MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND EDITION

“This is great. I love your blog. Keep at it.” - Stephen King (free subscriber on March 15, paid subscriber on April 28)

There are 162 days to the mid terms.

Let’s start with good news for a change: Yesterday, the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw after deeming it a “vindictive prosecution,” going on to say, “The evidence before this court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.” Glenn Kirschner, who has been reporting the case on his podcast “Justice Matters”, said: “The judge made a special point talking about how Todd Blanche, this is going to be my characterization, said the vindictive part out loud. The phrase, ‘hoisted on your own petard,’ is what comes to mind.” He went on to say: “Todd Blanche seems to open his mouth only to change feet these days. He’s always putting a foot in his mouth. Todd Blanche running his mouth is part of the downfall of the Trump administration’s attempt to unlawfully and unconstitutionally go after Trump’s perceived enemies.” Hurrah for this victory.

The Iranian semi-official news agency ILNA announced late Friday that the US and Iran may be only hours away from announcing terms for peace negotiations. ILNA said the US and Iran have reached an agreement, mediated by Pakistan, that includes a full ceasefire - including any targeting of infrastructure - “freedom of navigation” in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, and a gradual lifting of economic sanctions on Iran. Maladministration II was preparing Friday for a fresh round of military strikes against Iran, according to sources with direct knowledge of the planning, even as diplomacy continued. No final decision on strikes had been reached as of Friday afternoon.

“Dr.” Nicole Saphier, a radiologist, podcast host and frequent Fox News guest who is now Trump’s third surgeon general nominee, has sold supplement products online “since at least 2024,” according to The Guardian; but after the outlet contacted the online storefront this week, it quietly pulled her products from its listings, which some critics have labeled as “snake oil.” Saphier has also sold health products online under the brand name Drop RX, including products called “Calm” and “Focus.” In its report published on Friday, The Guardian purchased both products for $24.99 each. The Calm product’s first listed ingredient is kava kava root, an herbal substance the Department of Defense banned for military service members in 2024 due to the “possibility of impairment and subsequent threat to military readiness,” according to a department spokesperson. The FDA first issued a consumer advisory about kava’s potential link to liver damage in 2002, and the substance has been banned or restricted in countries including the UK, France and Switzerland over the same concern. “Focus” is a vial of liquid with a dropper in a 2oz bottle, formulated using a number of different herbs such as rosemary leaf and ginseng root. The product’s label instructs users to ingest 1-2 drops daily “under tongue or diluted in a beverage.” That the nation’s top doctor and leading voice on public health would promote such products, argued Richard Carpiano, a public health scientist and professor at the University of California, Riverside, was concerning: “The US surgeon general should be a highly trusted position as America’s health communicator, bringing to bear the best science, the scientific know-how. If she’s willing to push these kinds of wellness products, what else might she push along the way?” The Guardian also contacted Amazon, where Saphier’s “medicine” is also sold. “By Thursday, several of the listings had been removed, and those that remained were listed as ‘currently unavailable’ and were not purchasable. Amazon said in an email: ‘We are investigating the compliance of the products in question and will take appropriate remediation actions.’” I’m sad to say, but my previous high regard for the medical profession in the U.S. has been reduced by my experiences the past two years. I don’t think Saphier is that much of an outlier - her husband, who is highly regarded at the hospital where they both practice, appears to have gotten special treatment there for her after they married. The corruption of integrity and knowledge goes on everywhere now.

Trump took to social media Friday to whine about the “absolute fortune” he allegedly forewent by dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for a nearly $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded settlement designed to compensate those claiming to have been unfairly targeted by the Biden administration’s Justice Department, writing on Lies Anti-social; “I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward. I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune. Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!” Before Trump dropped his bullshit suit, the presiding judge in the matter expressed heavy skepticism over the case’s merits, and may very well have thrown it out. The “settlement” is not actually a settlement, since the case was withdrawn leaving there nothing to “settle.” Additionally, it was filed four months after the two year statute of limitations had passed.

Late Friday, the klassiest Queens POS to ever occupy the White House shared an AI-generated video depicting him throwing Stephen Colbert into a dumpster and subsequently dancing. The video, posted to Lies Anti-Social, shows Colbert onstage for the taping of the last episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” before Trump walks up behind him, grabs him by his shoulders and tosses him into a dumpster. Trump closes the lid to the dumpster and starts dancing to the Village People’s “YMCA.” The official White House X account also shared the video, with the caption, “Bye-bye.”

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis issued a blunt reality check to Trump on Friday that he may face “the most miserable two years” of his life should Republicans perform poorly in the upcoming midterm elections. It was a warning that apparently didn’t sit well with Trump, who quickly took to Lies Anti-Social to lash out: “People don’t remember that Thom Tillis, the weak and ineffective Senator from the Great State of North Carolina, a State I won, including primaries, 6 consecutive times, didn’t have the courage to fight it out in the Senate, remain in place, and run again for office, a thing he desperately wanted to do. I called him a ‘Nitpicker,’ always fighting against the Republican Party, and ME, mostly on things that didn’t matter. When I told him that I would not, under any circumstances, endorse him for another run, too much work and drama (he couldn’t have won, anyway!), he immediately quit the race and publicly announced that he was going to ‘retire.’ The media said how brave he was to take me on, but he wasn’t brave, he was just the opposite – HE WAS A QUITTER! Now he can have all the fun he wants for a few months, with some of his RINO friends, screwing the Republican Party. In the end it will only get bigger, and better, and stronger, than ever before!!!” I can smell Trump’s “panther sweat” from here.

