Wednesday, April 30, 2025
North Carolina is seriously schizophrenic
Two days ago, a 3-panel court blocked this shit.
UPDATE 05/01/2025:
North Carolina auditor Dave Boliek (R) appointed a GOP majority to the State Board of Elections after an appeals court allowed a law that took away appointment power from Gov. Josh Stein (D) to take effect. The new Republican members could put the board in the service of the party’s effort to overturn its loss in the state’s Supreme Court race.
Democracy Docket
Court rules against DOGE getting SSA data
I just feel like they were messing in every agency, and if they wanted to get into the computer systems, they probably already have. It may be illegal, but what do they care about that?
Suck it, MAGA
Haha. I've seen this picture numerous times. It's the first time I've noticed the toy cars are stretch limos.
What a joke
Could she kiss ass any harder? Of course they went around the table each one kissing ass. She had to compete.
Wow. 258 million lives he saved. He IS a god.
Kids are buying fentanyl-laced "junk" she says, thinking they're buying Tylenol. Uh-huh. Kids are trying to buy Tylenol on the streets.
Christ.
"Do your own research"
JFC. Is the average parent in this country capable of even researching scientific journal articles?
Get on it
The time to act IS past, but we'll take now.
Time to write or call your congress critters.
Trump 2.0 - Don't look now
Everything with him is it's not being truly reflected; wait 2 weeks, 6 months, whatever. Things are great.
Useless Democrats
Add Massachusetts Rep Stephen Lynch.
He wants to take Gerry Connolly's place at the top Dem on the House Oversight Committee. He'll get it as a temporary position automatically, which probably means he'll get it permanently. He shouldn't have it.
PS Lynch was also in with Republicans defying the wearing of masks during Covid.
Hopefully, Lynch is on David Hogg's list.
I assume Schumer is.
No, don't even stay in the Senate. Taking up space that would be better served by someone not anchored to the past.
Impeach Trump
Actually, he's right on that question.
He's going to demand ABC fire Terry Moran, isn't he?
UPDATE0 7:43 am:
UPDATE 05/05/2025:
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
What happened to "Big Gretch"?
Again she's on camera with Trump.
She has even affected the cosplaying style of Kristi Noem.
Police state
Not sure why you would look for a fresh start in Oklahoma, but that's not the point.A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings – even though they were not the suspects the agents were looking for.
The agents had a search warrant for the home, but the suspects listed on the warrant do not live in the house.
The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.
KFOR
Her husband stayed back in Maryland a couple of extra weeks, planning to join them this weekend.
[...]
But any comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door.
[...]
“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
[...]
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
She said the agents didn’t care.
[...]
Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
[...]
“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.
Nutlick at it again
From screwing tiny screws in iPhones to servicing robots.
Well, not Nulick's kids.
Trump purge continues
I'm still waiting for Emhoff to resign from Wilkie Farr & Gallagher in response to them bending the knee to Trump.
What the?
Wait a minute. Trump signed it into law. And Ivanka supported it. WTF?Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday he's "proudly" ending a Pentagon program intended to advance women's participation in peace-building and security.
The Women, Peace and Security program was signed into law by President Trump in his first term with bipartisan support, and was touted by the administration as an accomplishment that "advanced women's economic empowerment."
Trump's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, then a Congressmember, was a co-sponsor of the bill.
Hegseth said in a post on X Tuesday that the Department of Defense will fight to end the program, calling it "yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING."
He said it's "a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists" and "troops HATE it."
[...]
"So—yes—we are ending the 'woke divisive/social justice/Biden (WPS) initiative.'"
Axios
DOGE in court
The article gives a detailed account of happenings after that in the case, the upshot of which is...For months, the Trump administration has fended off legal challenges to DOGE’s sweeping interventions in federal governance by insisting that neither DOGE nor its de facto leader, Elon Musk, have real decision-making authority. The common refrain—expressed in court filings, sworn statements, and depositions—is that DOGE merely advises agencies on which contracts to slash or which personnel to lay off en masse. According to the government, it’s ultimately up to the relevant agency officials to decide whether to act on DOGE’s recommendations.
It’s a convenient narrative. As a matter of legal strategy, the idea that DOGE merely advises rather than directs agency decision-making is a key part of the government’s defense in litigation alleging violations of the Appointments Clause. In other cases, the government has argued that DOGE is not an “agency” subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) because its role is limited to advising and assisting the president.
