ONCE AGAIN THURSDAY IS HERE

There are 91 days to the midterms.

The latest Quinnipiac University poll found only 32% of registered voters support how Trump has handled his second term in office; 58% disapproved, and 10% had no opinion. The approval rating marks a new low for Trump.A CNN survey reported an approval rating of 34%.

Todd Blanche’s nomination for Attorney General has run aground with Sens. Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, over whether Maladministration II could revive a the $1.776 billion “thug fund.” Both have said their vote was contingent on the fund being formally and permanently disbanded.
A “no” vote from either could doom the nomination in committee. As of 7 p.m. Wednesday, an increasingly frustrated-seeming Cornyn told reporters the DOJ had “stonewalled” his request, which he’d been making for months. “They’ve simply refused to cooperate.” Late4 last night, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley canceled today’s scheduled meeting to vote on Blanche’s nomination. Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement. Tomorrow’s markup is postponed as work continues to secure sufficient support in committee to favorably report Attorney General-nominee Todd Blanche, who is highly qualified for the job.”

This morning, David Kurtz at TPM takes on the question of just what it is that John Cornyn is negotiating to obtain. Citing Cornyn’s own statements and reports of the “negotiation” in the NYT, it appears that Cornyn is NOT attempting to get the tax immunity deal for Trump and his family killed off completely - he is attempting to insure that it only covers Trump, Don Jr and Eric, and The Trump Organization, and only for the retrospective tax liability that is covered in the period of the Trump lawsuit; he wants to insure it does not extend to anyone else in the Trump family or anyone involved in Trump’s shenanigans, and that it does not cover immunity going forward from the IRS for anyone but Trump, Beavis and Butthead, and the Trump Org. This still gives Trump et al at least a $100 million pass on their tax crimes (and we know he has committed them because that’s what the 34 felony convictions in New York were about). Once again, it appears that you really can’t trust a Republican farther than you can see them with your eyes closed, and that Harry Truman was right when he observed that “The only ‘Good Republicans’ are pushing up daisies.” MS NOW has also reported this.

So, how important is that tax immunity to Trump? This important: last night on Lies Anti-Social, he conceded he may pull Blanche’s nomination, rather than give Senators Cornyn and Tillis what they are demanding. He wrote: Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.” Trump also attacked both senators directly, calling them men “whose political careers have been ended by my action” What’s going on here is that Blanche can continue as Acting AG for all of Trump’s remaining term. The possibility of the Thug Fund being revived is still in play as well as the ongoing tax immunity - unrestricted as to beneficiaries. Trump now only cares for one thing: his personal enrichment for the rest of his time in office.

This morning, the Senate Finance Committee voted down a check on Maladministration II’s efforts to shield Trump and his spawn from tax audits. Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee defeated a Democratic block in a 14-13 vote as part of committee work on a broader tax-administration bill. While Democrats argued Trump’s audit immunity arrangement amounted to an abuse of power, Republicans claimed the Senate committee wasn’t the correct venue to address it.Committee chairman Mike Crap-o said, “This is not the place. If this bill were to become the vehicle where this issue is resolved, it would achieve basically making this bill a partisan bill and that would turn this bill into a bill that has a much dimmer future for becoming law.” Lawmakers approved the full bill at 26-1 with Sen. Elizabeth Warren the lone dissenting vote. She said, “No other taxpayer, ever, has gotten this kind of a deal. I cannot support a bill that rubber stamps Donald Trump’s corruption. Congress needs to stand up and put a stop to it.” Please Senator, don’t hold your breath waiting for that, you’ll turn blue and die and we need you.

Just when you think you’ve arrived at the worst, that’s when it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance has released a detailed report revealing that 59 ICE and CBP agents have long histories of sexual and physical abuse, with most of it directed toward women and children. Nearly 85 percent of the agents on the list have been charged with or convicted of sex offenses - 35 committed sex offenses against children. Cases from 2025 and 2026 alone make up over 42 percent of the entire list. Many are longtime veterans of their respective agencies. One served 20 years in CBP while being known as the East Valley Serial Rapist. Anothert murdered women he’d paid for sex. One ICE agentwho oversaw background checks for others was himself convicted of soliciting prostitution involving a minor. The evidence shows a deep problem within the culture of these agencies, which has only been exacerbated by the Trump administration effectively eliminating all prior vetting and training standards. A former ICE training attorney called the current program “deficient, defective and broken,” noting that 240 hours of vital training got cut from what used to be a 584-hour curriculum. Immigration is not supposed to be the work of morally-deficient otherwise-unemployables who terrorize these neighborhoods and get their jollies from so doing. I am now fully on with abolish ICE and CBP, burn them to the ground and start over - with any of them brought onboard considered guilty till they prove themselves innocent.

