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The Merit-Based Trump Administration Finds A Big Job For Erika Kirk

The Merit-Based Trump Administration Finds A Big Job For Erika Kirk

America, meet your new super-qualified member of the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors.

Is it someone with military experience? Nope.

Maybe some post-secondary education experience? Wrong again.

It’s Erika Kirk, silly!

Taking over the seat that her late husband Charlie Kirk held for about five months before he was killed, Kirk will be tasked with making recommendations about the academy to the Defense Department and the president.

You can tell that the administration is really proud of this by the fact that neither the board nor President Donald Trump announced her appointment. Instead, her name just randomly appeared on the board’s website.

Kirk has no relevant experience, so much so that even a White House spokesperson could only muster up that she would be “a fearless advocate for the most elite airpower force in the history of the world.”

Does … does the White House understand that this board exists to help the Air Force Academy better educate more than 4,000 cadets, not demand more planes or whatever?

It’s ridiculous that we have to pretend that Kirk is qualified to join the board, which works to “inquire into the morale, discipline, and social climate, the curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods, and other matters relating to the Academy that the Board decides to consider.”

It’s also a slap in the face to the military, even as Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pretend they’re the most pro-military folks ever.

Kirk’s experience consists mostly of being a beauty queen and founding a “Bible-based streetwear brand,” whatever that means. Her LinkedIn profile lists her past roles as a real estate agent, model, and casting director.

She’s also ostensibly studying for a doctorate in biblical studies at Liberty University, which must be tough to manage with all of her flashy public appearances, where her entrances are nothing but content for TikTok.

The one thing Kirk is likely to do is follow in the footsteps of her late husband—who demanded to know how the Academy “doesn’t push the worldview of oppression, oppressor/oppressed dynamics, anti-western, anti-American, and gender ideology”—and harass staff about following Trump’s executive orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Though she no doubt thinks that she was put in this role based on merit, Kirk is actually the DEI hire here.

No, not actual DEI, but the DEI that is at the heart of this administration—where unqualified yahoos are stuffed in key roles not because they’re qualified but because they’re willing to show fealty to Trump.

Trump’s Cabinet is littered with these people. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not only has no experience that qualifies him for his job but is also an unhinged antivaxxer. And Hegseth’s main qualifications are being a bone-deep racist and having no qualms about unfettered violence.

Dearly departed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also had no experience that made her fit for the job, save for a willingness to shamelessly lie about the actions of her immigration goons. Her likely replacement, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, also has no relevant experience, unless you count his appearance on Fox News, where he pretended he’s been to war. (He hasn’t.)

But these meritless hires aren’t limited to high-ranking, well-known members of the administration. Trump put one of his former receptionists on the Commission of Fine Arts despite having no experience in the arts or architecture or anything really. But it’s pretty helpful to have that sort of DEI hire on a board that will approve his big dumb ballroom.

And we can’t overlook the considerable number of temporary U.S. attorney appointments that courts have ruled illegal. That situation has arisen because Trump is committed to stuffing his former personal attorneys and Big Lie believers into those roles.

Or how about Thomas Fugate, the 22-year-old whose job experience consisted of working on Trump’s campaigns, interning at the Heritage Foundation, and—according to his LinkedIn—serving as secretary general of a Model United Nations club. He now oversees terrorism prevention, which should definitely make you feel very safe.

We also endured random DOGE babies who used ChatGPT to kill thousands of grants that the chatbot found to include any sort of “DEI.”

There’s no merit here. It’s a full-fledged affirmative action program for people who couldn’t get a job in the real world. They’re all objectively unqualified for the jobs they have, and they only got them because they share Trump’s worldview.

The administration may pretend that these people were hired based on merit, but we don’t have to join in. And when Democrats get back in power, it will be a delight to clean house.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos


Yes, Trump Is Seeking To Trademark (And Grift Off) America's 250th Birthday

Yes, Trump Is Seeking To Trademark (And Grift Off) America's 250th Birthday

President Donald Trump’s second term is so chock-full of corruption and grift that it seems almost too small to mention that the Trump Organization, his private company, just applied for trademarks for “Trump 250” in conjunction with America’s 250th birthday.

America! Get hyped for “Trump 250” bumper stickers, tote bags, drinkware, clothing, and golf balls, among other trash. And enjoy the opportunity to line Trump’s pockets while purchasing what will no doubt be some of the tackiest shit imaginable. Just look at what you can buy from Trump’s online store, which sells ugly merchandise that veers into “Dear Leader” territory pretty often.

In the terrible timeline we’re currently in, it makes perfect sense that Trump would seek to trademark this phrase. He is already warping America’s birthday into a celebration of himself instead. One of the proposed logos Trump wants trademarked is his name below five fighter jets, while another is just “TRUMP 250.”

Conveniently, his allies also set up Freedom 250, a group planning such patriotic events as paying for Trump’s big dumb arch, an IndyCar race in D.C., and, of course, a UFC fight on the White House lawn. If you slide at least $1 million to those efforts, you get access to Trump.Better yet, the person soliciting donations for Freedom 250 is Meredith O’Rourke, Trump’s fave fundraiser, who is also netting him millions in donations for his gaudy ballroom on the former site of the White House’s East Wing.

But those things allow only the rich to throw money at the president. What about the little people? Well, rest assured: “Trump 250” merchandise seemingly will include some affordable items that allow you to honor Dear Leader.

The Trump Organization also made sure to file to trademark all variations of “President Donald J. Trump International Airport” just before the Florida legislature voted to rename the West Palm Beach airport after him.

The company generously told the airport that it could use the name at no charge and would not profit from the renaming of the airport as far as signage, advertising, and promotions. Sure, but that applies to only the airport itself. Presumably, everyone selling airport-related merchandise, for example, will still get the privilege of paying to use the name.

There’s also the application to trademark Trump’s name for cryptocurrency, tech products, and NFTs. Oh, and there’s also the application to trademark “Trump” and “T1” for his telecommunications phone and service, if those ever launch.

Probably the most disgusting of all of these applications is the attempt to trademark “The Trump Kennedy Center,” the cultural center that he got his cronies to vote to illegally rename after him.

Trump has been pushing the envelope on this sort of thing for years. During his first term, he tried to use the presidential seal at his private golf courses. In a move that was both audacious and pathetic, he continued to use it when he was out of office.

It isn’t like the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, now run by Trump appointee John Squires, will push back. Squires has no background in government, but he is enough of a Trump loyalist that he refused to say in his confirmation hearings whether former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. This is not a man concerned with the propriety of profiting off the presidency.

Unless Republican legislators come to their senses on this, Trump will continue to use the presidency to line his pockets. This is as corrupt—and tacky—as it gets.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton Remains Cool And Calm During Bogus House Hearing On Epstein

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent much of Thursday in a closed-door hearing about accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It all amounted to a laughable circus led by noted moron James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee.