To be sure, there’s already a voluminous body of public evidence—from Trump and Musk’s own statements to court documents to media reporting on DOGE’s activities—contradicting the government’s claim that DOGE is an advisory entity. But much of that evidence, while compelling, is circumstantial or based on “social media posts and news reports,” as one appeals court recently complained.
[...]
But a new court filing reveals the most compelling evidence yet that the government has been spinning a fiction in federal court. The underlying case, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights v. United States Department of Justice, was brought by a network of legal aid groups that subcontract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which provides legal services for non-citizens and unaccompanied minor children.
[...]
Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum directing the Justice Department to review—and, potentially, terminate—all contracts with organizations “that support or provide services to removable or illegal aliens.” The legal aid groups moved to block the Justice Department from terminating its contracts based on Bondi’s memorandum.
[...]
[A District Court] judge entered an order requiring the Justice Department to provide the plaintiffs “with at least three business days’ notice before suspending or terminating” any of the funding at issue.
[...]
[A] DOGE associate embedded at the Justice Management Division—reportedly as an information technology “advisor”—directed senior Justice Department officials to immediately “terminate” the Acacia Center’s contracts. When the senior officials were unable or unwilling to do so within an hour, the DOGE associate took matters into his own hands, soliciting a contract officer to send the termination notice. He apparently did so without the knowledge of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which administers the contracts. While the April 3 termination notice was rescinded the following day, a second notice was issued on April 10, again at the urging of the DOGE associate.
Lawfare
The litigation in the Amica case is ongoing, and it remains unclear how the newly-revealed information about DOGE’s role might affect the legal arguments and outcome in the case.
Still, whatever impact it may or may not have within the four corners of the Amica case, the new information reflects an important factual development in the public record concerning DOGE and its activities. The government’s administrative record provides documentary evidence that, at least in some instances, DOGE and its agents are not merely advising but are in fact directing agency action.
Trump 2.0 - Cryptocorruption
Everything Trump touches becomes a black spot.Mr. Trump’s return to the White House has opened lucrative new pathways for him to cash in on his power, whether through his social media company or new overseas real estate deals. But none of the Trump family’s other business endeavors pose conflicts of interest that compare to those that have emerged since the birth of World Liberty.
The firm, largely owned by a Trump family corporate entity, has erased centuries-old presidential norms, eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in a manner without precedent in modern American history.
Mr. Trump is now not only a major crypto dealer; he is also the industry’s top policy maker. So far in his second term, Mr. Trump has leveraged his presidential powers in ways that have benefited the industry — and in some cases his own company — even though he had spent years deriding crypto as a haven for drug dealers and scammers.
He has filled his administration with sympathizers to the crypto cause, including by appointing a former adviser to industry players as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, the Justice Department recently disbanded a crypto crimes task force, continuing a broader unwinding of Biden-era scrutiny of the industry.
[...]
World Liberty has sold its cryptocurrency to investors abroad, including in Israel and Hong Kong, according to interviews and data obtained by The Times, establishing a new avenue for foreign businesses to try to curry favor with Mr. Trump.
Several investors in World Liberty’s coin managed firms that the federal government accused of wrongdoing. They include an executive whose fraud case was suspended after he invested millions of dollars in World Liberty.
[...]
World Liberty proposed swapping cryptocurrencies with at least five start-ups, and often used the Trump name to solicit steep payments as part of the deals. Even in an industry with a disreputable history, the deals raised alarm among veteran executives.
“It’s a black spot on our industry,” said Andre Cronje, a founder of SonicLabs, a crypto firm that turned down World Liberty’s pitch.
NYT
One could say the ONLY successful thing they've done.“It’s one of the more successful things we’ve ever done,” Eric Trump, the president’s son who runs the family business, said in an interview this month at the Trump Doral golf course in Florida.
Thank you, SCOTUS.He and his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., are actively involved in World Liberty, though they rely on three partners to oversee the daily operations. Two of them, Mr. Folkman and Chase Herro, have a mixed track record in crypto. The other is Zach Witkoff, the son of Mr. Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who is also a World Liberty founder.
In recent days, Zach Witkoff, Mr. Folkman and Mr. Herro were in Pakistan meeting with the country’s prime minister, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, and other top government officials to discuss World Liberty. The trip, complete with limousines, a dance performance and police escorts, seamlessly blended the president’s business interests with the trappings of a state visit. (Mr. Wachsman said no U.S. government officials were involved in the meetings.)
[...]
