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Grapes of Wrath?


Redistricting is the process of redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts to ensure fair and equal representation based on population changes.

What Redistricting Is

Redistricting involves adjusting the lines of electoral districts, which are the geographic areas from which voters elect representatives to government bodies, including the U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, and local councils. The primary goal is to ensure that each district has roughly equal populations so that every citizen’s vote carries similar weight, upholding the principle of “one person, one vote”. This process is typically triggered by the decennial U.S. Census, which provides updated population data.

How Redistricting Works

In most states, the state legislature is responsible for drawing district lines, often subject to the governor’s approval. Some states use independent or bipartisan commissions to reduce partisan influence and create more neutral maps. Districts are drawn based on criteria such as contiguity, compactness, preservation of communities of interest, and adherence to the Voting Rights Act to prevent racial gerrymandering. Redistricting can also occur outside the census cycle if court orders or state laws require adjustments.

Redistricting vs. Gerrymandering

While redistricting is intended to be fair, it can be manipulated for political advantage, a practice known as gerrymandering. Gerrymandering occurs when district lines are drawn to favor a particular party or incumbent, diluting the voting power of certain groups and undermining democratic representation. Fair redistricting, by contrast, ensures that districts reflect population changes and diversity, giving all voters an equitable voice in elections.

Why Redistricting Matters

Redistricting is crucial for maintaining representative democracy. Without it, population shifts could lead to unequal representation, where some districts have far more voters than others, weakening the influence of individuals in larger districts. Proper redistricting also ensures that growing communities, including those of color, are fairly represented in legislative bodies. Public participation, transparency, and legal oversight are key to achieving fair and effective redistricting.

Trump’s presidency is crumbling. The GOP will as well.



Opinion by Rex Huppke, USA TODAY • 5h • 5 min read


There has always been one thing, and one thing only, that President Donald Trump is good at: lying. He has conned and audaciously dissembled his way into a fortune and into two terms as president, always leaving chaos in his wake.
Well, it appears the tornadic chaos of the moment – war with Iran, high gas and food prices, a president with a Caesar complex – has finally overwhelmed Trump’s lies, rendering him impotent against collapsing poll numbers and setting the Republican Party up for disaster in the coming midterm elections.
A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released April 21 showed only 30% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, something that was once his strong suit. That’s down from only 38% approving in March.
In the same poll, a whopping 72% of Americans say the country is heading in the wrong direction, and the president’s overall approval rating is a dismal 33%.
Many Americans feel betrayed by Trump’s lies and unmet promises
In a story about its poll, the AP quoted Kathryn Bright, a 60-year-old retired U.S. Air Force captain who supported Trump in the last election: “I feel disgusted with myself, I feel betrayed, like he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Ouch. Accurate, but still ouch.
A new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll found: “Trump’s net approval on prices/inflation has fallen to -46, the worst rating on any issue we have ever recorded.”
That poll also found that voters prefer Democrats over Republicans by a 7-point margin.
Trump’s poll numbers are circling the drain
Trump has turned Americans against his deportation policies, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll released April 22 showing 52% of Americans less likely to support a candidate who embraces Trump’s mass deportation plans. Only 42% said they’re more likely to support a candidate who is in line with the president’s draconian approach to immigration.