After Comer threatened Hillary and former President Bill Clinton with jail time if they didn’t testify, the couple agreed to appear before the committee. Of course, the GOP insisted on doing this behind closed doors because that’s the best way for the partisan lawmakers to control the narrative.

Ahead of the hearing, Hillary Clinton shared her opening statement, where she rightly called the committee out for so, so many things.

The Oversight Committee’s Epstein investigation is a sham. While the Clintons were subpoenaed and are required to sit for long closed-door sessions, many of the Department of Justice and FBI officials involved in the Epstein investigations and prosecution were allowed to simply submit written statements.

In her statement, Clinton excoriated the committee for refusing to hold public hearings or allow the media to attend, and for refusing to call people who figure prominently in the files, such as one Donald J. Trump.

Finally, she pointed out that if the Trump administration was earnestly committed to its supposed goal of stopping sex trafficking and addressing Epstein’s myriad crimes, it would get to the bottom of why the Department of Justice and FBI are withholding material that implicates Trump.

Oh, and then there’s the whole thing where she said she never met Epstein, never flew on his plane, and, presumably, never drew him a fun little naked-lady sketch as a birthday tribute, unlike how one Donald J. Trump seems to have done.

Once the hearing started, things almost immediately got very stupid. Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado snapped a photo of Hillary Clinton and sent it to right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson, who posted it online, saying, “This is the first time Hillary has had to answer real questions about Epstein. Clinton does not look happy.”

Well, would you be happy being forced to testify about a person you say you’ve never met—all while Trump, a former close friend of Epstein, doesn’t have to answer for a thing?

Sure, the committee rules explicitly forbid taking pictures, and sure, Boebert was typically smug and sarcastic about it, because rules don’t apply to Republicans, but it was quite the move for a committee that refused to let Clinton testify in public.

Closed-door means closed-door, not forcing Hillary Clinton to testify in private while you dribble out shit to your favorite right-wing influencer.

Boebert’s antics led to the hearing being halted for a bit. It also led to Johnson whining that it’s totally cool that he posted the photo because Clinton was “trying to get out of answering questions about Epstein.”

And how exactly could Johnson tell that from just a photo? It sure sounds like Boebert or another GOP goblin leaked more than just a picture.

In a mid-afternoon statement, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California demanded that a full, unedited transcript be released within 24 hours—which is unlikely. For one, it’s a heavy lift for such a long testimony, and for another, Republicans on the committee will want as much time as possible to mischaracterize or just straight-up lie about Hillary’s testimony.

Garcia also told the press that Clinton had not invoked the Fifth Amendment, setting her apart from, say, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator. And of course, since the GOP will never call Trump to testify, he doesn’t even need to bother with deciding whether he would take the Fifth.

When things finally wrapped up well after 5 PM ET, Clinton spoke to the press, and it was clear that the hearing got both stupid and weird.

“It then got at the end quite unusual because I started being asked about UFOs and a series of questions about Pizzagate,” she said. “One of the most vile, bogus conspiracy theories that was propagated on the internet.”

Sure, why not.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, never one to miss an opportunity to be creepy and inappropriate, demanded that Clinton answer a question about whether she had any feelings about photographs showing Bill Clinton getting a back rub from a young woman or any other of his associations with Epstein. Hillary told Mace she wasn’t there to talk about her feelings.

Mace did, however, tell the press afterward that Clinton “took every question from every single member.”

Of course she did. Clinton sat for 11 hours of testimony over the farce that was the Benghazi Committee in 2015. She could do 6.5 hours of questioning on Epstein while standing on her head.

But you know who apparently didn’t seem to have any questions about Epstein? James Comer. Clinton confronted him during the hearing and pointed out that he hadn’t asked her a direct question about Epstein all day. Kind of a wuss move from the committee chair who threatened jail time if the Clintons wouldn’t appear.

Hillary is done, but Bill Clinton testifies on Friday, and let’s be honest: You can expect his questioning to be even stupider, weirder, and longer. Republicans are going to continue to protect Trump and other favored right-wingers, and they’re going to continue to try to make the Clintons the real villains. But in their dark little cramped hearts, Trump’s toadies all know that they’ve got nothing.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

RFK JR

RFK Jr. Unleashes Weird Musk Chatbot On Americans Seeking 'REAL FOOD'

If you were weirded out by the extreme close-up convicted rapist Mike Tyson Real Food Super Bowl ad, prepare yourself for new heights—or perhaps depths?—of unpleasant feelings about the whole affair.

No, it’s not because the ad was directed by credibly accused sex pest (and Epstein files denizen, of course) Brett Ratner, fresh off his stunning triumph with Melania. While repulsive, that’s pretty much par for the course for this administration. No, it’s because the official government website, realfood.gov, has a section where you can “Use AI to get real answers about real food.”

Since this is on an official fancy government website and is an official government initiative, surely whatever AI tool is being used must have been trained extensively on health information and have multiple safeguards in place to ensure it will provide healthy, correct advice, right?

Uh, no. It’s Grok. It was always going to be Grok. After NextGov asked about why Grok was giving out official nutrition info on an official government website, the administration simply swapped out “Use Grok to get real answers about real food” for “Use AI to get real answers about real food,” but it still just kicks you right over to Grok after you ask your question.

There’s no warning telling you that you are leaving an official government website, no disclaimer that a random chatbot may provide unsafe or incorrect answers. Though a spokesperson told NextGov that the “publicly available version of Grok” is “also an approved governmental tool,” they didn’t feel like answering questions about how Grok was chosen, whether there is a contract, or what guardrails are in place.

404 Media reported that people quickly figured out you could ask Grok to give you dangerously stupid advice, such as what foods are most comfortable to stick up your butt. Guess there aren’t any guardrails, huh?

In case you’re not feeling that adventurous, the realfood site also has suggested prompts of imaginary people desperate for REAL FOOD, which is somehow always in all caps: “My aging parent lives alone, is on a fixed income, and mostly eats frozen dinners and packaged snacks. I'm worried they're not getting REAL FOOD, but they don't cook much anymore. How can I help them get more REAL FOOD without it being complicated or expensive?”

It appears you are supposed to cut and paste this into the Grokbox and get helpful answers. Doing that with the above prompt gets you the same sort of bog-standard information you would get from a web search: look for senior food programs like Meals on Wheels, try some no-cook healthy meals like Greek yogurt, and so on.

Well, at least that’s not Grok generating child sexual abuse material or telling you to put a zucchini up your ass. Small blessings.

If you ask more than a handful of questions via the realfood Grok prompt, you get a message telling you that you have reached the message limit and that you need to sign up with Grok to continue.

