trump. They’ve gutted the DOJ. The DOJ doesn’t exist. The FBI doesn’t exist. It’s all just Trump’s employees.
Rep. Dan Goldman: "This is a coverup. This is a massive cover up...Donald Trump was hot to trot and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were leading the charge to release the Epstein files. Now, all of a sudden, they don't want them released. They are trying to hide something."
Pritzker: "He has no idea what's he's talking about. There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops. He is insulting the people of Chicago by calling our home a hellhole, and anyone that takes his word at face value is insulting Chicagoans too."
So they re-released most of the same shit they gave the GOP binder crew in February? Color me shocked. Never thought I’d say this, but I’m with Massie. Release the rest of the damn Epstein files, not this cherry-picked bullshit.
The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to decide if citizens can still enforce the Voting Rights Act, after a federal appeals court ruled that only the government — not private citizens — can sue to enforce protections against racial discrimination in voting. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
Trump murdered 11 civilians, whether they were involved in organized crime or not, doesn't take away their human rights. Trump murdered those people and released the video to boast about it. It's not law enforcement or legal military action, it is simply premeditated murder.
Trump could’ve intercepted the boat, seized the drugs and imprisoned everyone Instead he approved this Venezuela strike and killed all persons aboard The extrajudicial killing of 11 men and potentially provoking a war with President Maduro is an odd way to campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize
JUST IN: Federal appeals court says Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act for deportations. https://cnn.it/4pmjCyr
Read about how Francis J. Allman, Chief Judge of Florida’s Second Judicial District, is an un-American censorial fascist thug worthy of contempt.
Russians saying a Ukrainian group came from Sevastopol, some on motorcycles, to the area of Russian military logistics, blew up some things and escsped freely. Crimea is no longer safe for Russians.
About to go to bed but the man who ran on "NO NEW WARS" just ordered a lethal military strike on a ship in the Caribbean, alleging it is a "narco terrorist vessel," but of course no regard for Congressional due process, no evidence, & no care for potential civilians. Nothing autocratic about this.😐
BREAKING: Gov. JB Pritzker says the Trump administration has sent the Texas National Guard to Great Lakes Naval Base outside Chicago, awaiting orders to deploy to Chicago. Trump administration officials will target Mexican Independence Day (Sept. 16) celebrations. @wttw.bsky.social
Senator Mark Warner, who serves as Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that his classified meeting at one of the most important U.S. intelligence agencies, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), was canceled due to Laura Loomer.
We don’t know if the 11 people on the boat killed by Trump were gang members, were carrying drugs, their names, their criminal histories, what specific drugs were on the boat. In a real operation, DEA/military would have already provided details #TrumpMurder www.bbc.com/news/article...
Pritzker: "When did we become a country where it's ok for the US president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything? Especially something we don't want. Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?"
🚨🚨🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Full-price 2026 #ACA premium rate hikes to average 23.4% nationally (semi-final): acasignups.net/25/09/02/exc...
📣 IMPORTANT: I can't stress this highly enough: 23.4% is the weighted average premium increase for *currently unsubsidized* ACA enrollees only. For most of the > 90% who currently receive federal subsidies (~21M Americans, myself included) the NET rate hikes will be higher than 23%. MUCH higher.
don’t love shooting a missile at a boat that appears to be just chugging along harming nobody (and, if it contained drugs, could’ve easily been interdicted). really don’t love posting satellite snuff footage of it on social media.
Trump is in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Maybe he needs to rethink his pending announcement.
This is a departure from 20+ years of US drug interdiction policy. Today was a military operation, not law enforcement. VIDEO: U.S. Military Strikes Suspected Drug Vessel as Warships Gather in the Caribbean - USNI News news.usni.org/2025/09/02/u...
Drug trafficking is not a capital crime; it doesn’t carry a death sentence. I genuinely cannot think of anything under U.S. law that would permit premeditated government assassination of people suspected of drug trafficking.
No one is showing any evidence that there were drugs on the boat? // US military kills 11 people in strike on alleged drug boat from Venezuela, Trump says - www.reuters.com/world/americ...
Like this is just not acceptable, sorry
Pritzker: When did we become a country where it's okay for the president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything, especially something we don't want? Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation that we treat this as normal?
Lethal force against a civilian vessel in international waters is a war crime if not in self-defense. If not in self-defense, only non-lethal actions, such as warning shots or disabling fire, are allowed. "Not yielding to pursuers" or "suspected of carrying drugs" doesn't carry a death sentence.
Here's the video Trump just posted to Truth Social, with the claim that 11 people aboard the boat were killed. There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea. Even if they had drugs aboard, that's not a capital offense.
This is the most important news of the day. Sending Texas guardsmen to Illinois is an intentional, unprecedented provocation. It should be immediately challenged in court. Follow @democracydocket.com for breaking news and updates on this developing story. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
The Trump admin dumped half a dozen men with serious criminal records in the Kingdom of Eswatini, where they are being jailed indefinitely despite all having finished serving criminal sentences in the United States. It’s a disturbing situation.
the thing is that by getting out in front of this instead of waiting for it to happen Pritzker might actually short circuit the whole thing. Texas is already issuing denials.
Buried 35 paragraphs in: "Violent crime in Chicago has dropped significantly in the first half of the year, according to official data released by the city. Shootings are down 37% and homicides have dropped by 32% compared to the first half of 2024, while total violent crime dropped by over 22%..."
KASIE HUNT: Over the summer you said, “There’s no vaccine that’s safe and effective”. Do you still believe that? RFK JR: “I never said that.” KASIE HUNT: “Play the clip.” RFK JR (clip): “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” (March 2024) ht: @cwebbonline.com
The US military will conduct a flyover of the White House and wider DC at 11am tomorrow (Wednesday). Epstein’s victims will be holding a press conference on Capitol Hill around the same time.
Illinois Gov. Pritzker ahead of Trump National Guard deployment: "To Chicagoans... Look out for your communities and your neighbours. Know your rights. Film things that you see happening... Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud for America."
Good: Pritzker calling BS, unambiguously and forcefully, on Trump’s planned invasion of Chicago, correctly identifying it as blatant rights violations based on a pretext. Bad: How much it stands out to see a leading politician do that, rather than go along with the BS, treating the pretext as real.
Pritzker: "I refuse to pretend that any of this is normal ... I refuse to fall into the pundit trap that demands we sacrifice vital constitutional rights if it's being done in the fake guise of fighting crime."
Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio has warned Donald Trump’s America is drifting into 1930s-style autocratic politics — and said other investors are too scared of the president to speak up on.ft.com/46g7Iyd
The Trump administration used Benny Johnson's claims that his house was "burned to the ground" and that "people were murdered in my front yard" to justify its federal takeover of DC. @kenbensinger.bsky.social found out that Johnson made it all up. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/b...
love it
Here’s a link to the old Circular A-11: www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u... Here’s a link to the new Circular A-11: www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
Russ Vought has been very clear from the beginning that he thinks the Trump admin can (illegally) impound anything they want. They have been impounding since day one. These changes to Circular A-11 are just motivated reasoning to get to the answer they want.
GAO and normal humans understand that things outside of an agency's control can cause delays on budget execution. GAO holds up Trump admin's NIH & Head Start deferrals as examples of stuff that obviously isn't allowed. You may not defer for policy reasons. The admin's just claiming unlimited power.
This'd be incredibly broad power to pause anything they want for as long as they want. Just say you want to change the scope or realign with admin policy, and now you can pause forever.
Same as with the definition of impoundment, they're doing the meme.
Section 1013 of the ICA is crystal clear that, if you want to defer budget authority, you need to go through the procedure laid out in Section 1013. So what's OMB's approach? Just (incorrectly) assert that all sorts of deferrals aren't actually deferrals.
![PROPOSED DEFERRALS OF BUDGET AUTHORITY SEC. 1013. [2 U.S.C. 684] (a) TRANSMITTAL OF SPECIAL MESSAGE.—Whenever the President, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the head of any department or agency of the United States, or any officer or employee of the United States proposes to defer any budget authority provided for a specific purpose or project, the President shall transmit to the House of Representatives and the Senate a special message specifying— (1) the amount of the budget authority proposed to be deferred; (2) any account, department, or establishment of the Government to which such budget authority is available for obligation, and the specific project or governmental functions involved; (3) the period of time during which the budget authority is proposed to be deferred; (4) the reasons for the proposed deferral, including any legal authority invoked to justify the proposed deferral; (5) to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated fiscal, economic, and budgetary effect of the proposed deferral; and (6) all facts, circumstances, and considerations relating to or bearing upon the proposed deferral and the decision to effect the proposed deferral, including an analysis of such facts, circumstances, and considerations in terms of their application to any legal authority, including specific elements of legal authority, invoked to justify such proposed deferral, and to the maximum extent practicable, the estimated effect of the proposed deferral upon the objects, purposes, and programs for which the budget authority is provided.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:drfb2pdjlnsqkfgsoellcahm/bafkreiccasi3vsp4k2c7ao5egwffel2c5mkbjv3eumiwuqnbopzcusphsq@jpeg "Click to view full size")
And finally, they also changed 112.2 to assert broad deferral authority. On the left again is the old 112.2 language. On the right is the updated relevant language.
But no matter what they say, pocket rescissions are illegal - and the exact part of the law that they claim *grants* the power actually directly prohibits it instead. However, even if the law did grant them the power, it would be unconstitutional under the LIVA decision. bsky.app/profile/bbko...
Next, they have changed 112.2 to claim the power to do pocket rescissions. On the left is the old section 112.2. On the right is the relevant part of the updated section 112.2.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised given that OMB sent a letter to GAO saying it would limit cooperation with GAO's oversight into its illegal impoundments. admin.govexec.com/media/genera...
And here's what it says now. Strong message that, even when GAO finds the government to have illegally impounded - as it has done many times in the Trump administration - agencies should ignore it and just continue impounding anyway.
GAO is tasked in the Impoundment Control Act itself with adjudicating what constitutes an impoundment. Here's what Circular A-11 used to say about GAO
What about the new Circular A-11? They just deleted the entire definition.
Here's the White House's definition of impoundment used in the July 2024 Circular A-11. Simple and straightforward. "Impoundment means any Executive Branch action or inaction that temporarily or permanently withholds, delays, or precludes the obligation or expenditure of budgetary resources."
Enormous impoundment-related changes in Trump/Vought's Circular A-11 update from Friday, which is OMB's guidance to agencies They: -removed the definition of impoundment -said GAO's impoundment determinations don't matter -claimed pocket rescission authority -claimed profound deferral authority 🧵
This week, Oversight Committee Dems are meeting with many of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. We will listen to their stories and continue our work to seek justice against anyone responsible for these horrific crimes.
Republican governors have sent National Guard troops to Democratic-led Washington, D.C., even though cities in their states all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation’s capital. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Trump on the cover of French magazine Le Point. Translation: “Man from Moscow” Le Point is a major French weekly news magazine. It is considered a center-right / conservative-leaning publication.
"From the CDC to the CIA, the Trump administration is tossing out the world’s top experts and replacing them with unqualified, unctuous acolytes. Disaster awaits." fridainsight.substack.com/p/the-myster...