On the livestream introducing World Liberty, Donald Trump Jr. hailed the men as first-class financial minds.
“You could put them in a boardroom at Goldman Sachs, and they’re going to smoke the people in the room,” he said.
[...]
In 2022, Mr. Herro urged a roomful of crypto enthusiasts to invest in the currency TerraUSD, calling it “one of the coolest assets in history.” The coin imploded a month later, erasing billions of dollars in wealth. Mr. Herro’s most recent venture with Mr. Folkman was a crypto platform called Dough Finance, which was hacked in July, leading to the theft of $2 million.
[...]
In October, Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman got to work on the company’s first initiative — selling a new cryptocurrency, which it called $WLFI, with the goal of $300 million in sales.
These coins would be different from $TRUMP — the so-called memecoin that spiked in January after Mr. Trump marketed it to his followers before it abruptly crashed.
A memecoin is a type of cryptocurrency based on an online joke or celebrity mascot. It has no practical function other than speculation. After $TRUMP’s initial surge, its price plummeted, costing investors a cumulative $2 billion.
World Liberty, at least according to its marketing pitch, eventually plans to operate as a new type of internet bank that would allow customers to borrow and lend money in various digital currencies.
[...]
[Eric and Don Jr] had become enthusiastic crypto proponents after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol effectively exiled the family business from the mainstream financial system.
“We built and sold and held real estate forever. And for a long period of time, I had access to everyone in the world,” Donald Trump Jr. explained in a live video appearance at a crypto conference in Washington last month. “All of a sudden that became really difficult. And I sort of realized very quickly just how much discrimination there is in the ordinary financial markets.”
[...]
The change of heart also coincided with an influx of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the crypto industry into the Trump re-election effort. Under the Biden administration, the industry had faced nearly 100 enforcement actions by the S.E.C., and crypto executives wanted a leader to champion their interests in Washington.
During his campaign stumps, Mr. Trump’s qualms about crypto appeared to vanish. At a Bitcoin conference in July, he vowed to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
[...]
Federal law prevents foreigners from donating to presidential campaigns or inaugural funds, but World Liberty’s coin sale offered a new, legal way to back Mr. Trump.
“The main reason for purchasing such a token was to support Trump’s inauguration, as he was the first crypto-friendly president of the United States.”
[...]
President Trump has noted that conflict of interest laws do not apply to him, and that he has broad immunity for official actions he takes as president.
There's a whole lot more in this article about the sleaze the Trumps are dealing in around cryptocurrency. Here's a bit concerning the future of their enterprise...
Jordi Alexander, a crypto executive who helped World Liberty with its plans to launch its stablecoin, said in an interview that the company had already secured commitments of at least $1 billion from investors to buy the stablecoin once it hits the market.
The new venture will only compound World Liberty’s ethical conflicts. The company plans to offer USD1 on a platform developed by Binance, a giant exchange that settled criminal charges with the Justice Department in 2023. This week, Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Herro and Mr. Folkman met with Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder and former chief executive, in Abu Dhabi.
Mr. Zhao, who served four months in federal prison for money-laundering violations, has been seeking a pardon from the Trump administration.
[...]
The overlap between Mr. Trump’s policy pronouncements and his business interests have alarmed congressional Democrats, who moved recently to amend the pending stablecoin legislation to bar the Trump family from issuing one.
The amendment failed, and none of the concerns about World Liberty have disrupted its momentum.
Trump 2.0 - The First Amendment is null and void
The House GOP’s campaign arm in recent weeks has successfully pressed three advertising companies to pull down Democratic billboard displays bashing vulnerable Republicans over Medicaid — a setback to Democratic campaigners hoping to make health care a liability for battleground Republicans around the country.
In a series of cease and desist letters, the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) said the imposing roadside ads — sponsored by a splinter group of the top Democratic super PAC in six battleground districts — promoted “patently false” claims against the targeted GOP incumbents, warning the companies that they would be complicit in defaming those lawmakers if the billboards were left up for public consumption.
The threat proved successful — the billboards in all six districts were taken down almost immediately.
[...]
Democrats think otherwise. They’re defending the veracity of their Medicaid campaign, saying the ad companies didn’t pull the billboards on the basis of the accuracy of the NRCC complaint but because they’re terrified of the current political moment, in which President Trump is attacking political opponents in the public and private sectors alike.
The Hill
Amazon clarification
No threat necessary...
Perhaps Bezos doesn't have the balls.
UPDATE 04:12 pm:
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