So, an official government website is sending people to a sketchy chatbot owned and controlled by the world’s richest man, and the only way you can take advantage of this oh-so-helpful official government tool is to give your personal information to Elon Musk. Great. That’s a totally normal and cool way for government to work

Grok is also burrowing in at the Department of Defense, but this appears to be the first use of Musk’s nonconsensual sexual deepfake machine in the Health and Human Services Department.

In a normal world, HHS would presumably want to make sure that people were receiving helpful, accurate, expert information about what foods to eat, but under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the entire idea of expertise is suspect. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of democracy and it’s not a feature of science; it’s a feature of religion and totalitarianism.”

Man, that is bleak.

So, don’t listen to experts. Instead, listen to Grok. Listen to Mike Tyson. Listen to RFK Jr. cosplaying as Mike Tyson? This stuff isn’t just dangerous. It’s offensive.

Having the spokesperson for REAL FOOD be a REAL ADJUDICATED RAPIST in an ad directed by a REAL CREDIBLY ACCUSED SEXUAL HARRASSER that directs you to a REAL NONCONSENSUAL DEEPFAKE CHATBOT that is also a REAL OFFICIAL GOVERNMENTAL TOOL shows a slapdash, disgusting disdain for everyone. Your tax dollars are being lit on fire to reward the worst people for the dumbest things.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Grift Culture: Why MAGA Productions Can Keep Failing Forever As Art And Commerce

Grift Culture: Why MAGA Productions Can Keep Failing Forever As Art And Commerce


By any normal metric, the Turning Point USA “All-American Halftime Show” was a massive failure. At its peak, it had 6.1 million concurrent views, which might sound good until you learn that the actual NFL halftime show with Bad Bunny had 135 million based on preliminary reports. If that number holds, it will be the most-watched halftime show ever, knocking last year’s Kendrick Lamar show from the top spot.

An alternative that couldn’t even pull five percent of the real-time eyeballs affixed to the dreaded Bunny is not a success, full stop. iIn a normal world, immediately announcing that you were going to do it all over again in 2027 would be deeply odd and delusional.

But the pathetically low viewership doesn’t matter, because the point of the TPUSA halftime show was to gin up outrage over the real halftime show, not to create a well-produced, well-run, or well-performed event. And with so much right-wing money sloshing around, there is no pressure for anything like this to succeed. It just has to come into being.

Notably, the TPUSA show was also not a success as a show. It wasn’t filmed anywhere recognizable and ended up looking like the performers had wandered onstage at CPAC. Headliner Kid Rock’s lip-syncing was off. TPUSA head Erika Kirk couldn’t be bothered to attend. Not exactly a world-class event.

This was never a serious enterprise. Artists weren’t even finalized until a week before the Super Bowl, despite being announced in October. That sort of delay might have been fine if TPUSA had ultimately revealed some amazing heavy hitter, but instead it coughed up the infinitely washed-up Kid Rock and three other country singers who were in no way household names but did have the requisite MAGA grievance politics.

If anything, this haphazard slop shows a complete disregard and disdain for TPUSA fans, Kid Rock fans, and fans of the also-rans: a last-minute lineup, a shitty venue, and no actual broadcast rights. Just a hastily assembled, low-rent event whose purpose was not to provide people with quality entertainment but to serve as a way to howl about Bad Bunny.

Nonetheless, there is an impressive level of post-show flop sweat as conservatives try to tell themselves what a massive success this thing was. Far-right activist Jack Posobiec declared the event was the number one YouTube livestream of all time in various categories and that Kid Rock’s hot new release passed Bad Bunny on iTunes, but without any, you know, proof.

But by midday on Monday, Posobiec was bragging that somehow 40-50 million people watched the thing on some combination of live and streaming and platforms and whatever and therefore, as Posobiec said, “VOTED WITH THEIR REMOTE CONTROLS LAST NIGHT.”Except that is obviously not true. Even if somehow 40-50 million people really did tune in to see Kid Rock beclown himself, it didn’t make a dent in the official halftime show numbers. There was no mass voting via remote control, with people clicking away from Bad Bunny. Instead, it appears that Bad Bunny put up the biggest halftime numbers ever.

This is clearly some self-soothing for Posobiec, but it isn’t really necessary. The money will always be there for next year’s alternative halftime show, because TPUSA had revenue of $85 million in 2024 alone. Under Charlie Kirk, the group raised $389 million from 2012 to 2023, and conservative billionaires just love to give the group money. Even the existence of the alternative halftime show was a fundraising opportunity.

At first glance, the MAGA entertainment world seems similar to the closed world of evangelical entertainment that has been around for decades. However, that stuff is actually popular, albeit with a limited market. It’s telling that TPUSA didn’t pull any of those high-profile Christian recording artists, who arguably would be aligned with TPUSA’s values. Instead, they got a has-been who has a song bragging about statutory rape and some Nashville denizens whose phones aren’t ringing as much as they used to.

The right having such a tremendous amount of money warps the incentives here. No one needs to put on a good show. No one needs to get good ratings. External metrics are meaningless because the point was not to actually dethrone the NFL halftime show, a ludicrous proposition even if TPUSA had landed big performers. The point was just to be angry, to scream about Bad Bunny, and to offer a tepid, half-assed alternative that conservatives are forced to pretend was terrific.That’s true of Bari Weiss at CBS just as much as here. Normally, coming in and having your ratings immediately nosedive and making weird choices to put yourself on camera despite being not at all good at it would be serious missteps for a new leader.

But Weiss isn’t there to do good work. She’s there to push a right-wing agenda. And when she isn’t doing that, she’s got the most low-rent material imaginable, like putting her sister on air to talk about a random Free Press piece.It’s also true of Melania, the documentary that was really just a way for Jeff Bezos to bribe the president. Bezos spent $40 million to make the thing and another $35 million on advertising. Eager conservatives with smaller pocketbooks then had their own opportunity to suck up to Trump by purchasing massive amounts of tickets to artificially prop up sales.

But those moves only work one time, so sales for the second week of this epic tale dropped 67 percent. As with the TPUSA halftime show, there’s an attempt to pretend the film is an actual real piece of art and that people really want to see it, but why bother? The film has already served its dual purposes: letting Trump know just how far Bezos will go to curry favor and giving conservatives talking points about how Real America craves this sort of thing.

At best, this stuff is a waste of time, at worst, pure propaganda. But so many people behind it are in such an insular world that they have convinced themselves that everyone shares their fixations. Normally, that insularity would be pierced by the consistent failures of these projects, but with all that sweet right-wing cash, that never happens. These folks will continue making rage bait for each other, all the while telling themselves they are speaking to the majority of Americans.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Hey Kids! Meet 'Coalie,' New Mascot For The Trump Team's Climate Deniers

Hey Kids! Meet 'Coalie,' New Mascot For The Trump Team's Climate Deniers

Hey kids, it’s Coalie! He’s a cute and cuddly lump of coal wearing a hardhat, and he’s here to tell you just how great coal mining is and just how great the Trump administration is at mitigating the harms caused by coal mining.

