#how old is pam bondi

[sohan121]

3 takeaways from Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearing Reed More

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John Buss

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 9, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 09, 2025

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order “protecting Second Amendment rights.” The order calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine all gun regulations in the U.S. to make sure they don’t infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms. The executive order says that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”

In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.

The United States Constitution that establishes the framework for our democratic government sets out how the American people will write the laws that govern us. We elect members to a Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That congress of our representatives holds “all legislative powers”; that is, Congress alone has the right to make laws. It alone has the power to levy taxes on the American people, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, declare war, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper.”

After Congress writes, debates, and passes a measure, the Constitution establishes that it goes to the president, who is also elected, through “electors,” by the people. The president can either sign a measure into law or veto it, returning it to Congress where members can either repass it over his veto or rewrite it. But once a law is on the books, the president must enforce it. The men who framed the Constitution wrote that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” When President Richard Nixon tried to alter laws passed by Congress by withholding the funding Congress had appropriated to put them into effect, Congress shut that down quickly, passing a law explicitly making such “impoundment” illegal.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the federal courts have taken on the duty of “judicial review,” the process of determining whether a law falls within the rules of the Constitution.

Right now, the Republicans hold control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. They have the power to change any laws they want to change according to the formula Americans have used since 1789 when the Constitution went into effect.

But they are not doing that. Instead, officials in the Trump administration, as well as billionaire Elon Musk— who put $290 million into electing Trump and Republicans, and whose actual role in the government remains unclear— are making unilateral changes to programs established by Congress. Through executive orders and announcements from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” they have sidelined Congress, and Republicans are largely mum about the seizure of their power.

Now MAGA Republicans are trying to neuter the judiciary.

After yet another federal judge stopped the Musk/Trump onslaught by temporarily blocking Musk and his team from accessing Americans’ records from Treasury Department computers, MAGA Republicans attacked judges. “Outrageous,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted, spreading the lie that the judge barred the Secretary of the Treasury from accessing the information, although in fact he temporarily barred Treasury Secretary Bessent from granting access to others. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said the decision had “the feel of…a judicial” coup. Right-wing legal scholar Adrian Vermeule called it “[j]udicial interference with legitimate acts of state.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who would take over the office of the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump can no longer perform the duties of the office, posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted: “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. Vermeule knows this, of course. So does Vance.” Of Vance’s statement, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice added: “this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders.”

The Republicans have the power to make the changes they want through the exercise of their constitutional power, but they are not doing so. This seems in part because Trump and his MAGA supporters want to establish the idea that the president cannot be checked. And this dovetails with the fact they are fully aware that most Americans oppose their plans. Voters were so opposed to the plan outlined in Project 2025—the plan now in operation—that Trump ran from it during the campaign. Popular support for Musk’s participation in the government has plummeted as well. A poll from The Economist/YouGov released February 5 says that only 13% of adult Americans want him to have “a lot” of influence, while 96% of respondents said that jobs and the economy were important to them and 41% said they thought the economy was getting worse.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans know they cannot get the extreme changes they wanted through Congress, so they are, instead, dictating them. And Musk began his focus at the Treasury, establishing control over the payment system that manages the money American taxpayers pay to our government.

Musk and MAGA officials claim they are combating waste and fraud, but in fact, when Judge Carl Nichols stopped Trump from shutting down USAID, he specifically said that government lawyers had offered no support for that argument in court. Indeed, the U.S. government already has the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that audits, evaluates and investigates government programs for Congress. In 2023 the GAO returned about $84 for every $1 invested in it, in addition to suggesting improvements across the government.

Until Trump fired 18 of them when he took office, major departments also had their own independent inspectors general, charged with preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government and promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government operations and programs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigates corruption, including that committed by healthcare providers.

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies.

But Trump has been gutting congressional oversight, apparently wanting to make sure that no one can oversee the president. Rather than rooting out waste and corruption in the government, Musk and his ilk have launched a hostile takeover to turn the United States of America into a business that will return huge profits to those leaders who, in the process of moving fast and breaking things, are placing themselves at the center of the lives of 332 million people. Breaking into the U.S. Treasury payment system puts Musk and his DOGE team at the head of the country’s nerve center.

The vision they are enacting rips predictability, as well as economic security, away from farmers, who are already protesting the loss of their markets with the attempted destruction of USAID. It hurts the states—especially Republican-dominated states—that depend on funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education. Their vision excludes consumers, who are set to lose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as protections put in place by President Joe Biden. Their vision takes away protections for racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, as well as from women, and kills funding for the programs that protect all of us, such as cancer research and hospitals.

Musk and Trump appear to be concentrating the extraordinary wealth of the American people, along with the power that wealth brings, into their own hands, for their own ends. Trump has championed further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while Musk seems to want to make sure his companies, especially SpaceX, win as many government contracts as possible to fund his plan to colonize Mars.

But the mission of the United States of America is not, and has never been, to return huge profits to a few leaders.

The mission of the United States of America is stated in the Constitution. It is a government designed by “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Far from being designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a single man, it was formed to do the opposite: spread wealth and power throughout the country’s citizenry and enable them to protect their rights by voting for those who would represent them in Congress and the presidency, then holding them accountable at the ballot box.

The people who think that bearing arms is central to maintaining American rights are the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by storming the United States Capitol because they do not command the votes to put their policies in place through the exercise of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mugiwara-lucy]

You libtards stopped a Kennedy from even running in the primary, denied him secret service protection and told Big Tech to censor and ban him when all he ever wanted was healthier food and safer medicine but don't you worry Pam Bondi will set you all straight and help get revenge on everyone who ever wronged him :) MAHA! Oh and I hope you like Vance because after 2029 Vance will be President for eight years and then once he's done Barron Trump will be your president :)

Fuck Pam Bondi. That bitch is a corrupt witch like the rest of MAGAs who helped cover up fraud at Shitbreak's university.

And yeah how dare people get pissed over an Anti-Vaccine quack that got 80+children killed with his Anti-Vax bullshit as well as saying black people need to be "resilient" to racism (while ignoring white people being racist) and opposed Confederate soldiers' statues coming down.

Fuck this insane old quack and he needs to put better make up on his face 😂

And fuck that creepy potential future rapist. Shitbreak's approval rating is dying DAILY and people don't really like his dumb ass children.