So much winning! A Trump administration official tasked with proving debunked election- rigging conspiracy theories tried to ban Dominion voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states. He and failed spectacularly when he couldn’t produce a shred of evidence to back it up. White House adviser Kurt Olsen asked the Commerce Department to declare components of Dominion Voting Systems machines national security risks. This move would have effectively banned them before the November midterms. The plan advanced far enough that Commerce officials began exploring legal grounds to execute it last September. Still, it ultimately collapsed when Olsen’s team failed to provide evidence to justify the move. Olsen’s team had physically torn apart Dominion machines seized from Puerto Rico, hoping to find components from adversary nations. Instead, they found a chip packaged in China by U.S. company Intel - not generally considered a security threat - along with chips from Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia. In their report, the labeled these “of East Asian origin,” in attempt to sound ominous. Olsen was also pushing a broader scheme for the federal government to take control of elections from states, an idea Trump has publicly aired. Trump’s attempt to interfere with voting systems is not novel; in his first term, he tried to direct the attorney general, the Department of Defense, and DHS to seize voting machines.

For those concerned about Beavis’s daddy not showing up for Beavis’s Wedding #2, his cousin Mary Trump Mary Trump, ripped him while responding to news that Daddy Dearest skipped his son’s wedding. During an appearance on the Dean Obeidallah show Friday, she said: “For those feeling sorry for Donny, Donny is a horrible human being. He’s a little Nazi. He’s totally unaccomplished, and he’s a racist and a misogynist and just a terrible person, so don’t waste your time feeling bad for him.”

Jake Lang, a pardoned Jan. 6 rioter, far-right provocateur and long-shot Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Florida, who showed up to support a racist livestreamer charged with attempted murder got himself thrown in jail, earning the maximum contempt sentence allowed under Tennessee law. Lang was removed in handcuffs from a Thursday bond hearing for Dalton Eatherly - the white supremacist livestreamer known online as “Chud the Builder” - after the judge ordered him out of the courtroom. Judge H. Reid Poland III told Lang directly: “Told you, sir, you did not have a speaking role today. You decided that you wanted one for whatever reason. I don’t know why, but take him to custody.” Under Tennessee law, contempt of court carries a maximum of 10 days in jail. Lang got the maximum sentence, according to his fiancée, fellow Jan. 6 rioter Rachel Myers, who was convicted and released on probation. Myers posted on X that “the judge gave him the max of ten days.” She disputed the events, claiming Lang “literally did nothing” and was jailed merely for shaking his head and saying “two-tiered justice” as he was escorted out. She called the judge “a psychopath.” Lang was there to support Eatherly, who faces attempted murder charges after shooting a Black disabled veteran outside the Montgomery County Courthouse earlier this month. Eatherly has a lengthy history of posting videos using racial slurs against Black people, and has become a cause célèbre in far-right circles, raising more than $100,000 for his legal defense in a single day. Lang is no stranger to controversy himself. Trump pardoned him in January 2025 after he spent nearly four years awaiting trial on charges including assaulting police officers with a baseball bat during the Capitol attack. Since his release, he has led anti-Islam rallies, performed a Nazi salute outside AIPAC headquarters, and threatened a Capitol Police commander. He is currently running for the Florida Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio. Only the best people...

It turns out that Sen. John Fetterman is not as bad as you think he is. He’s worse, far worse. New York Magazine reporter Alex Shultz gained access to a trove of Fetterman’s private texts to staffers, which have now been published in a bombshell New York Magazine investigation last Thursday. The texts paint a portrait of a senator who, his own staff says, has been “acting like a Republican” in private, even as his approval among Pennsylvania Democrats has collapsed. In January, Fetterman sent a group text to staffers after seeing a headline about the average working family spending nearly $4,000 a year on healthcare. “How should it cost? Free?” he wrote. “I don’t understand what affordability it is.” That same month, after the release of the Epstein files, Fetterman texted a staffer: “Epstein was a nothing burger. Worst pics I’ve seen were from Clinton lol.” When Alex Pretti was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Fetterman fixated not on the killing but on what he saw as Democratic hypocrisy. “Kyle Rittenhouse brought a gun to a protest. He was roundly condemned for that. Why are now democrats defending the nurse it was legal to carry. Both legal weapons. Square that,” he texted. The picture inside Fetterman’s office is equally grim. Multiple current and former staffers told New York Magazine they are “incredulous and exhausted.” His chief of staff, Cabelle St. John, announced her departure after the story was published. Some staffers have begun privately joking that Fetterman is the “senator from Tel Aviv,” a reference to his increasingly singular focus on Israel, a preoccupation that has effectively sidelined other legislative work, according to a current staffer. Fetterman floated himself as a potential VP pick on the 2028 Democratic ticket to senior staff. Their reaction, per one staffer in the room: “Are you out of your mind? You don’t do your job, you can’t raise any money, and your entire party hates you.” A February Quinnipiac poll found 22% of Pennsylvania Democrats approved of his job performance, while 73% of Republicans approved. According to CNN, his net approval among Pennsylvania Democrats has dropped 108 points since 2023, from +68 to -40.

Remember, you are not the crazy ones, and we were made for these times. Regardless of what you may feel right now, act as if you believe that and redouble your efforts.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” - Abraham Lincoln

JackJack

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