Marco Rubio’s State Department has turned to a high school dropout with ties to Donald Trump Jr. to help staff the country’s diplomatic corps. Andrew Crapuchettes, a 49-year-old conservative fundraiser with no education beyond a Christian nationalist Pastor Doug Wilson-affiliated private Christian “college,” was hired by the State Department to help fill its depleted Foreign Service ranks. Crapuchettes was messaged by a State Department spokesperson on LinkedIn, who praised his Idaho firm, RedBalloon, which headhunts conservative employees. He was encouraged by someone at State to bid for a contract to replace more than 600 Foreign Service workers in the early days of DOGE. Crapuchettes bid, and won the contract. “We’re focused on merit, hard work, patriotism, and not the latest political correctness, whatever that is, because that shifts,” Crapuchettes told Bloomberg. Crapuchettes is now tasked with helping to reshape the formery apolitical State Department, aided by a nearly $1 million contract for MilitaryHire, a subsidiary of RedBalloon that counts Donald Trump Jr. among its investors - surprise surprise. Crapuchettes founded his company after he was fired as CEO of his previous employer over his “conservative and Christian views.”His LinkedIn profile says his previous position was CEO of EMSI, a labor market analytics firm based in Moscow, Idaho. He also funds Liberty PAC, whihc aims to sway “the tide of mainstream American culture toward a more conservative future.” He serves as an elder at Pastor Doug Wilson’s Christ Church in Moscow. Wilson is known for his hardline misogynistic views of society, advocating women lose the right to vote and work outside the home.

Further proff of how low thing can go: State Department officials caused major embarrassment after using a map of Africa in a presentation that failed to place a single country in the correct part of the continent. The error-filled map was used during a State Department presentation at AIDS 2026, a global conference held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, earlier this week. The map—which was supposed to display opportunities for Annual Program Statements (APS) in several African countries—mislabels every single one of the countries it highlights. Nigeria, the West African nation on the Gulf of Guinea, was placed in the Sahara Desert; Mozambique, which is in southeastern Africa, was relocated to the Horn of Africa on the eastern side of the continent; Ivory Coast, in West Africa, was moved to the eastern part of the continent. There were more. The errors appear to be the result of someone trying to create the map using an Artificial Idiot;Reuters analysis fund it was created using OpenAI.

Tuesday, former FBI Director James Comey filed a motion to dismiss Trump’s case against him. The motion to dismiss and the documents attached to that filing revealed a string of bizarre details about the case. Last September, the department accused Comey of lying to Congress over press leaks, a case that was thrown out after a judge determined that Lindsey Halligan had been illegally appointed. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi failed to make that case against him stick, but the seashell case was revived under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The White House was so fixated on the initial Secret Service investigation that top officials demanded updates while Trump was flying home from Europe. Law enforcement, they argue, went to extreme lengths to track him down. Federal agents used emergency phone-tracking to follow Comey as he drove from North Carolina to northern Virginia shortly after the post with the sea shell photo went up. That kind of warrant-free location tracking is supposed to be reserved for true emergencies, requiring law enforcement to claim there is “an imminent threat to life or limb,” one Secret Service official noted in the filings. Internal records show agents knew they were crossing a line. One unnamed Secret Service official admitted in a memo, “we did not believe that anyone’s life was in immediate danger and legally it was a bad idea to ping the phone.” Agents also noted they believed the activity was illegal at the time, but did it anyway In an effort to prove “86” meant murder, TrumpDOJ interviewed Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano. In those interviews, Gravano said real mobsters wouldn’t even use the term, since it’s too obvious. Gravano ended up helping Comey’s case when he suggested FBI agents contact longtime prosecutor John Gleeson for his take. “The claim that ’86 is mafia jargon for ‘kill’ is preposterous,” Gleeson wrote, citing thousands of hours of debriefings and conversations with mafia members in which the term was never used that way. An unnamed Comey associate, interviewed by the FBI in April, said they told Comey’s wife, Patricia, about the term’s meaning soon after the post went live, and then contacted the Secret Service, arguing Comey would have known what the numbers meant. That associate’s belief was reportedly based on having listened to a Rudy Giuliani podcast, in which he suggested Comey’s law enforcement background meant he’d have known the term’s origins. Comey’s lawyers argued that none of his cases ever involved the word, and noted the associate is estranged from him.

The legal community is reacting with shock (“I am shocked - shocked! - to discover that gambling is going on here!”) after Sullivan & Cromwell - the leading law firm supporting American Imperialism since its founding, whose partner Jamie McDonald was sworn in Wednesday as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York - officially joined the fight against an $83.3 million verdict writer E. Jean Carroll won against Trump. The firm filed a petition Tuesday asking the Supreme Court to overturn the verdict. McDonald had served as a personal lawyer to Trump at Sullivan & Cromwell before the president nominated him to his current post. “My goodness. There it is. The once-venerated white-shoe New York law firm of @sullcrom is representing an adjudicated rapist in a case brought by the victim. I never thought I would live to see something like this. Wow,” George Conway wrote on X. Sullivan & Cromwell have been the enemy of the law since they participated in the rape of Central America as the representatives of the United Fruit Company, starting in the 1880s. Both John Foster Dulles, far right promoter of the Cold War as Secretary of State under Eisenhower, and his brother Allan - who was responsible for starting the CIA off on the wrong foot in the 1950s - came from this organization of worthless scumbags. When Sullivan & Cromwell took Trump on as a client last year, firm co-chair Robert Giuffra promised partners the firm would stay out of the Carroll cases, the WSJ reported. Giuffra reversed course after Trump’s personal lawyer Boris Epshteyn pushed the firm to take on the Carroll matter, prompting a revolt among some partners. The petition asks the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that Trump’s White House statements denying Carroll’s allegations were official presidential acts shielded by immunity, and to wipe out the $83.3 million judgment. It was filed the day before McDonald moved over to SDNY.

Tuesday, Maladministration II said it would move to end a Biden-era Medicare premium subsidy program, alleging it benefited insurance companies more than enrollees. As a result, Medicare Part D subsidies will expire at the end of the year and no longer be offered in 2027. The program was restructured under former President Biden to implement a $2,000 annual cap on out-of- pocket spending on prescription drugs. It also permitted Medicare to negotiate prices for certain high-cost Part D drugs. The majority of enrollees in the subsidy program were seniors or those with disabilities, who are now awaiting information regarding new monthly prices. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it’s expecting to release details on costs in mid- to late-September. In 2027, the national average monthly bid amount will be $296.05, per the agency’s announcement, and will influence the federal government’s direct subsidy payments to insurance plans. For 2027, the base beneficiary premium will be $41.33. About 25 million Americans carry standalone Part D drug plans. And these fjucking morons are doing this literally the week before the midterms - to the voting demographic most likely to turn up for midterms.

Ken Paxton is turning into the child nobody wants, with two major campaign funders waiting for the other to step into the breach. The GOP’s top spending committees are locked in a “high-stakes game of chicken” over Paxton’s floundering Senate campaign, each hoping the other will kick in tens of millions needed to save his sinking candidacy. Texas demands approximately $15 million weekly in super PAC advertising for a credible campaign, making it a resource drain compared to cheaper battlegrounds with equal strategic value. Republican strategists are increasingly questioning whether Paxton is worth the investment. The NYT article states, According to the report, “Mr. Paxton finds himself in a unique situation among Senate candidates, according to interviews with a dozen Republicans with ties to his campaign. Republican donors still hold grudges from a bruising primary. The state, with its 18-plus television markets, is an epically expensive setting. And his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, has proved to be a particularly strong fund-raiser.” Paxton is also being shunned by Washington campaign cash rainmakers. “National Republican groups are slated to spend tens of millions of dollars this summer and fall in every other top-tier Senate race, including in some states that prominent handicappers think are not as competitive as Texas,” the Times is reporting. “They even plan to spend more in noncompetitive Kansas. In most states, Republicans are expected to outspend Democrats - for instance in Ohio, where the G.O.P. commitment totals over $100 million.” The Times notes that “the amount of Republican spending planned in Texas from now through Election Day, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm: $0.”

The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady for a fifth straight time Wednesday amid mounting pressure on the bank to stay ahead of another war-driven energy price shock. In a 9-3 decision, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintained its baseline interest rate at a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent. It marked the second consecutive hold under new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Lorie Logan, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari all voted to raise rates by 0.25 percentage points.

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

Cary

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