Coalie made his debut Wednesday on the official government webpage for the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, a division of the Department of the Interior. OSMRE just dropped a listicle with the “10 Things to Know About How OSMRE Supports America’s Energy Legacy and Communities,” with Coalie as your guide.

This list is ostensibly about how OSMRE supports not only coal mining but also the reclamation efforts after coal mines are used up and abandoned. Sure, the amounts charged to coal companies to help pay for reclamation have plummeted over the years, and sure, there’s currently no pushback from this reclamation-loving administration over congressional efforts to strip money from a dedicated fund for mine cleanup and give it to the National Forest Service instead.

But just hear Coalie out, okay? Per the anthropomorphized talking lump of coal, one of the top 10 things OSMRE does is “evaluate potential environmental impacts of federal actions” as required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

Well, Coalie—we have to admit that balancing “responsible stewardship with opportunities for public input” does sound pretty great. But Coalie apparently overlooked that the administration is fast-tracking and minimizing NEPA reviews of proposed mines as part of an overall push to limit public input on environmental issues and drastically restrict environmental review. That sounds much more like no stewardship at all.

Oh Coalie, how could you lie to us?

Coalie also wants you to know that the Trump administration supports coal miners and their families.

“Each year, OSMRE transfers more than $1 billion to the United Mine Workers of America Health and Retirement Funds to support health care and pension benefits for eligible coal miners and their beneficiaries,” the website claims.

“Transfers” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. That’s because the federal government does not provide more than $1 billion per year in pensions and benefits to coal miners.

UMWA receives some federal funding, but is largely funded by premiums that coal companies are required by law to pay. The government is also responsible for transferring interest from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund to UMWA, but the AMRF is funded by fees assessed to coal companies for each ton of coal produced. So, what the administration and Coalie are bragging about here is quite literally just transferring the money collected from coal companies to the UMWA funds, as required by law.

Coalie, it sure feels like you’re trying to pull the wool over our eyes here.

Any attempt by this administration to say it prioritizes the health and safety of miners is undercut by its eagerness to make black lung disease great again by thwarting desperately needed regulations, such as one that would have restricted exposure to silica dust.

No one wants coal mining as much as President Donald Trump wants coal mining. Well, except maybe for Coalie.

Even coal companies don’t want coal mining as much as Trump or Coalie want coal mining. The administration has resorted to forcing energy companies to keep their aging coal plants open, even when they were already winding down operations and even though keeping them open would cost consumers more, not less. It also created a $625 million slush fund for coal plant owners to upgrade their aging plants rather than close them.

The Department of the Interior opened up a swath of public land to coal mining, eager to get cash from all those companies thrilled to pay for the privilege—only to find out that companies didn’t really want to do that at all and offered only a pittance for the land.

Apparently it is very hard to convince people—even coal industry people—that coal is super great. But hey, that’s just because they haven’t met Coalie yet. That cute little lump of coal is bound to turn things right around.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Defying GOP Leadership, House Passes Bill To Extend Obamacare Subsidies

Defying GOP Leadership, House Passes Bill To Extend Obamacare Subsidies

In a remarkable rebuke of Republican leadership, the House passed legislation Thursday, 230-196, that would extend expired health care subsidies for those who get coverage through the Affordable Care Act as renegade GOP lawmakers joined essentially all Democrats in voting for the measure.

Forcing the issue to a vote came about after a handful of Republicans signed on to a so-called “discharge petition” to unlock debate, bypassing objections from House Speaker Mike Johnson. The bill now goes to the Senate, where pressure is building for a similar bipartisan compromise.

Together, the rare political coalitions are rushing to resolve the standoff over the enhanced tax credits that were put in place during the COVID-19 crisis but expired late last year after no agreement was reached during the government shutdown.

“The affordability crisis is not a ‘hoax,’ it is very real — despite what Donald Trump has had to say,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, invoking the president's remarks.

“Democrats made clear before the government was shut down that we were in this affordability fight until we win this affordability fight,” he said. “Today we have an opportunity to take a meaningful step forward.”

Ahead of voting, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill, which would provide a three-year extension of the subsidy, would increase the nation's deficit by about $80.6 billion over the decade. At the same time, it would increase the number of people with health insurance by 100,000 this year, 3 million in 2027, 4 million in 2028 and 1.1 million in 2029, the CBO said.

Johnson (R-LA), worked for months to prevent this situation. His office argued Thursday that the federal health care funding from the COVID-19 era is ripe with fraud, pointing to an investigation in Minnesota, and urged a no vote.

On the floor, Republicans argued that the subsidies as structured have contributed to fraud and that the chamber should be focused on lowering health insurance costs for the broader population.

“Only 7% of the population relies on Obamacare marketplace plans. This chamber should be about helping 100% of Americans,” said Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

While the momentum from the vote shows the growing support for the tax breaks that have helped some 22 million Americans have access to health insurance, the Senate would be under no requirement to take up the House bill.

Instead, a small group of senators from both parties has been working on an alternative plan that could find support in both chambers and become law. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said that for any plan to find support in his chamber, it will need to have income limits to ensure that the financial aid is focused on those who most need the help. He and other Republicans also want to ensure that beneficiaries would have to at least pay a nominal amount for their coverage.

Finally, Thune said there would need to be some expansion of health savings accounts, which allow people to save money and withdraw it tax-free as long as the money is spent on qualified medical expenses.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who is part of the negotiations on reforms and subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, said there is agreement on addressing fraud in health care.

“We recognize that we have millions of people in this country who are going to lose — are losing, have lost — their health insurance because they can’t afford the premiums,” Shaheen said. “And so we’re trying to see if we can’t get to some agreement that’s going to help, and the sooner we can do that, the better.”

Trump has pushed Republicans to send money directly to Americans for health savings accounts so they can bypass the federal government and handle insurance on their own. Democrats largely reject this idea as insufficient for covering the high costs of health care.

Republicans go around their leaders

The action by Republicans to force a vote has been an affront to Johnson and his leadership team, who essentially lost control of what comes to the House floor as the Republican lawmakers joined Democrats for the workaround.

After last year’s government shutdown failed to resolve the issue, Johnson had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on another health care bill that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes.

But after days of discussions, Johnson and the GOP leadership sided with the more conservative wing, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up ACA, which they consider a failed government program. He offered a modest proposal of health care reforms that was approved, but has stalled.

It was then that rank-and-file lawmakers took matters into their own hands, as many of their constituents faced soaring health insurance premiums beginning this month.

Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York, signed the Democrats’ petition, pushing it to the magic number of 218 needed to force a House vote. All four represent key swing districts whose races will help determine which party takes charge of the House next year.