·

With approval ratings in the mid-30s, Trump is well into the dreadful range of George W. Bush during his second term, another president who got the United States embroiled in a war in the Middle East.
But what stands out in this particular moment is the failure of Trump’s usually reliable ability to convince a large swath of America that up is down or that bad is good.
Lying worked so well for Trump. Now it’s failing him.
He keeps telling us that the war in Iran is going swimmingly, that we have dominated the enemy, that he is in complete control and that everything will be over soon. But none of that is true, and Iranian leaders appear to be playing him like a fiddle, leveraging their control over the Strait of Hormuz to spike gas prices here at home and outmaneuver Trump in ceasefire talks.
He keeps telling Americans that things have never been better, like in this April 17 social media post: “The U.S.A. is the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World right now. Just a short time ago, under Sleepy Joe Biden, IT WAS DEAD, LAUGHED AT ALL OVER THE WORLD!!! But not anymore ‒ Nobody’s laughing!!!”
He’s right that nobody’s laughing, but that’s certainly not because we’re the “HOTTEST” country in the world. Americans are struggling. Trump hasn’t brought down food prices as he promised, and his unnecessary and wildly unpopular attack on Iran has pushed gas prices through the roof.
Even our once-strong allies in Canada have turned on us, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney saying recently, “Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become weaknesses. Weaknesses that we must correct.”
Tucker Carlson is latest of Trump’s supporters to flee like rats.
Meanwhile, a quick stroll through the president’s Truth Social page shows he’s primarily focused on posting self-aggrandizing artificial intelligence slop, worrying about his precious White House ballroom project and insisting everything is perfect.
Trump is now seeing high-profile departures from his clown car of avid right-wing supporters. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the thing you would get if the word “disingenuous” took human form, recently said he regrets supporting Trump: “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has bailed, as have Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene saw the light before most and hopped off the Trump Train, her opportunistic finger sensing which way the political winds would blow.
As more Americans turn on Trump, Republicans face likely midterm doomThere’s a point when even the most deluded among us, those Trump pulled so effectively into his vast web of lies and false promises, cannot reconcile their reality with the president’s fiction. I think we’ve reached that point, which explains why Trump has recently seemed more unhinged than usual. The magic trick isn’t working. He’s flailing.
That spells almost certain doom for Republicans in November’s midterm elections. GOP candidates now face a choice of either siding with a broadly disliked president who has suckered the American people, or running from that president and being torched by his ire and the hate and threats that will invariably come from the dwindling-in-number-but-still-loud MAGA loyalists.
You’ll pardon me if I don’t feel bad for the Republicans. They invited a liar extraordinaire into their parlor and let him sell them the politics of cruelty, dishonesty and scams.
But when the lying stops working, it all crumbles. And it’s looking increasingly likely the GOP will be well and deservedly crumbled come November.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s presidency is crumbling. The GOP will as well. |

Stephen Miller’s new bullshit about immigrants


Miller and his boss are now targeting Minnesota’s Somali community

Robert Reich

Dec 27, 2025

Friends,

Trump’s chief bigot, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News this month that immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations.

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller claimed. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

In fact, the data show just the opposite. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of most immigrants are models of upward mobility in America.

In a new paper, Princeton’s Leah Boustan, Stanford’s Ran Abramitzky, Elisa Jácome of Princeton, and Santiago Pérez of UC Davis used millions of father-son pairs spanning more than a century of U.S. history to show that immigrants today are no slower to move into the middle class than immigrants were a century ago.

In fact, no matter when their parents came to the U.S. or what country they came from, children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers.

Stephen Miller’s great-great-grandfather, Wolf-Leib Glosser, was born in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl in what is now Belarus.

For much the same reasons my great-grandparents came to America — vicious pogroms that threatened his life — Wolf-Leib came to Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 in his pockets. Though fluent in Polish, Russian, and Yiddish, he understood no English.

Wolf-Leib’s son, Nathan, soon followed, and they raised enough money through peddling and toiling in sweatshops to buy passage to America for the rest of their family in 1906 — including young Sam Glosser, Stephen Miller’s great-grandfather.

The family settled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a booming coal and steel town, where they rose from peddling goods to owning a haberdashery and then owning a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores, run by Sam and Sam’s son, Izzy (Stephen Miller’s maternal grandfather).

Two generations later, in 1985, came little Stephen — who developed such a visceral hate for immigrants that he makes up lies about them that have no bearing on reality.

In a little more than 11 months, Stephen and his boss have made sweeping changes to limit legal immigration to America.

On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order declaring that children born to undocumented immigrants and to some temporary foreign residents would no longer be granted citizenship automatically.

The executive order, which was paused by the courts, could throw into doubt the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of babies born each year. Miller and his boss want the Supreme Court to uphold that executive order.

After the horrific shooting of two National Guard members on November 26 by a gunman identified by authorities as an Afghan national, Trump halted naturalizations for people from many African and Middle Eastern countries.

Trump is also threatening to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized migrants “who undermine domestic tranquillity.” He plans to deport foreigners deemed to be “non-compatible with Western Civilization” and aims to detain even more migrants in jail or in warehouses — in the U.S. or in other countries — without due process.

In addition to the unconstitutionality of such actions, they stir up the worst nativist and racist impulses in America — blaming and scapegoating entire groups of people.

As they make their case to crack down on illegal and legal immigration, Miller and Trump have targeted Minnesota’s Somali community — seizing on an investigation into fraud that took place in pockets of the Somali diaspora in the state to denounce the entire community, which Trump has called “garbage.”

Let’s be clear. Apart from Native Americans, we are all immigrants — all descended from “foreigners.” Some of our ancestors came here eagerly; some came because they were no longer safe in their homelands; some came enslaved.

Almost all of us are mongrels — of mixed nationalities, mixed ethnicities, mixed races, mixed creeds. While we maintain our own traditions, we also embrace the ideals of this nation.

As Ronald Reagan put it in a 1988 speech,

You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk. But … anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American. A person becomes an American by adopting America’s principles, especially those principles summarized in the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence, such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Reagan understood that America is a set of aspirations and ideals more than it is a nationality.

Miller and Trump want to fuel bigotry. Like dictators before him, Trump’s road to tyranny is paved with stones hurled at “them.” His entire project depends on hate.

America is better than Trump and his chief bigot.

We won’t buy their hate. To the contrary, we’ll call out bigots. We won’t tolerate intolerance. We’ll protect hardworking members of our community. We’ll alert them when ICE is lurking.

We will not succumb to the ravings of a venomous president who wants us to hate each other — or his bigoted sidekick.

Over Time


I have written what is called "6 word memoirs". I am sharing just a few below":

GOP espousing false narratives as facts’

The GOP seems to be determined to mop the floor with a dirty mop

Truth riles TOTUS, so be it!!

It is pretty obvious by now that facts riles up the liars no matter the party. It seems that all purveyors of non facts get upset when presented with facts and counter with more non facts or personal attacks.

Sixes 2 A

We’re doing what best for you

autocrats, dictators, people in power all seem to tell us that what they are doing to us is for our own good and somehow many of us believe it. If we are paying attention, we can see that the GOP is doing and saying the same thing while enacting repressive laws on

 voting, reproduction and installing “their choice of judges” while stopping passage of infrastructure legislation. Is this for our own good?

No truth in poLItics, neither party

Dishonesty appears to be the bedrock of politics and unfortunately too many voters  are accepting it.

Botch already backing TOTUS for 2024

Botch McConnell in a play to remain in power has already endorsed TOTUS for a 2024 Presidential run-Is it possible that his (Mitch) constituents are blind and numb?

 Cruz, Hawley, Johnson, modern JoeMcCarthy’s

Only in America can miscreants become lawmakers (or breakers?) and suffer no consequences

Higher standards-N/A to elected officials

We always thought it- politicians generally are suspect

Foxes have control of the henhouse

The GOP now has control of the US house and has proceeded to exact revenge on the DEMs for perceived and real (correct) sins against the party. This energy world be better used to actually strike an accord and govern instead of pursuing irrational and uninformed issues. The course being followed will certainly come back to

bite” them and further divide the voters.

Shiny objects no motive for support-The most prominent or shiniest object more distracting than useful

Flip flops are not just footwear-

 ask Linsey Hop graham and Botch McConnell

Patton slap to GOP-all Cowards!

General Patton was reprimanded for slapping a GI who was suffering from what we now know as” battle fatigue”, he was wrong in what he did however he was ordered to apologize for it. We as voters need not apologize if we “Patton” slap our elected officials

2Tr tax cut or 2Tr stimulus?

The GOP happily passed a 2trillion dollar tax cut that benefitted themselves and big business yet balk against 2trillion to stimulate the economy and help the voters. No brainer on who to vote foTop of Form

r.

Why Do Balding heads require parting?

Just curious

Congress competing for standup Comic jobs?

Standups are more serious about their work than these neer do wells

Its Ok until you’re the victim

What happens to one affects us all and we should all be involved or be at least paying attention.

Possibly hoods in the Congressional closet?

Ron Johnson has made plain what we have always suspected of the GOP. Perhaps not all but too many to ignore and we should not let the Dems off the hook either.

Fist Bump ridiculed once, now gentrified

During Obama Presidency fist bump was ridiculed, not so “ghetto” now is it?

Amazing disgrace: current miscreant elected officials

There is no partisanship when elected officials disrespect the office for their personal gain, not the country and the voters who put them in office.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Turns Out, Trump’s Qatar Private Jet Wasn’t Even a Gift


The New Republic

Opinion

Edith Olmsted

Tue, May 20, 2025 at 9:15 AM CDT2 min read

There’s no such thing as a free plane.

Donald Trump’s administration specifically sought out the luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from Qatar’s government to replace Air Force One, despite the president’s insistence that the plane was a gift, sources informed CNN.

A senior White House official told CNN that Trump tasked Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East (and shady crypto partner), with tracking down a replacement for Air Force One, after Trump learned that Boeing would not have new jets ready for another two years. Witkoff ended up leading initial conversations with the Qatari government, according to the White House official.

Boeing provided the Pentagon with a list of other clients who might be able to help with America’s search for a new plane, three sources told CNN. One of those sources said that Qatar was included on that list of clients and that the U.S. reached out about purchasing the luxury plane from the Qatari Defense Ministry, which indicated it was willing to sell. There were also discussions about leasing the plane, said another source.

Legal negotiations over the plane’s transfer are still ongoing, and it’s unclear how the plane went from being a potential purchase to a $400 million gift. Trump and his administration have repeatedly stressed that the plane will be free of charge, a gift of goodwill from a foreign government—sparking major backlash on both sides of the aisle over concerns of foreign corruption.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the potential transfer a “donation to our country” on Monday, but the plane is much more of a personal gift to Trump himself than to the people of the United States, whose tax-paying dollars could end up funding the costly rebuild for the president’s supposedly free gift.

Trump reportedly toured a Qatari plane with aides in February and began lamenting how luxurious the plane was compared to his own transportation options. Last week, Trump whined that the current Air Force One is a “much less impressive” plane than the lavish ones dictators use.

CNN’s reporting upends a recent claim from Senator Markwayne Mullin—which was then repeated by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—that negotiations to receive a plane from Qatar began under Joe Biden’s administration.

Giving Trump $400m Boeing jet was his team’s idea not Qatar’s, report claims

Joe Sommerlad

Tue, May 20, 2025 at 8:39 AM CDT

President Donald Trump’s administration originally approached Qatar about the possibility of acquiring one of its Boeing 747 jumbo jets, according to a report.

The new claim reported in CNN contradicts Trump’s insistence that the controversial plane lined up to replace Air Force One was simply offered as a “gift.”

The $400m aircraft that the Qatari royal family intends to present to the United States, described as a “flying palace” due to its luxurious interior, has inspired a number of ethics complaints at home that cast a long shadow over the president’s visit to the Middle East last week.

Now administration sources cited by CNN claim it was the U.S. that first sought out the plane, rather than Qatar coming forward to offer it as a friendly gesture.

The network’s sources claim that, shortly after Trump returned to the White House in January, the Pentagon contacted Boeing for an update on the two new jets it is building as replacements for the current presidential plane.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base in Doha on May 15 2025 (Win McNamee/Getty)

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base in Doha on May 15 2025 (Win McNamee/Getty)

It was told that their construction would take another two years to complete, prompting a frustrated Trump to task his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff with drawing up a list of potential alternatives already in service.

Boeing reportedly supplied Department of Defense officials with the names of its clients around the world. “Qatar was one of the clients,” one of the sources said, adding that the Pentagon then approached Doha, with introductions from Witkoff, offering to buy the plane. Qatar responded by indicating it would be willing to sell, it is claimed.

Another source, however, suggested those discussions were originally about leasing the Boeing, not buying it outright.

The account stands at odds with Trump’s own version of events after the president insisted throughout his trip to the Gulf that the plane was a present from one of America’s key regional allies, describing it as “A GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE” on Truth Social and saying that only a “stupid person” would have refused it.

His position was reiterated by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday. She described the jet as a “donation to our country,” saying that Qatar’s royal family “has offered to donate this plane to the United States Air Force, where that donation will be accepted according to all legal and ethical obligations.”

A White House official has since told The Independent that CNN’s reporting is accurate.

Trump griped about the age of the current presidential plane repeatedly last week, boarding it at Abu Dhabi International Airport on Friday with the resentful words: “I leave now and get into a 42-year-old Boeing. The new ones are coming, new ones are coming.”

Amid a furor in Congress over the jet potentially violating the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause, Trump’s own Department of Justice lawyers moved quickly to rule that accepting it would break no laws.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House lawyer David Warrington said the donation of the aircraft would be “legally permissible,” given that its ownership would be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation before the end of his term.

But Columbia Law School Professor Richard Briffault questioned that assessment when he told NPR that if Trump retains ownership of the plane after leaving office, in spite of his claim that it will ultimately be given to the Department of Defense, “then it’s not really a gift to the United States at all” and instead amounts to a “pretty textbook case of a violation of the emoluments clause.”

A Boeing 747 bearing the color scheme of planes used by the Qatari royal family seen at San Antonio International Airport in San Antonio, Texas, earlier this month (Brandon Lingle/The San Antonio Express-News/AP)

A Boeing 747 bearing the color scheme of planes used by the Qatari royal family seen at San Antonio International Airport in San Antonio, Texas, earlier this month (Brandon Lingle/The San Antonio Express-News/AP)

Professor Briffault further warned that accepting any present leaves the recipient beholden to the gift-giver, an argument also made by Trump nemesis Hillary Clinton, saying that gestures like Qatar’s are “designed to create good feelings for the recipient and to get some kind of reciprocity.”

Another cause of concern is the eye-watering cost of retrofitting the jet to make it an acceptable substitute for the presidential plane.

Experts warn that it would take several years and require billions of dollars in further investment from the American taxpayer to ensure it meets the necessary security standards.

It would require secure communications, electromagnetic shielding, and in-flight refueling capabilities, to name just three necessary upgrades.

‘A huge scandal’: Internal doc exposes Trump hunt for Social Security fraud as a sham


Story by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams • 23h • 3 min read

© provided by AlterNet

An internal Trump administration document reportedly shows that anti-fraud checks recently installed at the Social Security agency have found just two cases of potentially improper benefit claims out of more than 110,000—a rate of 0.0018%.

The documents, first reported Thursday by Nextgov/FCW, further undercut President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s narrative that Social Security is brimming with fraud. Musk falsely claimed in March that “40% of the calls into Social Security were fraudulent.”

The anti-fraud checks for Social Security have been applied only to benefit claims made over the phone. According to the internal document, “No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases.” Earlier this year, amid widespread outrage, the Social Security Administration (SSA) walked back a proposal to scrap many of its phone-based benefit claim services.

Nextgov/FCW noted Thursday that the Trump administration’s deployment of the anti-fraud tools beginning last month “did cause delays, as SSA changed its phone procedures to add the checks on the backend.”

“The lags stem from the three-day hold placed on telephone claims in order to run the anti-fraud [checks], a move that ‘delays payments and benefits to customers, despite an extremely low risk of fraud,'” Nextgov/FCW reported, citing the internal document.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement that “the Trump-Musk Social Security takeover has only meant more chaos and confusion for Americans.”

“Every one of DOGE’s so-called ‘mistakes’ is a backdoor cut to people’s benefits,” said Warren. “There’s nothing efficient about making it harder for people to access the checks they’ve earned and are owed.”

On social media, Warren called the revelations in the internal administration document “a HUGE scandal.”

It’s long been clear that Social Security fraud is minuscule, with an inspector general report published last year estimating that just 0.84% of Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022 were dispensed improperly—and even those improper payments were not necessarily fraudulent.

The new reporting out Thursday bolstered warnings that the Trump administration’s hunt for fraud is a mere pretext for slashing Social Security benefits and weakening the program.

“Turns out there ISN’T rampant Social Security fraud, but Elon’s witch hunt, driven by his insane conspiracy theories, IS keeping seniors from getting their benefits as quickly as they should be,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote on social media. “THIS is Republican governing: hunting for nonexistent fraud while breaking Social Security.”

Frank Bisignano, the newly confirmed SSA administrator, has close ties to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and has defended the president’s false claim that tens of millions of “dead” people are receiving Social Security benefits.

CNN reported earlier this week that as SSA combs “through its databases to check whether beneficiaries are alive or dead” at Trump and Musk’s behest, agency staffers are “seeing more people coming in to be resurrected” after being falsely deemed deceased.

“I’ve been saying it all along,” former SSA chief Martin O’Malley wrote Thursday. “Elon Musk is the biggest fraud, not Social Security.”

FDR’s grandson issues new warning about Trump’s targeting of Social Security


James Roosevelt Jr., Henry Scott Wallace And June Hopkins, Common Dreams

April 06, 2025 | 08:38AM ET

Thank you, Senator Cory Booker. In your record-breaking Senate talk-a-thon, you sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump’s increasingly blatant threats to Social Security, and the devastating impacts for ordinary people who count on it.

Ninety years ago, our three grandfathers created Social Security. It’s the most popular, efficient and effective government program ever, ensuring financial security for 73 million Americans today. Now, appallingly, America’s workers and seniors must get ready to fight like hell.

The first draft of Social Security was written by a small committee including Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace and top FDR advisor and Federal Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins, chaired by legendary Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. FDR had insisted that Social Security be funded by a system of payroll taxes, with both worker and employer contributing. He expressed great confidence that this would give workers an unquestionable “legal, moral and political right” to collect benefits.

Save Social Security. Don’t “outsource” it. Don’t tolerate this “reverse Robin Hood”—taking from the poor and giving to the rich.

President Dwight Eisenhower got it. There may be “a tiny splinter group” of politicians who want to mess with Social Security, he wrote, but “their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Now comes Trump and Musk. They’ve fired 7,000 Social Security Administration staffer, citing a “bloated” workforce (actually severely overstretched at 50-year lows), made it harder to access their benefits, and closed most of the regional and field offices, guaranteeing chaos. Musk has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” (it’s NOT), and shared a post calling Social Security recipients “the parasite class.” Trump has lied that Social Security benefits are being collected by illegal immigrants (they actually strengthen Social Security by paying payroll taxes while being barred from collecting benefits) and by tens of millions of people over 120 years old (nobody in the worldis over 120 years old, and in fact, only 89,000 people over age 99 receive Social Security benefits). Musk says fraud in “entitlement spending … is the big one to eliminate“.

Now, after whipping up anger at imaginary Social Security abuses, Trump is proposing to end all federal taxes on people earning less than $150,000—the largest category of taxes for people in that bracket being the payroll taxes that sustain Social Security— which, when combined with the current payroll tax cap of $176,000, would leave Social Security with virtually no revenues. Trump previously promised to completely end payroll taxes.

Could their intentions be any clearer? Trump campaigned on a promise that Social Security “will not be touched, it will only be strengthened” (and Musk has recently promised that benefits will be increased, unbelievably, without congressional action and without worsening the government spending he enjoys slashing with his chainsaw).

Today, the CEO earning $10 million a year hits that limit and stops paying payroll taxes after the first week of the year, while his janitor keeps paying the 6.2% payroll tax for the next 51 weeks. It’s an outrage against all working people.

But remember how a previous President, George W. Bush, wanted to “strengthen” Social Security? By privatizing it. Trump’s acting Social Security Commissioner now prefers to frame it as “outsourcing.”

The Washington Post reports that with seniors “beside themselves” with uncertainty stoked by all the cutbacks, “many current and former [Social Security] officials” fear that the ultimate goal is privatization. And they’ve got plenty of company among Democrats in Congress. (Trump’s Treasury Secretary recently suggested that the goal was to privatize everything government does.) And Trump’s likeliest argument is that the only way to prevent benefit cuts driven by the system’s looming solvency crisis, and strengthen retirement security, is to put Social Security’s money in Wall Street (rich financiers would surely love the extra $3 trillion in investments).

The fact is that there is absolutely no way for Musk and Trump to reach their goal of eliminating $2 trillion in federal spending without either 1) raising revenues or 2) decimating the largest federal spending program in America: Social Security (Medicare and Medicaid are not far behind).

What could avert such stupidity? Revenues. Make the wealthy pay their fair share. One no-brainer example: eliminate the current $176,000 cap on payroll taxes. Today, the CEO earning $10 million a year hits that limit and stops paying payroll taxes after the first week of the year, while his janitor keeps paying the 6.2% payroll tax for the next 51 weeks. It’s an outrage against all working people.

What related outrages should we expect? Start with Trump’s promised $5 trillion of tax cuts for billionaires (like Trump and Musk). That’s the justification for all of Trump’s cuts to programs that help ordinary people, from veterans to children to health care to preventing terrorism. And don’t imagine for a second that the privatization of Social Security can be blocked in Congress, as it was under President George W. Bush. Trump’s reign of boundary-pushing executive orders has made a supine Congress irrelevant and the Constitution a technicality.

Save Social Security. Don’t “outsource” it. Don’t tolerate this “reverse Robin Hood”—taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Don’t count on “guardrails” like Congress or the courts. It will take a movement of ordinary Americans shouting to protect FDR’s greatest legacy of financial security for working people.

America is The Backbone of Democracy


Apparently Not!

All of the touted greatness of the United States and the assistance given to other countries has started to pale. Our former world dominance is being relegated to this country being seen as potentially near mediocre actor on the world stage. All of the  bad actors are looking at the current “leader” as a purchasable commodity who if offered the right largesse will ease their situations with the U.S. in the way of sanctions or restrictions. As shown in his first term DJT is out for DJT and it will always be so. His Cabinet members, his Whitehouse staff all play to his ego and his greed so they can insert their agendas onto the American public.

These are the same actions performed during the 30 or so years prior to WWII. There are too many folks who don’t think it can happen here while it’s happening here! DRT is seeking a “Kingship” with absolute authority, that aspiration was imbued by same folks who pushed the “moral Majority, attacked and killed abortion rights”. These are the people who think Medicaid should get less funding (do you hear that Seniors with medical needs and disabilities?) It is not wrong to pursue waste and fraud but usually after a complete investigation as to where misdeeds occur. Forcing needy folks whose disabilities and age preclude any ability to work is ridiculous and wrong. At the bottom of all of this is funding the massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

The elected members of Congress who are kissing the “Arse” of FFLOTUS are people elected by the people to represent them in government but have failed and will continue to fail as long as they are in office. Terms are limited at the ballot box not by the people running for office.

The statements made on the campaign trail along with the empty promises are borne out by the negative rhetoric about Americans and allies against the sucking up to middle eastern strongmen who have swayed his views with pomp and circumstance long with lavish gifts. All of this aside, the promises made by the people we elected are next to useless while the promises made by a inveterate self-serving liar is as Anti American as you can get without actually stating that fact!

Apparently, we are not as sharp politically as we should be, we have more rested on our laurels aka Asses while the government is in the hands of an idiot on steroids!

It’s Interesting How Truth Social Moved to Sell Stock Right Before Trump’s Tariffs Were Announced


 

Victor Tangermann

Thu, April 3, 2025 at 1:47 PM CDT

3 min read

260

Just before announcing a major escalation in his tariff war on Wednesday evening — followed by a major stock market wipeout the following morning — president Donald Trump freed up the sale of his Truth Social shares.

As the Financial Times reports, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) revealed that it was planning to sell more than 142 million shares in a late Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Most notably, the shares listed in the document include Trump’s 114-million-share stake, which is worth roughly $2.3 billion and held in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr. Other insiders, including a crypto exchange-traded fund, and 106,000 shares held by US attorney Pam Bondi were also included in the latest filing.

While the filing doesn’t guarantee any future sale of shares, investors weren’t exactly smitten with the optics. Shares plunged eight percent in light of the news, according to the FT, and are down over 45 percent this year amid Trump’s escalating trade war.

The timing of the SEC filing is certainly suspect. Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement on Wednesday triggered a major selloff, causing shares of multinational companies and stock futures to crater.

Trump also vowed in September that he wasn’t planning to sell any of his TMTG shares, which caused their value to spike temporarily at the time.

Now that the shares are up for grabs, the president has seemingly had a change of heart — or, perhaps, is getting cold feet now that the economy is feeling the brunt of his catastrophic economic policymaking. It’s also possible Trump was always planning to cash out and leave investors exposed.

Meanwhile, Trump Media released a statement on Wednesday, accusing “legacy media outlets” of “spreading a fake story suggesting that a TMTG filing today is paving the way for the Trump trust to sell its shares in TMTG.” The company said this week’s filing was “routine.”

Experts have long pointed out that if Trump were to sell, it could lead to TMTG spiraling.

It’s still unclear whether the company — which reported a staggering $400 million loss in 2024, while only netting a pitiful $3.6 million revenue — will realize the mass sale of millions of shares.

But even just the suggestion appears to have spooked investors.

“In this offering it says the Trump trust could sell shares — it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will,” Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein told ABC News. “It signals to the market that they could.”

“This leaves it up in the air if and when a share sale will happen,” he added.

In short, instead of building a viable business that generates meaningful revenue to reflect its valuation, TMTG still feels more like an enrichment scheme for Trump and his closest associates.

“Trump Media has been pretty unsuccessful at creating an operating business model, but they have been quite successful at selling their stock,” University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter told ABC News.

Steve Bannon’s Refusal to Pay His Bills Is Costing Him Big


Could this be a forecast for Donald Trump?

Jose Pagliery

Thu, March 7, 2024 at 3:31 AM CST·3 min read

161

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
  • For two years, Steve Bannon has refused to pay the half-million dollars he owes his former lawyer. Now, his refusal to settle his debts has exposed him and his current attorney to potential sanctions.

“Bannon, with the aid of his counsel, has, for months, done nothing but intentionally stall and delay plaintiff’s enforcement of its valid money judgment,” the law firm that previously represented him wrote to a New York state judge last month, employing an underline to show their heightened frustration.

Bannon, who was once Donald Trump’s White House chief strategist and played an active role in the former president’s Jan. 6 coup attempt, is already trapped in a precarious position. He’s a convict trying to avoid serving his four-month prison sentence for ignoring a congressional subpoena that sought to question him over his role in the MAGA insurrection. And the Manhattan District Attorney is putting him on trial in May for duping nativist donors to “We Build The Wall” who wanted to support a privately built U.S.-Mexico border barrier.

But now he’s making it even worse on himself.

It’s been seven months since a New York state judge ordered the conspiracy-spewing right-wing political agitator to pay the $484,197 he owed the defense lawyer he stiffed, Bob Costello.

Steve Bannon Admits Bank Account May Have Evidence of Fraud

But since then, according to court filings, Bannon has been dodging the ordered judgment and ignoring follow-up subpoenas. That has put the aggrieved New York City law firm of Davidoff Hutcher and Citron in the awkward position of asking the judge to intervene yet again, citing what they called “a last ditch effort concocted by Bannon to game this court.”

In its attempt to get a readout of Bannon’s personal finances and his ability to pay the bill, the law firm tried to question him under oath and sent subpoenas to learn more about his businesses and what’s in his personal bank accounts. Emails show that Bannon’s new lawyer, Harlan Protass, initially agreed in November to schedule a deposition and turn over materials—provided that they first sign a “simple and straightforward” confidentiality agreement.

But as the months went by, nothing happened.

Then, in January, Bannon suddenly put up resistance and claimed he couldn’t possibly answer questions or turn over bank records. Doing so would potentially reveal evidence of fraud that could ruin his attempt to overturn his federal conviction or even bolster the Manhattan DA’s case.

“DHC’s taking of post-judgment discovery from Mr. Bannon poses a significant risk of compromising Mr. Bannon’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination,” Protass wrote in court filings.

It was an unwelcome surprise. On Feb. 6, Costello’s law firm told the judge that Protass has been toying with them and engaging in “a feeble attempt at stalling.” Joseph N. Polito, a senior counsel at Costello’s firm, wrote that the excuse “is beyond any and all logic.”

Steve Bannon’s Lawyer Sues Him Over Unpaid Bills

Polito then took the relatively rare and aggressive approach of asking that New York Supreme Court Justice Arlene P. Bluth hit the right-wing influencer and his lawyer each with $10,000 sanctions—the highest allowable fine “for engaging in intentional dilatory litigation tactics.”

“Bannon’s intentional bad faith conduct has left plaintiff with no other choice but to seek civil contempt and sanctions. Without this relief, Bannon will be further emboldened to continue his dilatory tactics that have, and continue to, severely prejudice plaintiff in its efforts to satisfy the substantial money judgment that remains outstanding,” Polito wrote.

But Polito went even further, asking the judge to also tack on the cost he incurred “for having to address Bannon’s frivolity,” an eloquent insult used to describe the hours he’s wasted chasing down the conservative media figure.

Protass did not respond to a request for comment, but he is expected to file a formal reply in court records later this week. Polito did not reply to an email asking about the case.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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