[coochiequeens]

Vance said the following at the anti-abortion March for Life in January: “I want more babies in the United States of America. I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”

Is Vance willing to help the economy so young people can be eager to start a family? Or is he going to be OK with. Or more money being spent of foster care because the potential adoptive parents from even 10 years ago are now sinking their hopes (and money) into IVF and surrogacy to have biological offspring

By Susan Rinkunas  |  March 4, 2025 |

It’s no secret that conservatives want to ban abortion pills or make them so much harder to obtain that they’re effectively banned. It’s also no secret that a number of freaks currently running our country are obsessed with everyone popping out babies. What we don’t know at this point is which tactics they’ll use to push their anti-abortion, pro-natalist agenda or how they’ll rationalize further limits on abortion access.

One tool Republicans could use would be misapplying the 19th-century Comstock Act to prevent sending the medications mifepristone and misoprostol in the mail. (Nearly two-thirds of all reported abortions in 2023 were done with abortion pills.) In a January letter, activists urged the Department of Justice to begin enforcing the zombie anti-obscenity law that bans sending abortion drugs or devices in the mail. (The Biden administration said the dusty old law shouldn’t be applied to legal abortions, but they’re not in office anymore.) In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi raised alarm bells when she told a Louisiana prosecutor she “would love to work with [him]” on a criminal case against a New York doctor who allegedly mailed abortion pills to a woman and her teen daughter. Bondi could be signaling that she’s open to prosecuting the physician under Comstock, but we have to wait to find out.

This week, one anti-abortion activist implored Bondi to enforce Comstock and gave two rationalizations: One, it could possibly bankrupt abortion providers and, two, it could maybe help with the country’s declining birth rate. 

Rev. Jim Harden, the CEO of a crisis pregnancy center chain called CompassCare, said in a Monday interview with an apparent right-wing outlet called Just the News that Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of abortions and gets millions of dollars from the government from programs like Medicaid. “It’s the biggest abortion business, probably on the planet,” Harden said. “If they shut down, it’s going to be good for women. There’s so many fantastic pro-life pregnancy centers.”

Harden then not-so-subtly hinted that Bondi could achieve the GOP goal of “defunding” Planned Parenthood by hitting them with Comstock prosecutions for actions that occurred even before Trump took office a second time.

“If Pam Bondi decides that she wants to enforce the Comstock Act, which basically says it’s illegal to ship chemical abortion drugs across state lines—and by the way, that’s 60% of all abortions in America right now is chemical abortion—the Comstock Act would essentially bankrupt the abortion industry in a very short period of time, because one violation is [up to] a $250,000 fine with a five-year statute of limitations, plus racketing charges,” he said.

But it got worse. He then claimed that abortion was “decimating minority communities” and that conservatives needed to focus more on women and children, specifically, making the former produce more of the latter. “Our country is facing a baby shortage,” Harden said. “We have a fertility problem in this country, not because women can’t have babies but because abortion is decimating the population.”

This sounds like a dog whistle tuned precisely for the pro-natalist creep ears of shadow president Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance. Musk has 14 children that we know of, and Vance said the following at the anti-abortion March for Life in January: “I want more babies in the United States of America. I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them.”

Few people make this birthrate argument against abortion pills, but the ones that do sound extremely weird. The Attorneys General of Kansas, Idaho, and Missouri claim in a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration that easier access to medication abortion is lowering teen birth rates in their states, which could reduce their population and lead to losing seats in Congress and federal funds. (In June, the Supreme Court said the original plaintiffs in this case weren’t harmed by the FDA’s actions and thereby didn’t have legal standing to sue, but the state AGs marched into a notorious anti-abortion judge’s courtroom and he said they can continue the litigation.)

Abortion is not the reason the birthrate is falling. That would be unchecked capitalism where working people don’t make enough money to feed and clothe children, let alone afford housing big enough for families, and aren’t guaranteed paid leave to recover from birth. Plus, the proliferation of abortion bans has led to more people choosing permanent sterilization rather than risk being forced to carry pregnancies that could kill or disable them and then parent children they don’t want. Food for thought, Pam!

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 10

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order “protecting Second Amendment rights.” The order calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine all gun regulations in the U.S. to make sure they don’t infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms. The executive order says that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”

In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.

The United States Constitution that establishes the framework for our democratic government sets out how the American people will write the laws that govern us. We elect members to a Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That congress of our representatives holds “all legislative powers”; that is, Congress alone has the right to make laws. It alone has the power to levy taxes on the American people, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, declare war, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper.”

After Congress writes, debates, and passes a measure, the Constitution establishes that it goes to the president, who is also elected, through “electors,” by the people. The president can either sign a measure into law or veto it, returning it to Congress where members can either repass it over his veto or rewrite it. But once a law is on the books, the president must enforce it. The men who framed the Constitution wrote that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” When President Richard Nixon tried to alter laws passed by Congress by withholding the funding Congress had appropriated to put them into effect, Congress shut that down quickly, passing a law explicitly making such “impoundment” illegal.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the federal courts have taken on the duty of “judicial review,” the process of determining whether a law falls within the rules of the Constitution.

Right now, the Republicans hold control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. They have the power to change any laws they want to change according to the formula Americans have used since 1789 when the Constitution went into effect.

But they are not doing that. Instead, officials in the Trump administration, as well as billionaire Elon Musk— who put $290 million into electing Trump and Republicans, and whose actual role in the government remains unclear— are making unilateral changes to programs established by Congress. Through executive orders and announcements from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” they have sidelined Congress, and Republicans are largely mum about the seizure of their power.

Now MAGA Republicans are trying to neuter the judiciary.

After yet another federal judge stopped the Musk/Trump onslaught by temporarily blocking Musk and his team from accessing Americans’ records from Treasury Department computers, MAGA Republicans attacked judges. “Outrageous,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted, spreading the lie that the judge barred the Secretary of the Treasury from accessing the information, although in fact he temporarily barred Treasury Secretary Bessent from granting access to others. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said the decision had “the feel of…a judicial” coup. Right-wing legal scholar Adrian Vermeule called it “[j]udicial interference with legitimate acts of state.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who would take over the office of the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump can no longer perform the duties of the office, posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted: “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. Vermeule knows this, of course. So does Vance.” Of Vance’s statement, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice added: “this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders.”

The Republicans have the power to make the changes they want through the exercise of their constitutional power, but they are not doing so. This seems in part because Trump and his MAGA supporters want to establish the idea that the president cannot be checked. And this dovetails with the fact they are fully aware that most Americans oppose their plans. Voters were so opposed to the plan outlined in Project 2025—the plan now in operation—that Trump ran from it during the campaign. Popular support for Musk’s participation in the government has plummeted as well. A poll from The Economist/YouGov released February 5 says that only 13% of adult Americans want him to have “a lot” of influence, while 96% of respondents said that jobs and the economy were important to them and 41% said they thought the economy was getting worse.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans know they cannot get the extreme changes they wanted through Congress, so they are, instead, dictating them. And Musk began his focus at the Treasury, establishing control over the payment system that manages the money American taxpayers pay to our government.