Trump encourages GOP to take on health care issue

What started as a long shot effort by Democrats to offer a discharge petition has become a political vindication of the Democrats’ government shutdown strategy as they fought to preserve the health care funds.

Democrats are making clear that the higher health insurance costs many Americans are facing will be a political centerpiece of their efforts to retake the majority in the House and Senate in the fall elections.

Trump, during a lengthy speech this week to House GOP lawmakers, encouraged his party to take control of the health care debate — an issue that has stymied Republicans since he tried, and failed, to repeal Obamacare during his first term.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos


Merry Christmas! Trump's Aid Cuts To Spike Child Mortality Worldwide In 2025

Merry Christmas! Trump's Aid Cuts To Spike Child Mortality Worldwide In 2025

For decades, the United States has played a major role in reducing child mortality. The Trump administration’s stance seems to be “well, what if we didn’t?”

The Gates Foundation issued a report Thursday that said about 200,000 more children worldwide under age five have died or will die this year compared with 2024. Last year saw 4.6 million children die before their age 5, but that is projected to increase to 4.8 million in 2025.

This is the first time this century that annual child deaths have increased. Child deaths have declined sharply since 1990, when 11.6 million children under 5 died. Nations made a concerted effort to drive that rate down, and it’s a genuine miracle that the number of deaths has been more than halved in just 35 years.

Bill Gates called the Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development “a gigantic mistake,” which undersells it. The United States played a big role in decreasing child deaths, and now we are playing a pretty big role in increasing them.

The administration shuttered USAID in July because that is apparently now a thing we let the president do, even though the power to create and eliminate agencies rests with Congress. The courts stood aside as well, letting President Donald Trump slash billions in foreign aid.

These cuts have already directly impacted hundreds of thousands of children.

In Ethiopia, the cuts mean a shortage of hospital staff, leading to children being discharged prematurely. In Nigeria, children are dying from malnutrition. The administration is so dedicated to abject cruelty that it even destroyed food bound for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, food that could have fed 1.5 million kids.

Impact Counter, which projects the human costs of these cuts, estimated that over 600,000 people have died, two-thirds of whom are children. Reviewing the breakdowns of that data and the methodology is an emotional gut punch. How do you feel about 14.7 million fewer children receiving treatment for pneumonia or diarrhea? How about roughly 168,000 children dying per year from malnutrition? And here’s malaria, where aid cuts are projected to lead to over 6 million additional child malaria cases.

Children are also at greater risk thanks to the arbitrary termination of maternal and child health funds. The administration did that even in the face of a USAID memo saying this would eliminate postnatal care for over 11 million children.

A modeling study published in The Lancet in April predicted that the cuts to this funding would reverse the decline in maternal and child deaths, with maternal mortality increasing 29 percent by 2040, under-five child deaths increasing by 23 percent in that time, and stillbirths by 13 percent. These are grim, brutal numbers, and Trump owns them.

The United States has removed itself from the global stage, stepping away from obligations and refusing to see itself as part of the larger world. Sure, millions of children may die, but that’s just the price we pay for “America First.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Bondi's Delay In Epstein Files Disclosure Irritates Bipartisan Congressional Group

Bondi's Delay In Epstein Files Disclosure Irritates Bipartisan Congressional Group

A bipartisan group of congressional leaders has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi for a briefing on when, exactly, she’s going to get around to releasing the Epstein files.

They picked a good day to send a letter to Bondi, as the House Oversight Committee Democrats just released a trove of pictures and videos from Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, including an incredibly creepy photo of a room with what appears to be a dentist’s chair and multiple deeply weird wall hangings.

They also reportedly plan to release records from J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank soon.

The administration is no doubt incandescent with rage that two Republicans—Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky— signed onto this letter. But it’s not surprising, given that they were two lead sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The letter was also signed by several Democrats—including Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, and Rep. Ro Khanna of California—who might be particularly interested in a new investigation focused solely on Democrats.

All of these Democrats need to be investigated, you see, because of “information [that] has come forward, new information, additional information,” according to Bondi.

But it’s far more likely that this so-called investigation is just Bondi doing President Donald Trump’s bidding.

Trump very much wants to target Democrats, but he also very, very, very much wants to hide any potential mention of him in the Epstein files. After being battered with bad headlines, Trump went on Truth Social to demand Bondi investigate Epstein’s connections to “Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”

Still, Bondi claims that she’s not doing this at the behest of Trump, but because of all that new information. That’s basically an invitation for members of Congress to say, “Well, do tell!” But since it’s highly likely that Bondi doesn’t actually have anything, she’ll probably refuse to respond by December 5, as the letter requests.

It’s also quite possible that this brand-new investigation is just an attempt to stall. The law mandating the release of the Epstein files has a giant loophole, allowing the DOJ to withhold anything that might jeopardize an active federal investigation. So it’s pretty convenient that there’s suddenly an active federal investigation.

It was never a question of whether the administration would try to dodge the 30-day deadline to release the files, but rather a question of how it would go about it. Looks like we’ve found out.

However, with both parties keeping the pressure on and Democrats’ steady drip, drip, drip of files, Bondi is going to have to work really hard to protect her boss—and she can’t keep “investigating” forever.

It’s clear she knows that a reckoning is coming. She can delay it, but she can’t stop it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Yet Another Grift -- Trump Mobile! -- Evaporates Like All Their Family Scams

Yet Another Grift -- Trump Mobile! -- Evaporates Like All Their Family Scams

Back in June, the grifty Trump family launched its Trump-branded cell service and super-luxe Trump T1 smartphone with maximum hype and minimal details. Now, five months later, neither is anywhere to be found.

We were told that the phone would be sleek, gold, made in the United States, and somehow only $499. And you could use your Trump phone on the Trump Mobile service for a mere monthly fee of $47—yes, you know why it’s that number. All you had to do to secure one was put down a $100 deposit—because who wouldn’t want to do that?

NBC News actually tried to buy the phone, dutifully paying the $100 down payment back in August. Since then, the network has waited. And waited. And waited.

According to NBC, it received “no proactive updates” since placing the order. That seems to be just a fancy way to say that the company went radio silent after shaking down the rubes. NBC called the support linefive times between September and November, only to get the runaround about the phone’s release.

In October, the support line said that the phone would ship on Nov. 13—which has come and gone with no Trump phone of any kind, much less a sleek, gold, American-made bargain.

After NBC followed up again, a customer service representative said that the delivery would be at the “beginning of December.”Why the delay? Well, the government shutdown, according to the customer service representative.

Not really beating the accusations that the Trump Organization is inextricably connected with the presidency here. If it’s just a private project of President Donald Trump’s sons, then why would it be affected by the government shutdown?

The details of this excellent—yet somehow nonexistent—phone keep changing. References to the phone being made in the United States are no longer anywhere to be found on the Trump Mobile website. Now, it’s going to be “brought to life right here in the USA. With American hands behind every device” and with an “American-proud design.”

The phone itself is also in a state of flux. The original offering looked like a gold-plated iPhone, but when Trump Mobile started taking preorders in August, it changed to looked like a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, photoshopped with the T1 logo and an American flag. The phone also now appears to be in a Spigen case—because they literally forgot to remove the Spigen logo.

The dimensions of the phone also seem to have changed between June and August. In June, the phone had a 6.78-inch screen. But by August, it changed to a 6.25-inch screen.

The Trump Mobile T1 smartphone as depicted on Trump Mobile websiteScreenshot from trumpmobile.com

But surely Trump Mobile is going gangbusters, right? Even if you can’t show your patriotism with an ugly Trump-branded phone, you can at least prove you’re a real American by using Trump Mobile cell service, right?

Wrong.

First of all, it’s not actually Trump Mobile’s network. It’s just a licensing deal, with the Trump family slapping its name on Liberty Mobile Wireless, which operates a mobile virtual network operator on the T-Mobile network. An MVNO is a carrier that buys bandwidth on large networks like Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T. So if you’re using Trump Mobile, you’re actually just using Liberty Mobile, which is actually just operating on T-Mobile.

And good luck finding out if Trump Mobile actually exists. News reports touting its existence are all from June, when the Trump sons first made their launch. Since then, the only development seems to have been the company deleting its coverage map because it failed to label the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America.”

Definitely focusing on what matters to bring this thing to market.

The Trump phone will join Trump University and the Trump video phone as a way to steal from MAGA’s most loyal suckers. It was bad enough when Trump did this as a private citizen—but it’s extremely gross watching him get away with it as president.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Trump Offers 'Nazi Streak' Ingrassia A Top Federal Position That Needs No Senate Vote

Trump Offers 'Nazi Streak' Ingrassia A Top Federal Position That Needs No Senate Vote

Guess who’s back? It’s Paul Ingrassia! With a new government gig!

That’s right! It’s everyone’s favorite far-right troll who was a fake lawyer for Andrew Tate who became a Trump nominee who lost his shot at running the Office of Special Counsel after his self-professed “Nazi streak” came to light. Hoo boy, remember that? Even having his mommy yell at Democrats for being mean to him somehow did not save that nomination.

But listen, as a creepy little racist baby, Ingrassia is entitled to a high-level job in this administration. It’s his birthright!

So what to do, what to do, if you are such a bad bet that even Trump knows that the Senate won’t confirm you? Yes, the same Senate that has confirmed totally coherent and sane and qualified luminaries like FBI Director Kash Patel and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Given that this administration’s motto seems to be “no Nazis left behind,” we probably should have expected Ingrassia to turn back up. The administration just needed to find a position that Ingrassia was wholly unqualified for but that didn’t require Senate confirmation.

Voila! Ingrassia is your new deputy general counsel of the General Services Administration, America. Get hyped.

Politico broke the news, describing it as “Trump taps Ingrassia for new role after texting scandal.”

“Texting scandal” is a pretty polite term for saying actual things like “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,” and “MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his 'holiday' should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs.”

No doubt underneath all that racism he’s a swell guy.

Ingrassia is now essentially second-in-command to the chief legal officer of a sprawling government agency that handles procurement, real estate, construction, and other professional services and has about 12,000 employees. The General Counsel’s office advises and represents GSA officials, drafts legislation, and liaises with other federal agencies.

Sure, that’s a job that normally houses people with decades of legal experience, where Ingrassia finished law school in 2022 and only joined the bar in New York last year.

But have you considered that Ingrassia, per Wikipedia, has a “Substack page [that] has been cited by President Donald Trump on several occasions; in January 2024, Trump repeated Ingrassia's false claim that Nikki Haley was ineligible to serve as president.”

Can’t learn that valuable kind of stuff at law school or some stuffy law job where they mind if you’re a Nazi.

If you’ve been worried that Ingrassia was going hungry, down on his luck, and out of a job while waiting for this, worry no more. After the OSC nomination debacle, he just stayed right where he had been before getting the nod: White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security.

Guys, he sent the sweetest goodbye to his colleagues!

It’s been the greatest honor to serve Secretary [Kristi] Noem and President Trump, alongside all of you. I genuinely feel this is the strongest group of political appointees anywhere in the federal government, which is a credit to not just this group’s work ethic, but above all, its character and integrity.

These must be definitions of “work ethic” and “character and integrity” that we were hitherto unaware of.

Ingrassia also let slip that Trump personally called him into the office to offer him the job. And why wouldn’t he? Ingrassia is exactly the kind of employee Trump values: vicious, underqualified, and wholly in thrall to Dear Leader.

Sorry in advance, GSA workers.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Halligan's Retribution Prosecutions Of Comey and James Are Falling Apart Fast

Halligan's Retribution Prosecutions Of Comey and James Are Falling Apart Fast

Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan is not having a good time.

Sure, indicting people because President Donald Trump said so was probably a bit of a rush, but now she’s stuck with two high-profile cases where the only help she has is prosecutors borrowed from other districts, since no one in her office would agree to handle these travesties.

While Halligan is running these cases on a shoestring, former FBI Director James Comey is going HAM and filing motion after motion to get rid of both Halligan and the indictment she secured against him.

He’s assembled a giant team of high-powered, experienced attorneys, and they are absolutely burying Halligan in a flurry of motions —an excellent strategy against an inexperienced prosecutor. Now, Halligan has to respond to all of these, and meanwhile, time marches on. Both Comey’s case and Halligan’s prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James are on the rocket docket, so Halligan has to simultaneously prepare for two big trials scheduled just a few weeks apart in January.

Comey had already filed two earlier motions to dismiss, one based on Halligan being illegally appointed and one alleging vindictive and selective prosecution. This week, he added three more.

First, he filed a motion to force the government to disclose the grand jury proceedings. Normally, grand juries are entitled to a “presumptionof regularity,” meaning the actions of the grand jury are presumed to be reasonable. But if a defendant can point to significant irregularities, they can get access to the grand jury materials.

Here, Comey points to two significant irregularities. First, it appears there may have been a tainted witness—an FBI agent who may have had access to privileged material between Comey and his attorneys, which would be covered by the attorney-client privilege. If the agent provided the grand jury with attorney-client information in an effort to buttress the indictment against Comey, that’s a big problem.

Additionally, Comey alleges that Halligan kept the grand jury well into the evening instead of sending them home after they refused to indict Comey on three counts. She then presented the two-count indictment and kept the jury until nearly 7 PM. Comey wants access to those proceedings to see if Halligan basically told the jury they couldn’t leave until they indicted him.

That might sound fanciful and ridiculous in a normal case with a normal prosecutor—a long-shot complaint. But this is no normal case, and Halligan is no normal prosecutor, so it’s not hard to imagine her thinking it’s totally appropriate to hammer a grand jury until she got what she wanted.

He’s also filed a motion for a bill of particulars. A defendant is supposed to know the basis for the charges against them so they can prepare for trial. But the indictment Halligan presented has literally no information about the factual basis for charging Comey. So, Comey is asking for all of it, and let’s face it: We know that whatever Halligan has as material supporting her fact-free indictment is probably pretty sparse.

If that wasn’t enough, Comey also filed a motion to dismiss the indictment “based on fundamental ambiguity and literal truth.” That’s a mouthful, but what it’s about is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s mangled, multi-part questions to Comey, creating confusion as to what, exactly, he was asking Comey about. The “literal truth” part is precisely what it sounds like—that Comey says he was literally truthful when responding to Cruz. Of course, if Comey was truthful, the whole indictment falls apart.

Meanwhile, in the Letitia James case …Halligan charged James with fraud over lying to her bank to get a better mortgage on a second home, but then renting it out in violation of the “Second Home Rider” contract. But there is language in her contract that says she can use the home “including short-term rentals.” In fact, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that a second home rider means the property “may be rented out on a short-term basis.”

James’ grand-niece lives in the home and testified to a different grand jury convened by Halligan that she had lived there for many years without paying rent. But then Halligan didn’t put the grand-niece before the grand jury that ultimately indicted James. That looks a lot like Halligan withheld material—that could have shown James’s innocence—from the grand jury that ultimately indicted James.

Halligan is overmatched and, honestly, seems to think her job ended after she secured indictments. Even though she’s gotten Justice Department attorneys from other jurisdictions to help out, that assistance can’t remedy the deficiencies in her indictments.

These experienced defense attorneys are not going to let up, and by now, Halligan has to feel like a mouse being batted around in a cat’s claws.

How long do we give her before she quits? Of course, if either of these indictments gets dismissed, Halligan might be purged by the same people who installed her in the job.

Perhaps she’ll go back to her previous job in the administration, where she got to singlehandedly remove any material from the Smithsonian museums that made white people sad, like exhibits about slavery.

She’s not qualified for that either, of course. But it’s got to be easier than her current thankless gig.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Peripatetic Patel Is Vacuuming Up Taxpayers' Cash On FBI Jet Trips

Peripatetic Patel Is Vacuuming Up Taxpayers' Cash On FBI Jet Trips

FBI Director Kash Patel is committed to making the most of his time as the unlikely, unqualified head of the nation’s law enforcement agency.

No, he’s not building big cases or figuring out better ways to keep people safe. Instead, Patel is making the most of the perks of his job. Well, not perks, really. More like just a straight-up misuse of government resources.

You may recall that, despite being the nation’s top law enforcement official, a job one would think required a lot of hands-on attention, Patel has not seen fit to fully relocate to Washington. Instead, Patel likes hanging out in Las Vegas in a house owned by a timeshare tycoon pal. He’s also down with staying in Nashville, where his girlfriend lives.

Must be tough managing a house in Vegas, a girl in Nashville, and a job in Washington, right?

Well, not if you just use the FBI jet, which also frees you up to get to your fave sporting events. So why not slurp up some taxpayer dollars to use that FBI jet to go on a date to see your girlfriend sing at a wrestling match at Penn State? Better still, it was a hella dumb thing called “Real American Freestyle,” a professional wrestling promotion co-founded by none other than Hulk Hogan.

Aren’t you glad that your money went to this?

The girlfriend in question, Alexis Wilkins, is ostensibly a country singer, but most of her output seems to be singing at events like this garbage and Turning Point USA gatherings. But Patel really, really loves to see her sing, apparently, so he seems to have taken the FBI jet from Virginia to State College and then back to Nashville.

It’s always nice when you can give your girlfriend a ride home, right? And even better if that ride home is on a private jet paid for by the taxpayers.

Despite all this, Patel is putting out the word that he works so hard every day. He’s too modest to say so, of course. So his extremely pliant deputy, Dan Bongino—yes, the guy so bad at his job that he now has a co-deputy babysitter—went on Fox to insist that Patel works 13 hours per day, getting to the office at 6 AM and not leaving before 7 PM.

This is as much of a lie as the one about how President Donald Trump works all day, every day, long into the night, when we all know what he’s really doing is watching television and drinking Diet Coke.

In reality, much like the man who appointed him, Patel has already cut down on the briefings he will attend, in part because he just can’t make it to the office by 8:30 AM. Well, yeah—he’s got to get there from Las Vegas or Nashville or wherever. You can’t expect him to be on time every day.

Aside from his lazy grifting, Patel is also a terrible boss, threatening polygraphs and firing people with the remotest connection to someone Trump doesn’t like.

Well, if Patel loses his job at any point, he can fall back on his merchandising skills. If you’re in need of a tacky sweatshirt with a graphic that is a mashup of Trump and The Punisher, Patel has you covered with his K$H hoodies.

It’s always good to have a side gig, though kind of unusual when you’re the FBI director. But his terrible clothing is just another way to show a cult-like devotion to Trump, which will probably keep him (un)gainfully employed by the federal government for the next few years.

What Are The Actual Plans For Trump's Ballroom? Nobody Knows, Including Him

What Are The Actual Plans For Trump's Ballroom? Nobody Knows, Including Him

The East Wing of the White House was reduced to a pile of rubble last week in a hasty, brutal demolition that shocked the country. Now, it’s time to build President Donald Trump’s big, dumb, gilded bribe palace—but no one knows exactly what that entails.

The New York Times tried to figure this out, looking at the plans—which Trump waved around in the Oval Office—posted on the White House website and a physical model of the ballroom.

And guess what? None of them are the same.

Honestly, of course they aren’t. This is all being done on the fly, subject to Trump’s daily whims. The ballroom could hold 650 people, or maybe 1,350—it’s a mystery! Maybe it will cost $200 million, maybe $300 million. Wait, scratch that—it’s $350 million. Definitely $350 million.

You might find it odd that construction is already starting on a building that has multiple building plans—where one version of the ballroom holds nearly twice the other, with a price tag that increases by about $50 million every time you turn around.

You fool! You rube! You just don’t understand how construction works! Let White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt school you.

“With any construction project, changes come. And we have informed all of you, we've been keeping you apprised of this project. We've shown you the renderings,” she said.Well, yes. It’s the fact that there are renderings plural that is the problem here. All we really know for sure is that it will be 90,000 square feet, or nearly double the size of the White House, which stands at 55,000 square feet—at least until Trump destroyed the East Wing.

Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s garden is also gone, as are two magnolia trees that were planted in the 1940s to honor former Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt. And why not? Trump doesn’t want to honor any past presidents. He only wants to honor himself.

Even the small details are inconsistent in Trump’s plans for the ballroom, including the number of decorative columns and staircases. There’s also the small problem of the renderings having physically impossible features, like a stairway to nowhere and overlapping windows.

To be frank, it looks a lot like someone just used AI to render a crappy facsimile of Mar-a-Lago.

Maybe these plans all look like haphazard, slightly different versions of golden crap because McCrery Architects, which is designing the ballroom, mostly builds churches—not ballrooms. However, James McCrery, the firm’s owner, is a hard-right religious zealot and has also designed buildings for Hillsdale College, the right’s beloved ultraconservative school.

But Trump knows that the companies showering him with money for this project don’t actually care about the ballroom's aesthetics or who builds it; it’s just another opportunity to curry favor with the president.

And Trump certainly doesn’t care about quality. He revels in gilded everything, a king in the world’s tackiest castle. He’s created a perfect ecosystem of grift without oversight or public input.

And what do we get? A comically ill-designed piece of garbage where the People’s House used to be.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

New ICE Recruits Failing To Meet Agency's Minimal Qualifications

New ICE Recruits Failing To Meet Agency's Minimal Qualifications

The Department of Homeland Security is positively awash in cash to hire Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons galore, but it turns out that all that money is not enough to buy even marginal talent.

NBC News is out with a report about ICE’s current training regime, or lack thereof, and it’s tough to figure out what part is worst. Is it the part where new recruits are starting training before DHS has finished vetting them, a thing that seems sort of suboptimal for law enforcement jobs? Is it the part where ICE only figures out mid-training that recruits have failed drug tests, have criminal backgrounds, or can’t meet the physical and academic requirements? Is it the part where recruits don’t submit their fingerprints for background checks even though ICE requires that as part of the hiring process?

Oooh, wait! How about the recruit who had a charge for strong-arm robbery and battery? From a domestic violence incident? Simply the best people.

Look, the administration is doing everything it can to smooth the path forward for wannabe fascists, but how much more can they do? Training had been slashed from 13 weeks to eight, and is now down to six weeks. The fitness requirements are startlingly low-key for a job that ostensibly requires you to be able to chase people down, but more than a third of the new recruits couldn’t do the required 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.

Almost half of the new recruits who arrived for training in the last three months were sent home because they couldn’t pass an open-book written exam on the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Fourth Amendment. To be fair, it isn’t like the administration cares if any of these people follow the law, but presumably they have to go through this fiction.

And ICE is pulling out all the stops to get recruits in the door. ICE and Border Patrol retirees are being wooed back with the promise of up to a $50,000 hiring bonus.

Also, no more pesky age limits! “Border czar” and bribe aficionado Tom Homan says age is only a number, baby! “I'm 63 and I love to put a badge and gun on and go out there and do these things,” Homan said in August.

The administration is trying to make all of this look less pathetic, explaining that these are just the new recruits that suck. Experienced law enforcement officers don’t have to go through the fitness test but can instead “self-certify” that they are plenty fit.

The administration wants more agents because it is convinced that part of the bottleneck in hitting the 3,000/day arrest goal set by deputy White House chief of staff and Chief Nazi Stephen Miller is a lack of staff. Surely, if there are thousands more ICE agents, they will be able to arrest even more people with no criminal records to try to hit the mark.

Meanwhile, any federal law enforcement that isn’t about hurting immigrants is on hold, as the administration froze all other training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, preventing dozens of other federal law enforcement agencies from training.

Trump can shower all the money on people and eliminate every last training requirement, but it doesn’t seem like it is possible to water down the requirements much more than they already are. They’ll probably just get rid of all the physical and academic requirements, knock out the rule that you can’t have a criminal background, and just give the worst people in the country weapons and unfettered power.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

She's Prosecuting Comey For Trump, But Lindsey Halligan Isn't Having Any Fun

She's Prosecuting Comey For Trump, But Lindsey Halligan Isn't Having Any Fun

Sure, they said: Go take a job as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, even though you’re not qualified, they said. It’ll be fun to be Trump’s Best Little Hatchet and go after his enemies, they said.

By all measures, Lindsey Halligan is very much not having fun these days, just a month or so into her tenure at a job she holds not based on her skills, but instead on her willingness to prosecute and persecute Trump’s enemies. Sure, she got indictments against both former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, but apparently no one told Halligan that the indictment is only the beginning.

Now, to be fair, by securing indictments, Halligan is at least doing better than U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. Pirro is busy putting up unprecedented numbers of grand juries refusing to indict on the comically inflated charges she keeps bringing.

But, the way things are unfolding, Halligan might be wishing she’d gotten no-billed on the Comey indictment and could just walk away.

On Sunday, Halligan filed a comically broad demand for a protective order, basically contending that Comey could never be left alone with discovery in the case for … reasons. The thing reads like a book report about protective orders, complete with one of Halligan’s justifications being that she looked up some other protective orders in criminal cases in the Eastern District of Virginia, and this was just like those!Reader, it was not just like those.

By Tuesday, Halligan had her answer from the judge: LOL nope. The request that basically all material in the case be subject to a protective order and that Comey not be able to access it, save for in the presence of his attorneys, was far too broad, said U.S. Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff, and would hinder Comey’s ability to prepare for trial.

Halligan also tried another motion designed to slow-walk the government’s obligation to produce discovery by pushing out a standard discovery deadline, and that didn’t work out either.

Halligan would be outmatched anywhere, but no more so than EDVA, the home of the rocket docket. Cases race through this district court. It’s a whole thing. Comey’s trial is already scheduled to begin on January 5, 2026. If Comey had requested it, the court was prepared for an even earlier start date in December.

Well, at least Halligan did find some prosecutors to help her with the case. Sure, she had to go outside her own office—the office she is literally in charge of!—and get two DOJ lawyers from North Carolina assigned to the case.

At least those two have some experience in prosecution, a thing Halligan very much does not. But hopefully, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gabriel Diaz and Nathaniel Lemons have some right-wing sinecure gig lined up for after this thing crashes and burns, because baby, it’s going to crash and burn.

Comey has already said he is going to file a motion of unlawful appointment, arguing that Halligan is just as improperly in her office as two of Trump’s other top-tier picks, Alina Habba and Sigal Chattah. Both Habba and Chattah have been ruled ineligible to hold their U.S. attorney offices because the complicated machinations Trump has gone through to avoid submitting their nominations to the Senate are, well, illegal.

Given that Halligan is also in her role via a shady temporary appointment rather than Senate confirmation, Comey’s move is in no way an empty threat.

Turns out that while it’s fun to do press conferences and get indictments on threadbare nonsense, it sucks to actually do the work of prosecuting. Does anyone want to lay odds on how long Halligan lasts?

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos