THE SAME OLD SAME OLD

There are 112 days to the midterms.

Pat Oliphant, truly “legendary” if anyone is as an editorial cartoonist, died yesterday at age 91.

U.S. federal judge Kathleen Williams ruled Monday that Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS was a sham tbrought for an improper purpose. She also ordered that Trump’s lawyers be sanctioned and punished. The lawsuit was a sham that used the courts to create an air of legitimacy around the settlement. However, both sides were working for Trump, which is why Trump’s lawyers are facing punishment from the court.

Judge Williams wrote: “In dismissing the non-parties’ claims of collusion, Plaintiffs reveal the true position of the Parties and say the quiet part out loud: “Regardless of whether Plaintiffs had ever filed this action, the Government and Plaintiffs still had the power to resolve all disputes between the parties.” (DE 89 at 15). The power to resolve was never a question before this Court. Whether Executive Branch actors can privately agree to give themselves and their former clients blanket immunities and billions of dollars in tax monies for legally undefined grievances was never an issue advanced to this Court.

“The question is whether the Parties could do so by claiming to be adverse and engaging the legitimacy of a court proceeding. The answer is a resounding “no”: the Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest. Because “Plaintiffs have no answer for the fact that the Lead Plaintiff, President Trump, directs and controls the Defendants,” this “renders this lawsuit non-adversarial, collusive, and jurisdictionally improper.” See DE 94 at 4.

“And because this fact was so obvious and so insurmountable, the Court finds that this matter was brought for an improper purpose—to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a “settlement” that had no viable basis in law or fact. As was observed in another matter brought in this District, “this case is part of Mr. Trump’s pattern of misusing the courts to serve political purposes.” Trump v. Clinton, 653 F. Supp. 3d 1198, 1219 (S.D. Fla. 2023).”

She concluded: “This action was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute. The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law. The President may be the functional “dominus litus” of the Executive Branch, but as a party to a civil suit, he, as well as all the parties and lawyers before a court, are bound by the rules. Ensuring that our courts are used only for the express purpose created by the Constitution is the obligation of every judge and an obligation that this Court must discharge in light of the matter before it. In sum, the facts before this Court demonstrate there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail.”

This means there is no $1,776 billion Thug Fund, and that Trump, his family and all his companies, do not get the immunity from tax liability investigations the sham agreement was set up to provide. As part of the order, Judge Williams also referred Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida bar for consideration of disciplinary action after finding that sanctions were warranted. The ruling also directs the clerk to alert the New York bar to the matter, citing ongoing disciplinary proceedings for Todd Blanche, as well as the D.C. bar, where Associated Attorney General Stanley Woodward is admitted. Williams was asked to reopen the case by intervenors who said a settlement to create an “anti-weaponization” fund tainted the case. The decision is a significant one from Williams, who was effectively sidestepped by Trump and the DOJ, which moved to settle the case before it was fully reviewed. The ruling comes just days before Blanche is set to appear before the Senate for his confirmation hearing to serve as Attorney General.

So long as we’re talking about President Loser McShitstain’s legal losses, he also lost another round at trying to steal the midterms when his thirteenth attempt to get voter information was tossed. The case concerns access to the voter rolls in West Virginia, a state that backed Trump by a roughly 2:1 margin at the ballot box, but where Republican Secretary of State Kris Warner has held firm against complying, because handing over the information would be a violation of state law. As with every other state where the information was demanded, the TrumpDOJ sought every registered voter’s full name, birth date, address, and sensitive identifying information like their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, slammed the government and also suggested their motives for demanding the data, when taken as a pattern in cases all around the country, may be less than pure. “Given the lack of an adequate basis or purpose, one is left to wonder what the real purpose was for the Justice Department to go to the trouble of filing civil actions like this one all around the nation. Troubling though this question is, it is not before the Court at this time.”

More details are starting to ooze out regarding the latest ICE murder, when an ICE agent fatally shot Juan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, in Biddeford, Maine yesterday; he was from Colombia and was legally in the country and had been issued a Social Security number, according to the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition. And the government’s coverup lie seems to be different from the one they always use. This time, ICE says their thug fired into the vehicle as Juan Sebastian Guerrero attempted to flee “to protect the community.” We can only imagine the lies and cover-ups that will try to shield the real story about what happened in Maine, the same way the lies and cover-ups are trying to hide the truth about what happened to Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston last week. ICE’s reputation for lying is only exceeded by Trump’s. The fish rots from the head. They leap to a lie to defend themselves before any of the facts have even been investigated. That’s why we know, right off the bat, that ICE and Maladministration II are lying through their teeth about what happened to all the people that have been murdered by these scum since 77 million American DNA failures returned this worthless piece of shit and his fascist toadies to the White House. I will never, ever, forgive the IQ failures who voted for him in 2024, knowing what he was going to do, again only worse. When we let ourselves go numb, we forget that each of the people who ICE has murdered is more than a statistic in an ongoing tally of eight deaths during this pogrom. We can’t forget that they are all flesh and blood people who contributed to their communities, unlike the Trumpscum who only detract by their existence. Monday, Sen. Susan Collins called for a “full and impartial investigation” into the ICE murder in Maine. She said, “The shooting in Biddeford requires a full and impartial investigation of what happened. It is my understanding that the Biddeford police have secured the site and that the FBI is investigating.” “The FBI is investigating” means they are taking the evidence to deny a local investigation and prosecution.

As is usual, independent video of the event puts the lie to every word from ICE. Videos from the fatal ICE shooting in Biddeford, Maine, show agents walking beside a slow-rolling car, putting the lie to the government’s claim that the driver tried to use it as a weapon. A second video shared by journalist Sam Stein shows ICE agents removing the man’s body from the car and dropping him headfirst on the ground. He appeared to have been handcuffed. Stein wrote: “Objectively, this is a video of a car slowly turning and ICE agents walking alongside it. Hard to understand how we could end up with ANOTHER deadly shooting here.” David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, wrote, “They still dropped him on the ground and handcuffed him after a bullet through his head.” Surprise surprise - the agents involved in the shooting were not wearing body cameras, according to the Portland Press Herald; DHS secretary Dumbfuckingokie Markwayne Mullet has been forced to admit that Guerrero was not the individual ICE was lookibng for (again). Two witnesses who live near the shooting scene described what they saw to the Portland Press Herald. A neighbor named Em watched from her window as agents stopped the car and pulled the driver out. “No one went to him and no one did anything,” she said. Daniel Boucher had been getting ready for work when he heard the shots. He watched agents pull the driver from the car. “He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher said. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.’” Boucher recalled watching the man die on the street. I wish they had covered the body. He was saying he was trying to stop and then he died. Why? Because he was driving a car?” Obviously the driver was alive when the ICEscum dropped him headfirst on the street. A third witness, Cecelia Humiston, told the Portland Press Herald she was asleep when she heard a commotion. . When she went to check it out, she saw a person lying on the ground. She then heard another woman yelling, “You took her dad, you took her dad!” “They were with a little girl, she couldn’t have been older than three. She was still in her Bluey pajamas.”

Following Trump throwing his support behind Darline Graham Nordone earlier Monday, stating her appointment would be a “fabulous tribute” to her brother, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has appointed Nordone, sister of Lindsey Graham, to fill the remainder of her brother’s term in the Senate. She is expected to only serve the rest of Graham’s current term through January. A separate special GOP primary will take place in August to select a candidate to run in the November election for the full six-year term.

Yesterday, President Loser McDingdong declared that the U.S. naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz will be reinstated, stating in a post on Lies Anti-Social: “The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately.” He said earlier Monday that the U.S. would be keeping the strait and “we’ll probably run it.” Iran pushed back, saying the strait is theirs and they “will not allow a rogue and child-killing army from the other side of the world to continue its illegal interference in it,” according to The Associated Press.

Trump is supporting Lindsey Graham’s Russia sanctions bill. The confirmation comes amid a push on Capitol Hill led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen to get members of Congress to pass the legislation in Graham’s honor. Graham and Shaheen, along with Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Roger Wicker had just reached an agreement with the White House regarding the text for potential sanctions legislation against Russia prior to Graham’s sudden death. Shaheen wrote: “On Friday, Senators Graham, Blumenthal, Wicker and I announced White House support for our Russia sanctions legislation to help finally achieve peace for Ukraine, which Lindsey described as one of his most consequential efforts. There can be no more fitting memorial to Lindsey, his legacy, or the causes he fought for, than to pass this legislation and realize his long-held dream of an independent and secure Ukraine.” The bill, known as the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, proposed 500 percent tariffs on countries that purchase Russian oil and gas. When he was in Kyiv last Friday, Graham announced, “We’ve reached an agreement with the White House on a version of the Russian sanctions bill that they will support. It means it’s going to become law.”

Monday, Secretary of State “Big Feet” Marco Rubio issued a new broadside in the U.S. fight with the International Criminal Court (ICC), announcing a diplomatic effort by Maladministration II to dismantle the global tribunal. Rubio’s announcement comes after three of the court’s judges filed a lawsuit in New York last month against Maladministration II, arguing sanctions levied against them are unlawful. Rubio wrote in an op-ed in the WSJ: “The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message - sovereign states over globalism. Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC - brick by brick, if necessary.” A State Department official told Reuters the diplomatic tools include travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and affiliated organizations, and diplomatic pressure on other nations to withdraw from the ICC. The ICC was established in 2002 to prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. There are 125 countries that have signed and ratified the Rome Statute, the agreement that established the court. Rubio accused the ICC of being “a global tribunal staffed by unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited” and accused the body of being “backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.” These traitors are terrified the next administration will bag the bunch of them and send them to the ICC to answer for the multitude of war crimes committed by this cabal of fascist scum.

Monday morning, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 11 other state AGs filed a lawsuit against Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, seeking to block the $111 billion merger. Add to that a Semafor report that advisers close to CEO David Ellison are nudging him to consider moving the company out of California (to Texas). Ellison’s reported exit threat tests what remains of Paramount’s standing in Hollywood. Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington joined the civil action against the merger, which Bonta is labeling “unlawful” and “illegal under the Clayton Act,” the federal law barring mergers that may substantially reduce competition. Bonta blasted Maladministration II for “greenlighting deals that their own antitrust section at the U.S. DOJ knows and believes are unlawful, and they are overriding them in the White House with political decisions.”

Former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya said that the legal challenge is “a strong suit” that appears to be modeled after the DOJ’s suit against the attempted Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger in 2022. “It’s a strong suit, and my hope is that it wins and it wins quick because people need it.” He added, “David Ellison thinks he can buy a company for 13 times the amount he paid for Paramount, load that company up with $79 billion in debt, take on the astronomical payments, cut thousands of jobs, and yet somehow make more tentpole movies than the companies have ever made before when they weren’t shouldering that debt and weren’t cutting those jobs. What the state attorneys general are saying is there is no world in which you can do that.” He continued, “A whole lot of people do not think that the underlying math works, and what that does is decrease the value of Paramount in the stock market, which makes it harder for this deal to go through. So not only is there a ticking fee, there’s the fact that more and more people are waking up to the fact that the math doesn’t work, and they are pricing the company’s equity accordingly.”

Former Paramount Television head of business affairs and The Business of Television author Ken Basin spoke about the rumored exist from California, saying: “It would be a horrible psychological blow to the industry, even if the iconic Paramount lot on Melrose remained open and not all of its workers had to move out of the state. Ellison and Paramount are already living on a razor’s edge of industry/creative community sentiment. People with options are already steering clear of them because of the political discomfort, Bari Weiss factor, etc. If they close the merger by lighting on fire what little community support they have in town, it could be a very Pyrrhic victory. No one stopped doing business with Oracle or Tesla over them moving their corporate headquarters. That wouldn’t be the case for Paramount. It seems hard to believe, even though they’re the great disruptors, that you’d take two storied Hollywood franchises out of Hollywood.” The lawsuit asks the parties not to consummate the merger while legal questions are being decided. If they proceed, the State Ags will file a TRO against the deal. If granted, this will extend the process into October, when Paramount becomes liable for payments to stockholders of $6.1 million per day. Such an event will likely kill the entire deal. “Status” founder Oliver Darcy told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on “Deadline: White House” that “I think this is a big, big, big problem for David Ellison and Paramount. The president is surely watching this and probably not too happy tonight because he very much wants CNN to be in David Ellison’s hands.” Sunday, Trump told Jake Tapper that “We are trying to have CNN go on a normal path.” Darcy concluded, “The states suing today are basically doing the job that the Department of Justice refused to do when they greenlit this deal, apparently over the concerns of some career prosecutors who wanted to challenge it. I think it’s a big problem for Paramount and for Donald Trump, who really wants CNN to be in the control of an ally’s hands.”

I’m sure this won’t surprise anyone: with the Reflecting Pool now drained to allow major work on solving the algae problem, no one who has taken a look has been able to find the famous “300 foot gash” in the paint applied to the bottom of the pool that Trump claimed was the work of “vandals” to embarrass him. Shocking!

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 froim 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

Jurate’s kitty “Smudge.”

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