Musk and MAGA officials claim they are combating waste and fraud, but in fact, when Judge Carl Nichols stopped Trump from shutting down USAID, he specifically said that government lawyers had offered no support for that argument in court. Indeed, the U.S. government already has the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that audits, evaluates and investigates government programs for Congress. In 2023 the GAO returned about $84 for every $1 invested in it, in addition to suggesting improvements across the government.

Until Trump fired 18 of them when he took office, major departments also had their own independent inspectors general, charged with preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government and promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government operations and programs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigates corruption, including that committed by healthcare providers.

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies.

But Trump has been gutting congressional oversight, apparently wanting to make sure that no one can oversee the president. Rather than rooting out waste and corruption in the government, Musk and his ilk have launched a hostile takeover to turn the United States of America into a business that will return huge profits to those leaders who, in the process of moving fast and breaking things, are placing themselves at the center of the lives of 332 million people. Breaking into the U.S. Treasury payment system puts Musk and his DOGE team at the head of the country’s nerve center.

The vision they are enacting rips predictability, as well as economic security, away from farmers, who are already protesting the loss of their markets with the attempted destruction of USAID. It hurts the states—especially Republican-dominated states—that depend on funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education. Their vision excludes consumers, who are set to lose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as protections put in place by President Joe Biden. Their vision takes away protections for racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, as well as from women, and kills funding for the programs that protect all of us, such as cancer research and hospitals.

Musk and Trump appear to be concentrating the extraordinary wealth of the American people, along with the power that wealth brings, into their own hands, for their own ends. Trump has championed further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while Musk seems to want to make sure his companies, especially SpaceX, win as many government contracts as possible to fund his plan to colonize Mars.

But the mission of the United States of America is not, and has never been, to return huge profits to a few leaders.

The mission of the United States of America is stated in the Constitution. It is a government designed by “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Far from being designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a single man, it was formed to do the opposite: spread wealth and power throughout the country’s citizenry and enable them to protect their rights by voting for those who would represent them in Congress and the presidency, then holding them accountable at the ballot box.

The people who think that bearing arms is central to maintaining American rights are the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by storming the United States Capitol because they do not command the votes to put their policies in place through the exercise of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

—

[gwydionmisha]

Cabinet Nominee Senate Hearing Action Items: Week of 1/27/25 - 1/31/25

Please contact your senators and ask them to reject dangerous and unqualified cabinet picks. I don't have a lot of hope at this point, but better to fight than roll belly up. If nothing else ask them to resist Pam Bondi, RFK Jr., Russel Vought, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel.

Usually they just log for or against. If they want a reason, I've listed some below. Use reason for Democrats. For Republicans: Stress military readiness, national security, and the integrity and morale of the military, law and order, etc..

All of these are terrible. Complain about whatever you have energy for (most important in red):

WEDNESDAY:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Heath and Human Services. He murdered hundreds of children in Samoa and plans to scale that up in the US, buy completely outlawing vaccines and dismantling our entire infectious desease response infrastructure. I beg of you, fight this one. Plenty of Republicans are old enough to remember how bad polio was. McConnell is a polio survivor. We have a chance here. Push hard.

"How would RFK Jr. handle bird flu? His record on vaccines has experts on edge:" https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/16/nx-s1-5254733/rfk-vaccine-bird-flu-trump-cabinet-picks

(RFK Jr, has a second hearing later in the week.)

Kelly Loeffler, Small Business Administration nominee, is wildly corrupt.

This is from December, but I'm putting it up as a refresher:

"Kelly Loeffler’s Conflict of Interest Is Even Worse Than Reported: The senator had power over regulators whose work directly affected her own financial interests.:" https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/kelly-loefflers-conflict-of-interest-is-even-worse-than-reported/

THURSDAY:

Kash Patel, FBI. He published an enemies list and has promised to purge all the honest people with ethics out of the FBI, replacing them with Trump loyalists, so he can weaponize the FBI to persecute anyone Trump doesn't like. No innocent person will be safe.

Tulsi Gabbard, Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She is in the bag for Russia and has ties to Bashar al-Assad. She is generally considered a major intelligence threat. None of our secret intelligence or that of any allies foolish enough to share information with us will be safe. I beg of you fight this one.

Files detail bid to contain fallout from Tulsi Gabbard meetings with Assad

[marta-bee]

News of he Day 4/14/25: Political Violence

Original source.

Without paywall.

I was going to have fun with some stories about how Elon's Tesla stock was plummeting even before the tariffs, or how Donny's latest poll numbers on the economy are similarly in free-fall. I'll get to that. But these stories are serious and need to be talked about first.

Story #1, the PA governor's mansion was set on fire last night by a Harrisburg man. Police haven't identified a political motive, but his actions were described as methodical, and he was carrying homemade incendiary devices. He's also got a history of saying Biden should be killed in social media posts (X). If you don't know the name, Gov. Shapiro's a sort of rising star among Democrats and people are already asking if he'll run in 2028.

Story #2, a 17-year-old teen murdered his parents to get the financial resources to assassinate Trump. He was involved with a neo-Nazi group, had immigrated from Moldova (one of the old USSR satellite republics), and apparently was working with someone in Russia to overthrow the US government. (X) According to court documents he was trying to spark a revolution to "'save the white races’ from ‘Jewish controlled’ politicians.’" He also said he wanted to cause chaos by assassinating the president, and make assassinations more acceptable.

At first I thought the second one was a leftist. It could have been, which is scary. Political violence is obviously wrong whoever carries it out, but practically speaking it's just not just a wrinkle we can afford in our message these days. I promise you: our best weapons are still our stories, public outrage, and everything else that makes possible.

Besides, public opinion in America is shifting a bit lately. Not enough, not quickly enough, of course. But there's still a definie shift. More stories about Elon's Tesla woes, Donald's freefalling polls, and all the people making good trouble below the cut.

Elon Musk and Tesla

Elon Musk Faces Billion-Dollar EU Fine for Failing to Curb Disinformation on X (X)

Tesla reports 336,000 vehicle deliveries in first quarter, 13% drop from a year ago (X)

Musk calls Trump’s looming NASA cuts ‘troubling’ (X)

From Tesla to SpaceX to xAI, Elon Musk’s sprawling global business empire will be slammed by Trump’s tariffs regime. (X)

Elon Musk rumored to be eyeing the White House exits, but can he save Tesla? (X)

Maggie Haberman Reveals How Trump Advisers Really Feel About Elon Musk (X)

Musk Denies Report That He and Trump Are Headed for a Breakup. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the billionaire would stay in Washington until DOGE's work is finished (X)

Asked about the intensifying feud between Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, the White House said, "Boys will be boys." It's not nearly that simple. (X)

NY lawmakers take aim at Musk: Bill could claw back Tesla incentives (X)

Democrats beg Elon Musk: Campaign for our GOP opponents (X)

And, sadly, some Musk-related things to still be concerned about:

Former head of rural broadband program calls Trump admin's handout to Musk-owned Starlink is a betrayal of rural residents relying on the program. (X)

Elon Musk ‘pressured’ Reddit CEO to remove DOGE posts (X)

Inside Elon Musk’s Gleeful Destruction of the Government. The world’s richest man has blazed a staggering trail of destruction as Trump’s DOGE chief, firing tens of thousands of workers while cashing in (X)

Pam Bondi says the DOJ is seeking 20 years in prison for a man accused of throwing a firebomb at a Tesla dealership (X)

Social Security plans to stop issuing communications through normal channels like press releases and will instead make statements exclusively on X. (X)

Elon Musk to “fix” Community Notes after they contradict Trump (X)

Increased Push-back over Tariffs and Other Unpopular Nonsense

Ted Cruz Flatly Rejects Larry Kudlow’s Defense of Trump’s Tariffs on Fox: It’s ‘A Tax On Consumers’ (X)

Hard-line conservatives concerned about the deficit are among President Trump’s most stalwart supporters in Congress. But they say they cannot in good conscience back the budget plan he has endorsed. (X)

Top Trump Official So Freaked Out by Tariffs, He Wants to Quit (X)

The Campaign Against Mike Waltz from Within MAGA (X)

Law students say they want to work for the firms standing up to Trump (X)

Obama calls on citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Trump agenda. (X) In a campus speech, the former president said universities should be prepared to lose federal funds to defend academic freedom, rather than be “intimidated.”

Democrats' 'Tea Party' Can't Repeat the GOP's Mistakes (X)

Trump has 90 days to do 150 trade deals. Financial markets aren’t buying it. (X)

With GOP support, Senate votes to halt Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports (X) The House has since voted against it, but it’s an interesting show of resistance.

Powell sees tariffs raising inflation and says Fed will wait before further rate moves (X) Basically, the Fed isn't giving Trump what he wants.

(House Minority Leader) Jeffries says Dems will probe possible manipulation, insider trading after Trump’s tariff pause

And of course, on Cory Booker's historic speech:

Cory Booker Condemns Trump’s Policies in Longest Senate Speech on Record. The New Jersey senator spent much of his speech, which ended after more than 25 hours, assailing the Trump administration. He eclipsed Strom Thurmond’s filibuster of a civil rights bill in 1957. (X)

'History!' Internet explodes as Booker takes segregationist senator 'off the record books' (X)

What happens to your body when you deliver a 25-hour speech without any breaks? (X)

Word of the Week: The swashbuckling origins and evolution of 'filibuster'

Booker didn’t “accomplish” anything. He was a voice of one crying in the wilderness. And that’s how you build a dissident movement: with simple acts of witness.) (X)

[free-luigi-mangione]

Another factor I have not seen brought up wrt Luigi’s pending federal indictment is that the current administration is going absolutely crazy. This is levels of fascism previously unseen by almost everyone who is still alive in the United States.

A few weeks ago, the new AG Pam Bondi made it clear that the administration would be pursuing the death penalty in cases of heinous crimes committed by illegal immigrants and anyone attacking law enforcement. A lot of erroneous headlines actually correlated it to Luigi’s case and made it seem like Bondi was referring to him and thank heavens that’s not true. Other than Trump’s initial statement condemning Luigi and Musk’s deranged throwaway comments about him, they actually haven’t been focussing much on him and that is a big blessing.

The administration is paying El Salvador millions a year to house what on paper should only be illegal immigrants belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Unfortunately, with Trump being Trump, this has actually resulted in people even remotely suspicious being deported without due process. Like, they’re sending immigrants from other countries to El Salvador. It’s insane. The place is called CECOT and it makes Rikers look like a Swiss spa. Do not look it up if you have a weak stomach.

KFA is vocally anti Trump and has spent more time witnessing politics up close than Luigi has been alive. She knows it’s absolutely in his benefit if the DOJ is ignoring his case right now and dragging their heels. Republicans are currently as trigger happy as they’ve ever been in recent memory and it’s not like the opposition can be counted on to do anything useful. Hell, half the DOJ officials who took bribes to pursue federal charges against Luigi are Democrats.

Karen knows it could get a lot worse for him and she’s 100% in the right not to piss anyone off right now. Human rights violations are being committed at unprecedented rates even against orders from judges, and poor Karen is stuck with shit judges in the first place. Luigi having to wear handcuffs all the time is much better than him getting carted off to a foreign torture camp. If 10 years ago you’d told me an American citizen awaiting trial was in danger of being disappeared this blatantly, I would’ve laughed my ass off. But in 2025 anything goes.

I’m actually not that old (I guess), I turn 29 soon. But the crowd here does seem a lot younger so I definitely feel a difference - 💚

as far as i'm aware, didn't Trump bring back the pursuance of death penalty for all cases where it's eligible when he came back to power?? so how exactly does this new thing affect cases like Luigi's??? (specifically Luigi's tho because he's kind of in a very differently tough spot compared to others)

also i looked up CECOT, i saw it has a capacity for 40,000 inmates and i cut it out quick, i was like forty fucking thousand??? this is it, i've seen enough, i'm out (i don't want to know more about that place if it's supposed to keep 40,000 people imprisoned, that place must be hell on earth for anybody stuck there)

KFA is so anti Trump (and good for her, somebody needs to speak out against that orange fascist) that i sometimes worry about whether that can make Luigi's case be handled worsely just because she's defending him. i don't know if it's a worry from nowhere because i at least see the current administration as highly problematic and dangerous but i hope it is an unfounded worry and it stays that way.

also the fact that the Dems are so useless currently and that even before going away they shilled for the 1% so hard and made Luigi's cases so much worse than what usually happens in such cases is so infuriating. also uhh d'you mean to say he's in danger of getting Epsteined some other way??? if not the direct Epstein Epstein way because of the kind of person Epstein was??

[arcticbunn]

The retreads keep reappearing in the new administration …

Having failed to twist GOP arms hard enough to get Matt (Breathalyzer Boy) Gaetz into the Attorney General job, don-OLD trump has turned to a Golden Oldie for the job: Pam Bondi, former Attorney General for Florida. Bondi reached national notoriety for being in the position to join a lawsuit against Trump University for grifting citizens out of their hard-earned money to learn how to invest in real estate. Associating with this “university” (if by “university” you mean a non-accredited fake school run by a group of people interested in getting money out of students) would cost prospective land barons $1,495 for seminars up to a $35,000 "Gold Elite" program. When confronted with this suit against the Republican candidate for president, Ms. Bondi decided that the $25,000 offered by the future crook-in-chief would soothe the conflict between her job as the attorney of the people and not ruffling the feathers of the leader of her party.

So, if we have someone who can be bribed so easily in a position where bribery can be made, what other decisions will Ms. Bondi overlook – or perhaps look too hard – to increase her personal wealth?

But there is a more humorous aspect to Bondi being in Washington, D.C.: her former main squeeze, Rick Scott, serves as senator for Florida. Back when Bondi and Scott were in Tallahassee, there were strong rumors of the two canoodling on the sly, ending only as both moved on from state governance. Indeed, we have this picture of Scott leering at Bondi:

What a smooth operator.

It’s bad enough that we have shady people filling positions in this new administration, including someone willing to take bribes (not to mention rapists), but we should consider passing a law that prospective lawmakers prove that they were born on this planet, to avoid aliens like Rick Scott from getting elected:

[head-post]

El Salvador’s president says he will not return man US mistakenly deported

President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele rejected a request for the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran wrongfully deported from the US and currently being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), El Salvador’s mega-prison, in a meeting at the White House on Monday.

Abrego Garcia, 29 years old and legally residing in Maryland, was deported on 15 March 2025 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite having a court order prohibiting his removal due to the risk of persecution in El Salvador.

During a meeting with US President Donald Trump, Bukele said he had the authority to repatriate Abrego Garcia and refused to facilitate his return, arguing that he would not let a “terrorist” smuggled into the US.

“Of course I won’t do that. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?,” Bukele told reporters present at the Oval Office.

According to Efe news agency , the Salvadoran president acknowledged that he could indeed order his release, but stressed that he had no intention of doing so. “We don’t really like to release terrorists in our country,” he expressed with an ironic tone.

In addition, he emphasised that El Salvador has become the “safest” country on the continent and that he does not want it to become “the murder capital of the world” again.

Wave of criticism and outrage

Before his speech, the US Attorney General, Pam Bondi, made it clear that the decision to return Abrego Garcia is no longer up to the US government, but is in the hands of the Salvadoran authorities, as the young man is now in the custody of the authorities of that country.

President Trump’s adviser, Stephen Miller, who is seen as the main architect of the migration policy implemented by the White House in recent months, emphasised that Abredo is a citizen of El Salvador and it would be very “arrogant” to tell El Salvador what to do with its citizens.

The case has drawn criticism from human rights organisations and US lawmakers who are demanding the release of Abrego Garcia.

The US trial chamber ruled his deportation was illegal and ordered that his return be facilitated, but the Trump administration says it is under no obligation to repatriate him unless El Salvador co-operates.

Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vásquez, has publicly requested Bukele’s intervention to reunite her family. At the same time, the Salvadoran government has received six million dollars from the US as compensation for accepting deportees under the Foreign Enemies Act, reinstated by Trump.

Nayib Bukele met with Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, in a meeting that cemented a close bilateral alliance on migration and security.

The meeting was accompanied by a series of public statements that demonstrated the political and rhetorical closeness between the two leaders. Bukele thus becomes the first Latin American president to be officially welcomed by Trump during his second term.

Read more HERE

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’ve been informally working with a co-worker answering questions about building out hybrid native applications and it’s been wonderful. I also had opportunity to work on more React Native to iOS code with another developer. Total blast. It hit all my happy buttons.

All that happiness was destroyed later Friday afternoon, but that’s a story for another day. Don’t worry, I’m fine, my family is fine, everything’s fine.

Gus Mueller

Without going into details (that’s what the technote is for), Acorn’s file format is a SQLite database, with a simple three-table schema, containing TIFF or PNG bitmaps to represent bitmap layers, and a plist to represent shape layers. Acorn has kept this simple format since version 2.0 back in 2009.

At some point I’d opened an Acorn file in Base, my database editing app of choice, and realized it was actually a SQLite database. Nifty!

Given Gus is the creator and maintainer of FMDB it kind of makes sense. 😃 (I use FMDB in Stream.)

The Onion

Warning that even the slightest dent, knick, or scratch would henceforth be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that Raymond Pratt, a 54-year-old resident of Chula Vista, CA who bumped a Tesla while parallel parking, had been sentenced to death.

The Onion’s articles, like this one, put a smile on my face.

Yahoo!Finance

Google lays off hundreds of employees in Android, Pixel group

I’m afraid we’re going to see more and more of this over the next handful of years.

I’m sure I’m living on borrowed time. Who knows, I may end up working at Starbucks?

I love being a software developer but the new world order is ready to trade craft for expediency. I hate that. I hope I can continue to be a software craftsman.

If I could retire today, I would. That would allow me to focus on Stream and [top secret project] all the time. 😀

Kate McCusker • The Guardian

Protective helmets were donned and sledgehammers wielded as Elon Musk Space Karen critics vented their frustration at the Tesla boss and billionaire by smashing up a disused Tesla bound for the scrapheap.

Oh, how much would you love to do this? I know I would.

Have you heard of the abandoned mall parking lots being used to store Tesla cars and trucks, weird, right? It would be a shame if a pack of drones flew over them and bombed them into oblivion, wouldn’t it?

[Ruben Cagnie • Toast Technology Blog]

At Toast, we believe that GraphQL is the right technology to build efficient web and mobile applications. This did not happen overnight. In this blogpost, we will cover the adoption of GraphQL at Toast, from its early days to the recent paradigm shift towards GraphQL Federation.

I love the Toast app! ❤️ It’s one of my favorite apps on my phone because it’s darned handy! There are four restaurants we love to eat at but sometimes we’d like to get takeout. That’s where Toast comes in. Their idea to build a generic ordering app was super smart. Love it! ❤️

It’s nice to see how folks build their infrastructure out. Reading articles like this is like reading about a motor rebuild. There’s always something new to learn.

I’ve always wanted to try GraphQL. Maybe one of these days I’ll get a chance at the day job? 😃

Alexander Lee • Digiday

Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms that offer larger shares of subscription revenue

Good! Nazistack needs a mass exodus of great writers.

I need to write a piece with a list of the wonderful writers I follow there, via RSS of course, so anyone who reads this can go encourage them to leave Substack. 🤬

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

This weekend, U.S. secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick went on CBS’s Face the Nation and pitched a fantasy world where iPhones are manufactured in the United States:

I’m sure Tim Cook would love to have a factory complete with worker accommodations that drives folks into the ground for pennies a day.

Maybe our new Administration plans to do away with the minimum wage too?

Mike Pearl • Mashable

It’s downright strange how little we know about the hacker or hackers who exposed the identities of over 30 million Ashley Madison users in 2015.

I watched a documentary on Netflix called [Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, & Scandal(https://time.com/6977627/netflix-ashley-madison-documentary-true-story) a couple nights back and it was absolutely fascinating.

As far as I know the person or persons behind the hack have never been found! That is just amazing to me. Their saving grace is they did it for cultural reasons, not for money. After making their demand for the company to shut down they simply delivered on their threat to release the data they’d stolen. No money demand.

It’s worth a watch.🍿

Mitch Wagner

Mitchellaneous: Excellent protest signs

I threw this in here because I love seeing the interesting signs folks come up with for protests. There have been a lot of good ones since Marmalade Messiah took office.

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Tapestry, a new app designed to organize the open social web, is adding a valuable feature to help people who are keeping up with multiple social networks: It will now remove duplicate posts from your feed. That means if you follow the same person across social networking services like Bluesky and Mastodon, you won’t have to see their post appear twice in your feed if they’ve shared it in multiple places.

I remember Craig Hockenberry being asked if Twitterrific — long live Ollie! — was coming to Mastodon. He said that The Iconfactory was exploring something different. Something more for the open web.

Well, Tapestry is that app and it was brilliantly executed.

I’m looking forward to what they do with the Mac version. 😍

Oh, one more thing! Hire The Iconfactory to do your design work, I did, and the results were brilliant!

The Iconfactory is one of those wonderful companies in my list of small companies I’d work for in a heartbeat! 🥰

Matthias Endler

I have met a lot of developers in my life. Lately, I asked myself: “What does it take to be one of the best? What do they all have in common?”

Great piece. I’ve met my share of absolutely incredible developers in my time. From so many developers at Visio, too many to name, to the many excellent developers at WillowTree, hi Nish!

I like Matthias’ take on the matter.

David Eaves, Hillary Hartley • Lawfare

In March, the U.S. government shut down 18F, the digital services team tasked with modernizing government technology and services. 18F was perhaps best known for helping the IRS create a free direct-file tax website that makes it fast and free for Americans to file taxes.

This group was full of kind, caring, compassionate, designers, developers, and project managers with the goal of making world class websites for the government.

Folks like Ethan Marcotte went to work there. Yes, that Ethan Marcotte, the guy who created Responsive Web Design. Now think of an entire engineering team like that!

Phil Windley

Cory’s right, using an RSS reader will make your digital life better. I’m wasting less time scrolling past stuff I don’t care about and more time reading things I enjoy. That’s a win.

Yep, yep, yep! There are plenty of excellent RSS readers on the market, but I think you should use Stream! 😁

Aria Desires • Faultlore

C is the lingua franca of programming. We must all speak C, and therefore C is not just a programming language anymore – it’s a protocol that every general-purpose programming language needs to speak.

This piece will take a little time to read but I really appreciated the technical detail and the authors take on so many things C. Nicely done! 🙏🏼

Ghost - Building ActivityPub

Last week we explored some Threads compatibility updates, how to find and follow people across the Fediverse, and the progress of the social web beta launch. This week, we’ve got more fixes and updates to share, as well as a painful and embarrassing story that we wish had never happened.

This is Ghosts place to talk about how they’re building ActivityPub support into Ghost. It’s nice to see other blogging tools support open standards.

To my knowledge, Micro.blog, WordPress, and Ghost support ActivityPub. I’m looking forward to seeing more!👻

Cory Dransfelt

All of Apple’s services are abysmal

I’ve heard this from so many people over the years. Creating web services is hard. Especially when you’re servicing millions and millions of people, but shops like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook manage to pull it off. Why can’t Apple?

https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/5176/2024/f9fe101b00.png TMNT Robatello!

[l-richardson]

Folks, strap in—this ain’t just a wake-up call, it’s a five-alarm FIRE raging through our nation! The radical left’s TESLA TERROR ATTACKS are exploding like a powder keg, and I’ve got the latest, bone-chilling TRUTH straight from the battlefield! "This 61-year-old woman was assaulted while driving Route 66 near Flagstaff, Arizona. Her 'crime?' Driving a Tesla," thunders Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ)—a patriot warrior sounding the alarm at https://thepostmillennial.com/man-attacks-61-year-old-woman-in-her-tesla-in-flagstaff-arizona! On March 19, 2025, the brutal reality of TESLA TERROR ATTACKS slammed down hard on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona. The shocking assault, caught on crystal-clear camera, rips the mask off how dangerous our streets have become for patriots daring to drive American innovation—watch the raw footage at https://www.azfamily.com/video/2025/04/01/tesla-driver-attacked-flagstaff-frustrated-with-law-enforcement/!

Here’s the gut punch: Robert Artherton, a 33-year-old felon with a rap sheet, hunted this 61-year-old woman’s Tesla like a predator on the prowl! Behind the wheel of a beat-up green Chevrolet Cavalier, this thug deliberately cut her off on East Route 66, boxing her in like a trapped animal, forcing both cars to a dead stop in the middle of the road! The video’s absolutely chilling—he leaps out, fists swinging, pounding her with vicious intent! She barely got out, “You cut me off, what’s your problem?” before the blows rained down—see it unfold at https://www.azfamily.com/video/2025/04/01/tesla-driver-attacked-flagstaff-frustrated-with-law-enforcement/! The evidence of this coordinated anti-Tesla campaign is OVERWHELMING! Since President Trump took office and unleashed Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), attacks on Tesla property have surged like a tidal wave of hate! Protesters—nah, call ‘em TERRORISTS—have organized dozens of demonstrations at Tesla dealerships across North America and Europe, but it’s gone way beyond chants into outright WAR—dig into the details at https://criticalthinkingdispatch.com/2025/01/30/can-exile-save-america-from-its-criminal-plague/!

Check this horrifying roll call of chaos across our land: In Las Vegas, black-clad attackers fired BULLETS into Tesla vehicles at a service center, then torched them with Molotov cocktails, scrawling "resist" on the doors like some anarchist graffiti! Near Boston, seven Tesla charging stations went up in FLAMES at a shopping mall—arson, pure and simple! In Washington DC, patriots woke up to their Teslas defaced with political hate speech—cowardly vandalism! In Seattle, a lunatic poured gasoline on an unoccupied Tesla Model S and set it ablaze in broad daylight on a city street! In Portland, Oregon, over a DOZEN BULLETS ripped through a Tesla showroom—vehicles trashed, windows shattered—and it was the SECOND attack there in ONE WEEK! https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/us/fbi-task-force-tesla-attacks-hnk/index.html can’t bury this—it’s a national crisis!

The fallout’s catastrophic! Used Cybertruck prices have CRASHED nearly 8% since Trump took the reins—dealers are reeling! In Europe, where anti-American venom festers, Tesla sales have plummeted an insane 45%—that’s HALF their market, gone! Even the most bullish Wall Street suits admit Musk’s fight with Trump’s shaking the company to its core—https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/fbi-tesla-taskforce-vandalism lays it out raw! But the patriots are rising! Attorney General Pam Bondi’s stepping into the ring, declaring these attacks "nothing short of domestic terrorism"—damn right, Pam! She’s vowing "severe consequences on those involved, including the shadowy bastards coordinating and funding this madness"—read her ironclad promise at https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-bondi-statement-violent-attacks-against-tesla-property!

Elon Musk himself ain’t mincing words: "There is no doubt that shooting bullets into Tesla stores and burning down Superchargers are acts of terrorism!" He’s a titan of freedom, and he’s calling it like it is—https://criticalthinkingdispatch.com/2024/06/06/houthi-rebels-launch-unjustified-assault-on-us-naval-heroes-in-red-sea-showdown/ backs him up! These gutless cowards won’t face us in the open—they skulk in the shadows, masks on, hurling firebombs at defenseless cars and charging stations! FBI intel’s tracked this filth across at least NINE STATES, always striking under cover of night to hide their yellow spines—https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crackdown-coordinated-attacks-teslas-intelligence-lone-actors/ has the smoking gun!

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a heavy-hitting think tank, warns: "Since late January 2025, a series of attacks have targeted Tesla facilities and vehicles across the United States, prompting federal investigations into possible domestic terrorism"—get the full breakdown at https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-attacks-tesla-facilities! It’s escalating FAST! Under the "Tesla Takedown" banner, these radicals are plotting a "global day of action" to hit 200 Tesla showrooms WORLDWIDE! Their sick goal? "Hit Tesla CEO Elon Musk in his pocketbook" as payback for standing with Trump! This ain’t protest—past attacks include torching showrooms, burning vehicles, and defacing them with NAZI SYMBOLS—https://www.newsweek.com/tesla-takedown-stores-targeted-global-day-action-elon-musk-2052621 exposes their playbook!

Patriots, we’re staring down the barrel of a grim TRUTH—America’s at a breaking point! Robert Artherton’s savage beatdown of that 61-year-old Tesla driver is a glaring symbol of the radical left’s chokehold on our nation! These spineless rats target innocent Americans—burning charging stations, riddling dealerships with bullets, and assaulting grandmothers for daring to drive the future! https://criticalthinkingdispatch.com/2024/07/25/exposing-orwellian-media-lies-the-truth-about-kamala-harris-bidens-border-czar/ peels back the curtain! I get it—there’s a line between free speech and crime. Law enforcement’s clear: they’ll hunt down vandals but won’t touch "constitutionally protected activity" aimed at Musk. Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel doubled down on March 25, calling it DOMESTIC TERRORISM—https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/us/politics/tesla-protests-vandalism-musk.html can’t spin it!

This is about ALERTING YOU to the wildfire of violence torching our streets! Reuters says last year’s election bloodshed hit levels "not seen since the 1970s," and analysts are howling it’s "only gonna get worse"—https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/opinion-we-dont-live-in-normal-times rings the bell! The full article’s coming soon—lock in at https://criticalthinkingdispatch.com/ for the unfiltered blast! This ain’t hype—it’s the fight of our lives!

Legal Disclaimer: This is my raw, unfiltered take, forged from the TRUTH I’ve clawed out of the muck! I ain’t a lawyer, and I’m not pointing fingers at who deserves what fate—that ain’t my call! These are opinions, built on rock-solid facts from legit sources—dig into ‘em yourself! Don’t twist my words into something they ain’t—this is about exposing the enemy, not starting a lynch mob! Stay sharp, patriots!

CALL TO ACTION: RISE UP, PATRIOTS—THIS IS WAR! Share this X post like a wildfire—BLAST #TeslaTerrorAttacks across every platform! Storm https://criticalthinkingdispatch.com/ for the article drop SOON! Pound your phones, flood your reps, SCREAM at the DoJ—demand they SMASH these terrorist-funding rats NOW, or America’s ashes! Get LOUDER than a freight train, madder than a hornet’s nest—our kids’ future, our FREEDOM, our NATION hangs in the balance! Watch the footage, spread the TRUTH, and FIGHT like hell—this is OUR COUNTRY, and we’re taking it BACK!

[bills-bible-basics]

EPSTEIN CASE, JFK, RFK, MLK JR., UFOs

It is my understanding that the flight logs were ALREADY publicized quite some time ago. That being the case, how is this anything new?

Unless Pam Bondi’s department releases the actual FULL client list, and unless there are actual prosecutions followed by prison terms for all of the guilty parties, this amounts to nothing more than the same old political stonewalling and pointless grandstanding which we have seen for the past 60-70 years, ever since some of these events occurred.

I think people who are putting there faith in this need to wake up. They need to stop being so naive and gullible.

Furthermore, I believe that as long as any of the guilty parties are still breathing and alive, this information will NEVER be fully released, simply because these people are too powerful.

They may possibly throw a few people under the bus to try to quell the public’s desire to know the full truth, but it won’t be everything.

I think people are going to be disappointed by what is released tomorrow. It will be a lot of hot air which SEEMS to say a lot, but which in reality will say little or nothing new.

Remember the Congressional UFO/UAP hearing with David Grusch and others? How did that turn out? What new facts were revealed that weren’t already known?

So again, this may just be another boring case of wash, rinse and repeat.

I hope Pam Bondi and her department prove me wrong. We will know soon enough.

[mugiwara-lucy]

Threatening President Trump again? I'm sure Pam Bondi would like to hear your threats of a very beloved President being told some TDS fool online saying no one will miss him when he dies when he has a loving family who follows and supports him through to the end. You see all the children in the room are gone and it's up to the adults to save the country after Sleepy Joe ran it into the ground. This is what's called "Peace Through Strength" and President Trump is tired of the greatest country on Earth being taken advantage of by third world shit hole countries.

1.) Fuck that dumb airheaded blonde bitch. The fact you idiots still rally even though she PLAYED you all with those Epstein files just shows how much of a CULT you lot are in.

2.) The Trump Family with the exception of his niece and nephew are all pieces of shit. FUCK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. And yes that includes his creepy ass youngest son Barron.

3.) Saying when he dies (because he's old and unhealthy) no one will miss him isn't a threat. It's a fact. I wonder if there'll be a national holiday. I know people will celebrate even HARDER than when he lost back in 2020.

4.) America is NOT the greatest country on Earth. It's a country built on Genocide and Racism.

5.) Peace through Strength even though he gives rim jobs to world dictators like the old BITCH he is.

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson

February 9, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 10

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order “protecting Second Amendment rights.” The order calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine all gun regulations in the U.S. to make sure they don’t infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms. The executive order says that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”

In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.

The United States Constitution that establishes the framework for our democratic government sets out how the American people will write the laws that govern us. We elect members to a Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That congress of our representatives holds “all legislative powers”; that is, Congress alone has the right to make laws. It alone has the power to levy taxes on the American people, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, declare war, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper.”

After Congress writes, debates, and passes a measure, the Constitution establishes that it goes to the president, who is also elected, through “electors,” by the people. The president can either sign a measure into law or veto it, returning it to Congress where members can either repass it over his veto or rewrite it. But once a law is on the books, the president must enforce it. The men who framed the Constitution wrote that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” When President Richard Nixon tried to alter laws passed by Congress by withholding the funding Congress had appropriated to put them into effect, Congress shut that down quickly, passing a law explicitly making such “impoundment” illegal.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the federal courts have taken on the duty of “judicial review,” the process of determining whether a law falls within the rules of the Constitution.

Right now, the Republicans hold control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. They have the power to change any laws they want to change according to the formula Americans have used since 1789 when the Constitution went into effect.

But they are not doing that.

Instead, officials in the Trump administration, as well as billionaire Elon Musk— who put $290 million into electing Trump and Republicans, and whose actual role in the government remains unclear— are making unilateral changes to programs established by Congress. Through executive orders and announcements from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” they have sidelined Congress, and Republicans are largely mum about the seizure of their power.

Now MAGA Republicans are trying to neuter the judiciary.

After yet another federal judge stopped the Musk/Trump onslaught by temporarily blocking Musk and his team from accessing Americans’ records from Treasury Department computers, MAGA Republicans attacked judges. “Outrageous,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted, spreading the lie that the judge barred the Secretary of the Treasury from accessing the information, although in fact he temporarily barred Treasury Secretary Bessent from granting access to others. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said the decision had “the feel of…a judicial” coup. Right-wing legal scholar Adrian Vermeule called it “[j]udicial interference with legitimate acts of state.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who would take over the office of the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump can no longer perform the duties of the office, posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted: “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. Vermeule knows this, of course. So does Vance.” Of Vance’s statement, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice added: “this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders.”

The Republicans have the power to make the changes they want through the exercise of their constitutional power, but they are not doing so. This seems in part because Trump and his MAGA supporters want to establish the idea that the president cannot be checked. And this dovetails with the fact they are fully aware that most Americans oppose their plans.

Voters were so opposed to the plan outlined in Project 2025—the plan now in operation—that Trump ran from it during the campaign. Popular support for Musk’s participation in the government has plummeted as well. A poll from The Economist/YouGov released February 5 says that only 13% of adult Americans want him to have “a lot” of influence, while 96% of respondents said that jobs and the economy were important to them and 41% said they thought the economy was getting worse.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans know they cannot get the extreme changes they wanted through Congress, so they are, instead, dictating them. And Musk began his focus at the Treasury, establishing control over the payment system that manages the money American taxpayers pay to our government.

Musk and MAGA officials claim they are combating waste and fraud, but in fact, when Judge Carl Nichols stopped Trump from shutting down USAID, he specifically said that government lawyers had offered no support for that argument in court.

Indeed, the U.S. government already has the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that audits, evaluates and investigates government programs for Congress. In 2023 the GAO returned about $84 for every $1 invested in it, in addition to suggesting improvements across the government.

Until Trump fired 18 of them when he took office, major departments also had their own independent inspectors general, charged with preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government and promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government operations and programs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigates corruption, including that committed by healthcare providers.

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies.

But Trump has been gutting congressional oversight, apparently wanting to make sure that no one can oversee the president. Rather than rooting out waste and corruption in the government, Musk and his ilk have launched a hostile takeover to turn the United States of America into a business that will return huge profits to those leaders who, in the process of moving fast and breaking things, are placing themselves at the center of the lives of 332 million people. Breaking into the U.S. Treasury payment system puts Musk and his DOGE team at the head of the country’s nerve center.

The vision they are enacting rips predictability, as well as economic security, away from farmers, who are already protesting the loss of their markets with the attempted destruction of USAID. It hurts the states—especially Republican-dominated states—that depend on funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education. Their vision excludes consumers, who are set to lose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as protections put in place by President Joe Biden. Their vision takes away protections for racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, as well as from women, and kills funding for the programs that protect all of us, such as cancer research and hospitals.

Musk and Trump appear to be concentrating the extraordinary wealth of the American people, along with the power that wealth brings, into their own hands, for their own ends. Trump has championed further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while Musk seems to want to make sure his companies, especially SpaceX, win as many government contracts as possible to fund his plan to colonize Mars.

But the mission of the United States of America is not, and has never been, to return huge profits to a few leaders.

The mission of the United States of America is stated in the Constitution. It is a government designed by “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Far from being designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a single man, it was formed to do the opposite: spread wealth and power throughout the country’s citizenry and enable them to protect their rights by voting for those who would represent them in Congress and the presidency, then holding them accountable at the ballot box.

The people who think that bearing arms is central to maintaining American rights are the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by storming the United States Capitol because they do not command the votes to put their policies in place through the exercise of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

[cueburstnews]

How Old Is Pam Bondi? Former Florida Attorney General’s Age Now – Hollywood Life

Image Credit: Getty Images Pam Bondi has been in the political world for years, but she’s reached new strides in her career following her nomination to be the next potential U.S. attorney general. After Donald Trump‘s original AG nominee, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his bid in late 2024, Bondi quickly made headlines. In January 2025, she attended her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate…