Hi all, I am back from a lovely vacation in West Virginia, where not all the yards are full of trash, and not all the yards have Trump signs, but all of the yards with Trump signs are full of trash! And there are pride flags and veterans against Trump signs too, which were lovely to see. Did I miss anything?
Oh surprise, surprise, President Pussgrab’s got more extortion and dictatorful threats to the legal system, so crass they’d make Don Corleone blush. He’s successfully extorted the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison for $40 million in “legal services,” following an executive order he decreed that would have suspended Paul, Weiss’s security clearances and barred its lawyers from federal buildings. He’s previously targeted the firms of Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie, and now has issued a memo to Pammy Jo Bondi and Kristi Noem to go after any other firms trying to step to him, and take away all of their government work and security clearances. (New York Times archive link / Washington Post archive link)
In other shakedown news, Bone Spurs claimed to have gotten an apology from the entire State of Maine for letting trans kids play sports which ruins his life somehow, and now he wants a PERSONAL “full throated apology from the Governor herself” Janet Mills for making him seethe in his shoe lifts about it, or else he’ll keep fucking with Maine’s funding. (Portland Press Herald)
Columbia University has also agreed to Trump’s shakedown demands, and now he is freezing $175 million due to the University of Pennsylvania, too. Because as anybody with a toddler or cat knows, giving in to hissy fits is a guaranteed way to encourage more of them. (NBC / Guardian)
FBI agent Johnathan Buma whistleblew a report to the Senate Judiciary Committee about how Rudy Giuliani was possibly compromised by Russian intelligence, and the balls-out way his investigations into Trump, Bannon and Giuliani and January 6 rioters kept getting quashed by William Barr’s FBI. Then Roodles screamed about Buma at Trump rallies. And now Buma has been Michael-Cohen-style arrested and charged with one count of disclosure of confidential information because he is writing a book. (PBS)
Former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Jessica Aber, was found dead at age 43. She was head of investigations into intelligence leaks, allegations of war crimes against Russian-linked individuals and people suspected of providing sensitive US technology to Moscow. Maybe that’s all a coincidence. (Newsweek)
Real-estate-investor turned White House envoy Steve Witkoff told Tucker Carlson that Putin is not a “bad guy,” because when Donald Trump got shot “he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president,” and commissioned an artist to paint a painting of Trump. He also hit all the other Russian talking points, of course, like, “There’s a view within the country of Russia that these are Russian territories, that there are referendums within these territories that justify these actions … I just don’t see that [Putin] wants to take all of Europe [… ]I take him as his word.” Pathetic. (Kyiv Independent)
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld California’s ban on ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds, in Duncan v. Bonda, because ammunition is not an “arm.” Now law-abiding mass shooters in California will have to pause to reload, how nice! And/but Judge Lawrence VanDyke did not like that, and filmed a video as his dissent, featuring himself loading and re-loading magazines and ‘splaining what the various parts of a gun are, like a fucking weirdo. (LA Times, YouTube)
Thursday a federal judge told DOGE employees to GTFO of people’s personal information at Social Security, and Leland Dudek, the low-level employee plucked from obscurity to carry out the Trump agenda there, huffed that he would just shut down all of Social Security, then, because who can even tell who the DOGE employees are? The judge clarified, no you fucking won’t, here are the 11 employees, call me if you have any questions about what I fucking mean, and Dudek generously decided not to cut off checks to the elderly, disabled people and orphans out of spite, for now. (NBC)
The UK is issuing new guidance to schools to teach children the dangers of “misogyny and the growing appeal of influencers such as Andrew Tate.” GOOD! (UK Times)
Jamie Raskin dropped by Cambridge, Maryland to blast Trump-humper Andy Harris with a giant picture of him missing on a milk carton, because he hasn’t held a town hall since 2017 when he humiliatingly got the living shit booed out of him. Now Harris plans to bravely holding a “telephone town hall” on Tuesday, where all the callers will be muted and he will only take pre-screened questions. Brave! (Baltimore Banner archive link / Andy Harris)
New York magazine is keeping track of reports of visa and green-card holders (AKA legal permanent residents) who have been detained by ICE, including a 10-year-old US citizen with immigrant parents who was undergoing treatment for brain cancer, because cruelty. (New York Magazine archive link)
Pope Francis is out of the hospital. (Irish Times)
First-Amendment warrior Elon Musk really wants his fourth babymom to shut up about what a cheap deadbeat he is. Oh, and nearly all Cybertrucks have been recalled because “an exterior panel that runs along the left and right side of the windshield can detach while driving.” Womp. (Vanity Fair / AP)
The Log Cabin Republicans are having a hard time finding a bar in Palm Springs that wants to host their get-together. (LGBTQ Nation)
Leopards ate my face dept.:
Ogden, Utah went for Trump by 20 points, but the IRS is (or was) the town’s largest employer. Derp. (FT)
Well dang, the state expected to be hit hardest by tariffs is Texas. (CBS)
Everybody sing along!
Buy some pizzas! Detroit Public Schools is working on the assumption we’ll have budget cuts next year of between $30 and $80 million for just our district. Please help Rebecca fund the girls’ Detroit public elementary school, and she will help you eat delicious fucking pizza, mailed right to your door. Buy the fucking pizzas everybody. They’ll FedEx em right to your door. Pizzas. (Pizzas.) This motherfucking pizza ad will be up all month.
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