#trump was shot a WEEK AGO

[thepurplebones]

[faketokufan]

CAN WE SLOW DOWN FOR ONE FUCKEN SECOND PLEASE?!

[plugnuts]

what a fucking year this week has been

[darlingillustrations]

DO NOT USE STICKER MULE

I stopped using Sticker Mule years ago when I learned they donated to the Trump presidential campaign. Now they have taken their support of Trump propaganda one step further. This email was sent out to the Sticker Mule mailing list this morning (links removed for tumblr):

Donald Trump was shot. I don’t care what your political views are but the hate for Trump and his supporters has gone too far. People are terrified to admit they support Trump. I’ve been scared myself. Americans shouldn’t live in fear. I support Trump. Many at Sticker Mule do. Many at Sticker Mule also support Biden. The political hate needs to stop. Hopefully this email helps. Btw, this week, get 1 shirt for $4 (normally $19). I suggest buying one that shows you support Trump. The more people realize that millions of kind-hearted, compassionate people support Trump, the sooner the hate will end. Awesome people, all over the world, love Trump. Don’t limit your friendships and diminish your happiness by indulging in political hate. Vocalize your support. Stop the hate. Anthony Constantino Cofounder, Sticker Mule P.S. Discuss this message on X.

[batboyblog]

Strange feeling,

9 years ago I started knocking doors with two goals in mind. I wanted to elect America's first woman President, a candidate I believed in deeply who inspired me and who was amazingly qualified to take on the hardest most complex job in the world. The other goal was equally clear, our future and our progress was at risk if a Republican took office, the Supreme Court was on the line, Republican Party was fixated on getting rid of Obamacare, attacking Social Security and Medicare, rolling back our new wins for LGBT rights, and of course banning abortion. In the Summer and Fall of 2015 it became more and more clear that the Republicans would pick Donald Trump and so the goal became even more clear and important, Stop Trump.

9 years of knocking doors across 5 elections I've come right back to where I started, the doors are different, I'm older, grayer, this Election Day I was not up at 5am doing lit drops (and god bless all the early birds who did that today). But I'm again voting for, and supporting an amazing, smart, qualified woman candidate who inspires me, and I'm voting to Stop Trump.

9 long years ends today, Today we finally finally FINALLY get to turn the page and put an end to Trump. How good will it feel to go weeks, even months, and years, without having to think about Donald Trump, talk about Donald Trump? 9 years is a long time to be stuck in a national abusive relationship, and no it won't fix everything, but damn it'll feel good.

9 years ago, one of the things that inspired me to work as hard as I did for Hillary Clinton was my grandma. She turned 90 in 2015, and would have turned 99 a few days ago. She was whip smart, with a razor wit, she read two books a week every week. She was a feminist before it was cool, always had her own job and her own money and her own car, in the 1950s when married mothers weren't supposed to do any of that. She seemed like she'd go on forever but I was realistic, I knew 2016 could be her last Presidential election, and I wanted her to see a woman President before the end. She passed away in 2019, and I miss her a great deal. She used to refer to Trump as "That shit" the final word said in a hiss of disgust. So I'm carrying her with me as I head to vote, and I'm voting for every tough, smart, witty woman who never got a shot because they were born in the wrong time, and for every little girl who's ever been told "no that's a boy job!" I've fought for 9 goddamn years to break this highest and hardest of glass ceilings and today is the fucking day.

[covid-safer-hotties]

With the toll of new COVID-19 infections regularly topping 1 million a day and weekly deaths creeping toward the 1,000 mark, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has launched a campaign aimed not at protecting the public from this ongoing pandemic, now in its fifth year, but at washing its hands of responsibility.

CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen held a press conference August 23 to review the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and encourage the public to get their winter COVID-19, RSV and flu vaccines once they are made available. While bluntly acknowledging that “COVID is with us,” she tried unconvincingly to assure reporters and viewers that “we have the tools to protect ourselves.” She then added, as a way of shifting the blame, “We just need to use them!”

Dr. Cohen was silent on who was responsible for the failure of most Americans to get booster shots or otherwise protect themselves from a disease, which can be fatal for many and cause lifelong debilitation for many more.

She could have named the Democratic administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which ended the COVID-19 emergency more than a year ago and treats the pandemic as a thing of the past. She could have named Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the promoter of quack remedies like ivermectin and bleach, who recently welcomed into his campaign the anti-vaxxer and enemy of science and public health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

And if she had been equipped with a mirror—and a conscience—she could have pointed to herself and other top CDC officials, who have collaborated in the anti-scientific rampage to shut down both mitigation efforts and even elementary data collection on cases of illness, hospitalization and death.

Most importantly (and therefore least likely) she could have acknowledged that within the framework of the capitalist system, the profits of giant banks and corporations are far more important than the lives of human beings. That is the meaning of the incessant claims that schools, factories, public transportation and facilities must be kept open, to save “the economy,” despite the inevitable spread of the infection as a result.

Dr. Cohen, like her predecessors and colleagues at the top of the public health establishment, puts political pressures above science and medicine. The nearly hour-long briefing was simply political theater, where a panel of experts attempted to place the public health agency in the best light despite acknowledging the monumental number of daily infections that have seen hospitalizations and fatalities climb.

Meanwhile, schools across multiple states have announced closures—affecting thousands—just as the new academic year has begun, in response to mass infections among faculty and students.

So far this year, more than 26,000 Americans have died from acute COVID-19 complications, and more than 800 per week are being killed by a preventable infection, a figure 20 percent higher than last year this time. At the current rate, it is expected that between 50,000 to 60,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 in 2024, a rate two to three times higher than fatalities from flu. However, these do not take into consideration excess deaths, and given the complete dismantling of the reporting systems, these figures are known undercounts.

Such figures could only appear low in comparison to the colossal death toll of the first three years of the pandemic, when 352,000 died in 2020, 464,000 in 2021 and 260,000 in 2022. In 2023, 76,000 COVID-19 deaths were recorded. All these numbers are underestimates, as excess mortality figures are considerably higher. The cumulative death toll from COVID-19 is likely well over 1.4 million in the United States and approaching 30 million worldwide.

Neither did the panel address any concerns over the fact that millions continue to suffer from Long COVID, which has taken a significant toll on the health of Americans and the world over. It bears mentioning that a recent study noted that 410 million people across the world have had Long COVID with a $1 trillion impact on global GDP. Yet, no treatment for this condition exists. Without health insurance and means, issues of brain fog, chronic fatigue and sleep disturbances become part of one’s physiognomy.

Much about Dr. Cohen’s characterization of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is deeply flawed and should have been taken up by the press, who remained silent on the matter. First and foremost, her claim, in response to a direct question that COVID-19 “is endemic,” is completely misleading.

An infection is endemic when it is contained, not spreading uncontrolled and not causing significant impact on the society. COVID-19 is none of these. It remains a pandemic, with new waves of infections where millions are being infected daily by a virus whose mutation far outstrips the efforts of public health agencies and pharmaceutical companies to provide vaccines, medicines and mitigation practices. It continues to cause large-scale social disruption, economic loss and general hardship.

The opposition of both capitalist parties to any significant effort to fight the pandemic was on display last week. The Democratic National Convention, like its Republican counterpart in July, was a massive superspreader event, with thousands of delegates and media personnel congregating in an enclosed arena, where there was continuous cheering, shouting and singing. There are already anecdotal reports of widespread sickness in state delegations returning from Chicago.

As for the Republicans, Trump staged his appearance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday afternoon, beaming as Kennedy announced he was folding up his independent presidential campaign and endorsing the ex-president and would-be dictator. Kennedy said he was working with Trump on staffing agencies like the CDC, NIH, FDA and USDA from the standpoint of ending the “chronic disease crisis.” By this he means, of course, ending efforts to fight diseases and letting children, the elderly, and the entire American population suffer the consequences.

Fundamentally, all large epidemics and pandemics are serious social issues that require broad-scale infection control in place to disrupt and prevent disease. And with respect to COVID-19 and all future pandemics, these require an international collaborative perspective.

In 2024 so far, 179 million people were infected in the United States, a total that is eventually expected to surpass 2023, when more than 248 million Americans, or three-quarters of the population, caught COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels throughout the pandemic suggest that there have been more than 1.1 billion infections in the United States, between three and four for every person in the country.

This begs the question how are those most vulnerable, such as the elderly, immunocompromised, and those with chronic disabling medical conditions, which represent a significant portion of the population, to protect themselves from perpetual mass infection?

For the CDC director to present public health efforts as a matter of individual, personal choice is a gross falsification of reality. The policy of mass infection has been forced on the population.

As for having the tools to protect themselves, what is being offered are simply vaccines and more vaccines as a means to prevent COVID-19. As the WSWS recently noted, “Despite the limitations, the uptake of the vaccines is vital for the health of the population. The shots have a strong, proven safety record and do prevent severe disease and potentially reduce the risk of Long COVID, as studies have indicated. However, they do not prevent infections and the immunity they offer is short-lived given the constant mutation of the virus.”

The vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna carry a cost of $120 to $130 per shot. In some regions, these can be as high as $160 or even $200. However, the rescinding in March of $4.3 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services in COVID-19 supplemental funding means access to free vaccines for the 26 million uninsured and tens of millions more underinsured, essentially all from working class families, will only mean that the vaccination campaign will simply languish as it did last year when only 7 million Americans accepted the boosters within six weeks of their delivery to pharmacies.

As for other tools in their toolbox, Cohen refers to anti-viral treatments like Paxlovid, which are regularly being denied to patients by their physicians or when they actually are given a prescription, face the daunting price tag of $1,300 to $2,400 per course because their insurance denies them coverage. Meanwhile, repurposed medications like Metformin, a drug that treats diabetes, which has shown anti-viral properties and shown in randomized trials to reduce COVID-19 viral loads and decrease risk of Long COVID, remain unmentioned. In particular, this raises the question of why there are so few tools in the toolbox, and why some are being removed, such as the ability to wear N95 masks in public.

The arrest of an 18-year-old New York man in Nassau County on Tuesday who was wearing a black ski mask utilizing the recently passed mask-ban legislation will only embolden police departments and threaten the public who face possible detentions and arrest simply on charges of police suspicion.

At the Democratic National Convention, guidance was issued forbidding mask wearing by attendees unless “it was necessary due to a disability” and this at the discretion of security.

[simply-ivanka]

Are the Democrats trying to assassinate President Trump, or are they just rooting for it?

Shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated after the 2016 election, a so-called comedienne posted a picture of herself holding Trump’s severed, bloodied head. That apparently passes for comedy among Democrats.

In a presentation of Julius Caesar in the venerable Shakespeare in the Park production in New York City a few months later, a likeness of Trump was cast in the role of Caesar. I don’t need to remind you what happens to Caesar in the end.

The violent rhetoric from Democrats just keeps on coming, through Trump’s first term, into this year’s re-election campaign, and right up to weeks before the election. And now, it’s predictably escalating from violent rhetoric and into violent acts.

A month ago, a would-be assassin missed Trump’s cranium by a quarter-inch with a bullet from an AR-15, only because Trump luckily turned at the last possible second. It came out that the Trump campaign had requested beefed-up security prior to the incident, and the White House had denied his request.

The Secret Service at the time was headed by a DEI hire, and the agents at the event were test-failing amateurs. They allowed the shooter within 130 yards of Trump on an unsecured rooftop. Even after they saw him there, with a gun, they failed to take him out and failed to alert Trump or his staff until he’d fired eight shots, killing one man, seriously wounding another, and grazing Trump’s ear.  

In an apparent admission of near-lethal negligence by the Service, five agents were later suspended.

Their replacements seem not much better. In yesterday’s attempt, a Democrat donor got within easy range of Trump on a golf course with a rifle equipped with a high-powered scope. The shooter was wearing a Go-Pro, apparently to post his assassination on YouTube where Democrats everywhere could cheer it. He was thwarted only because he was foolish enough to poke his rifle out of the bushes, where an agent happened to see it.

The shooter had been on the golf course for at least 12 hours. One must wonder, how did he know Trump’s golfing schedule at least 12 hours in advance?

Even now, after two assassination attempts that missed due only to incredible luck or Providence, President Trump is not afforded the level of protection that President Biden or even Vice President Harris receives.

Most recently, President Doofus again falsely accused Trump of saying that neo-Nazis are “fine people” even though that accusation has been thoroughly debunked even by leftist fact-checkers.

Kamala Harris repeated the lie in her debate with Trump – and was not corrected by the moderators even though the moderators purported to correct at least seven Trump statements (some of which were not factual claims, but mere opinions).

You might think the mainstream media would condemn these assassination attempts in the strongest words possible. But if you do think that, then you haven’t been paying attention to the mainstream media for the last ten years.

The mainstream media is implying – no, they’re outright stating – that Trump has all this coming because he’s a Republican who says nasty things. The Washington Post has already dismissed the assassination attempt and has framed it instead as Trump unfairly capitalizing on the incident politically.

The media take their cue from Biden and Harris. They routinely equate Trump with Adolf Hitler, the mass murderer of millions.

The Democrats let their rank and file connect the dots: Everyone has been taught, correctly, that killing Hitler would have been a heroic act that would have saved millions. So, the Democrats don’t exactly say “kill Trump” but they do suggest you’d be a hero if you did.

[qqueenofhades]

I may very well be getting too far ahead of myself here, but reading your last two (back to back, hot diggity damn, queen!) essays got me thinking about the future. In the beautiful possible future where we keep up the fight, elect Kamala, and keep Trump out of office for another 4 years, do you think there's a real possibility we'll be seeing the same election (Kamala vs Trump) in 2028?

I hear the arguments against the possibility - he's old and unhealthy so he'll probably die (not counting in it), the Republicans cannot be stupid enough to try again (they can), his fragile ego will be too broken to try again (his ego disconnected from reality long, long ago), he'll be in jail (unlikely with this Supreme Court, and hilariously we have no laws preventing someone in jail from running), but even the sum total of them doesn't seem like enough to count him out.

Mind you, if he does run against Kamala in 2028, I feel like the odds would be on our side? I'm just. So. Tired of this guy. I'll keep fighting till the day I die, but it'd be nice if we could actually see this dude go down and take on the next one.

We honestly have a good shot to shut ourselves of Trump forever at this election, because of the simple fact that he is in rapid dementia decline and I honestly don't think he'll be remotely sane in another 4 years. Not that he's sane now, but at age 82 after another four years of associated legal troubles and/or penalties complete with his rapidly unraveling mental state... I just don't think it will be possible even for the withered husk of the GOP to trot him out again, and I say that as someone who always unfortunately knew he would be the nominee again in 2024 despite some overly optimistic prognostications to the contrary by others. As I've said before, this is the last-chance saloon for Trump in any number of ways, and that is part of the reason he is so desperate now.

We can't count on the legal system to rid us of Trump before the election, but the delayed sentencing in his NY felony trial is coming a couple weeks afterwards, the Jan 6th trial has restarted, and the 11th Circuit is fairly likely to reinstate the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Trump running for president is a convenient grift to pay his legal bills, and if he gets crushed in November, even the most faithful MAGA diehard are going to find it hard to keep coughing up for his various fundraising appeals. I mean sure, he'll get something, because some of the cult members will be in it to the bitter end, but overall, he will be fucked. On many, many levels.

This is the delightful vision that is fueling me and frankly should fuel all of us, so yes. Vote. Remove stubborn orange stains, once and possibly fucking finally for all. Please.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

wrt your post about US elections influencing the whole world and the "European privilege" we exhibit: yes and? The dogshit american empire rules us. Before them it was the soviets. Before that it was the nazis and before them it the austrians and hungarians and turks. What is your fucking point? we KNOW your ratfucker private-sector-imported political class is salivating to make us work 7 days a week for 14 hours, and cook us in our cities by burning 30 trillion times more petrol. We have to see your fucking politicians' faces on every social media site and be swamped with gofundmes for black folks shot dead by your SS policemen. Are you trying to say politics is a distraction from labour disputes? WHAT? It's the same. Politics IS labour dispute. None of us are free until we all are, we KNOW. FUCK. Like no bitch, we KNOW the IMF is fucking us in the ass because a bunch of US economists normalized the Ayn Rand ideas of market capitalism 50 years ago. Yeah we would machinegun them for christmas if we could but we CAN'T. We can't even vote for the slightly less gaza genociding party but you can. SO SHUT UP! Don't you fucking understand we're governed by your economic power with no recourse or representation? That everything comes from you because you're at the top? Even fucking LEFTISM is INFESTED by tankie shitheads from america whose only idea of communism is that it must be good because they've reversed american exceptionalism in their heads and think anything opposing the US must be better? I can't even go online without some redfash LA shithead telling me about the virtues of Ho Chi Minh and Ceaușescu. GOD. If Trump pulls NATO out of europe Putin will be at my doorstep TOMORROW. Shut the FUCK up about europeans complaining that you english ratfucker colonists are governing us. Vote blue no matter who, strike, kill your bosses, guillotine your politicians and maybe our children - which we wont have - can live in peace one day. And for the love of gun-toting truck-driving hillbilly american Jesus shut the FUCK up and let europeans complain. CHRIST.

I love when I get five paragraphs long asks that can be completely invalidated with the following words:

I live in the global south.

[almostloverboy]

No one say anything about this post, it's my way of coping with the stress of the election.

Tommy down the hall looks even better than last week. His beard is a little fuller and his arms are... firmer. He somehow always manages to catch the girl staring at him shyly when they pass in the halls or around the neighborhood. The way her eyes linger over his body holding something than sexual desire. Something much deeper. She always looked away quickly when she was caught so she didn't see the way Tommy's eyes noticed her body and her own discomfort with it.

So, when passing in the stairway, Tommy mentions that he's got this sick new movie that she's just gotta see. "I think it'll really speak to ya." He offers like she needed to be convinced. She nodded and immediately caught herself being too eager. The embarrassment still showed on her face when she was walking into his apartment later that night.

Tommy puts on Fight Club. She's never seen it before but she's literally sitting on the edge of her seat by the end. Tommy studies her response and at the end he mentions something about how he loved this movie before he came out. Had she ever thought about coming down to his gym sometime? He remembered her mentioning something about wanting to try bulking but was worried about what her shitty ex-boyfriend might say about it if she did. He was so glad when that frothing Trump humper was out of her life. She was ready now to do much more important things.

"I'll take you tomorrow. The guys at the gym are gonna love you." Tommy mutters, slipping a joint between her lips. Wait, hadn't he lit her up just a couple minutes ago? Her head is swimming and Tommy keeps whispering about how handsome she'll be once the hormones kick in. He had old binders she could borrow.

He doesn't cut her hair until after giving her the shot, though, because he wanted something to hold onto while he did it. At some point, her pants had disappeared and Tommy was pressed up on her bare skin when he pricked her with the needle and injected her very first dose of T. "And you've gotta think of a name that suits you better than the one you have now. Honestly, I don't know how you've handled being called that for so long." The haircut felt like shedding off layers of personality other people gave her over the years. Before she knew it, everything she thought about herself laid on the floor, trimmed to pieces by those loud, ugly clippers and Tommy's gentle hand.

The night ends in Tommy's bed and he's teaching his sweet little boyfriend how to take it up the ass like a real man. "Come on, dude, you don't really want me to fuck you like a girl, do you? It's cool, don't worry, I promise you'll cum for me anyway."

[jaythelay]

Dump's outta ammo.

1. He tried to start a rumor of Biden coming back. He then, very exceptionally poorly, tried to insert this talking point in the middle of a completely different rally. This, made him look like he has dementia. But make no mistake, the issue was nobody believed him literally instantly, and everyone forgot he even said it the week/day prior because he never built it up. He then immedietely dropped the "Biden's coming back" bit afterwards. Making him look far more dementia riddled than previous.

2. He's trying to claim nobody know's Kamala Harris' last name. Only reason to try this angle is because you're outta ammo and wanted to somehow make her name less recognizable in the moment. But soon after, much like with point 1, he went in too early before it could spread and become common, and thus, had to drop that angle entirely aswell, causing more dementia awareness of himself.

It's like he wanted an instant "her emails" or "his laptop" angle without any time or work at fucking all.

The goal is make shit up til something sticks but it's so old and tired and he's incapable of patience. If it doesn't immedietely work, he jumps to another made up point. Much like with point 1 and 2, point 0 was "Kamala ain't black" which he then, also, abandoned when it didn't immedietly stick.

His cohorts are trying to make it stick but if you call them weird they get reeeeeal defensive and forget what the conversation was, so, the points aren't sticking at all.

3. Him almost getting shot by one of his own party absolutely scared the shit out of him. It's partly why he's sending Vance out. Let him get shot next time, not Dump. Regardless of accuracy on that bit, the fact remains, Republican voters Scared Donald Trump from going to rallies, and Vance is a bodyshield for his weak ass.

4. On top of all this is the stunning double fact: One, is that we all collectively moved on from the republican shooting dump situation, because republican violence is so normalized, and second, his rallies are shrinking Because Even The People Find Them Too Dangerous.

Turns out guns are a problem for republicans. But unlike kids in school, they have the choice not to go to a dangerous republican gathering.

All this to culminate in my theory: R's will drop Dump 2 months in and just accept the losses by replacing him with god knows who probably RFK tbh. They know his goose is completely cooked if he loses, and presently? He's losing. Publically and Loudly.

He's scared as fuck right now and R's eat each other for any social weakness they can create. Dump looks weaker than inch thin frozen piss like my god Cruz has more of a spine now and it may be entirely due to age.

You also have his core fanbae (white supremecists) starting to turn on him. There's leak after leak of stuff he's saying none of it new but desperately old and tried and thus nothing sticks for his fanbase. Every poll has him losing hard, worst of all? To a Bi-Racial Woman. His voters hate her but hate a weak man more. (see how they view trans issues)

He himself will never ever drop out. But his party Absolutely Will Kick Him Out Guaranteed. And we'll see a very bizarre flop in the narrative about Dump from R talking heads. Suddenly when he's gone, they can be honest about him. (Like dems with Biden, literally already, as I called it probably a year ago now)

All this to say, Ya'll if he doesn't have a stroke or some shit, it's either his voter base or cohorts that'll ensure one for him. I kinda feel like most of the political violence that'll come out when Dump loses, will turn inward near immedietely, likely, towards himself.

I mean, they didn't make gallows with a dems name on em, and they did kill some cops, just saying they appear to go after their own when they're in crowds. That and a single gunshot sent them all running, and a single black man completely diverted their attention from their actual goals simply by being black. Literal Toddlers are more successful in any of their goals.

NONE of this is to placate. Vote Kamala, vote Third Party. Just don't not vote. Don't let this opportunity slip away, Dems actually trying is a first in a lifetime, keep that momentum going, and stop allowing bullshit based on party affiliation. God damn RFK the starved brain word dude is considered dem, we deserve better than Biden or RFK, and Kamala/Walz is a hell of a start.

Vote. But ensure you crush R's voting spirit.

We don't need nazis voting for nazis. Ya don't have to sell Kamala/Walz to R's, you need to make R's and Dump appear as weak as they've always been, that's what is working best, because their image is actually everything, we saw it with Rittenhouse and Rogan. Immedietely flip flop because their image was made weak.

That's all a theory, a politic theory. Thank. go now.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump, a shock ruling that clears away one of the major legal challenges facing the former president.

In a 93-page ruling, District Judge Aileen Cannon said the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution. She did not rule on whether Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was proper or not.

“In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny,” Cannon wrote.

The ruling by Cannon, a judge Trump appointed in 2020, comes on the first day of the Republican National Convention. Even though a trial before the presidential election was considered highly unlikely, many legal experts had viewed the classified documents case as the strongest one of the four cases that were pending against the former president.

The White House referred requests for comment to the Justice Department. Smith’s office has not responded to a call for comment.

Smith had charged Trump last year with taking classified documents from the White House and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. He pleaded not guilty.

In a separate criminal case brought by Smith against Trump in Washington, DC, the special counsel was pursuing federal charges stemming from Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump also faces a state-level election subversion case in Georgia and he was convicted of state crimes in New York earlier this year for his role in a hush money payment scheme before the 2016 election.

Trump’s efforts to dismiss the case under the appointments clause was seen as a long shot, as several special counsels – even during his own presidential administration – were run the same way.

But the fringe argument gained steam when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas threw his support behind the theory, writing in a footnote in the high court’s presidential immunity decision that there are “serious questions whether the Attorney General has violated that structure by creating an office of the Special Counsel that has not been established by law. Those questions must be answered before this prosecution can proceed.”

Still, Cannon held a hearing on the issue several weeks ago, pushing attorneys to explain exactly how Smith’s investigation into Trump was being funded. The judge’s questions were so pointed that special counsel attorney James Pearce argued that, even if Cannon were to throw out the case due to an appointments clause issue, the Justice Department was “prepared” to fund Smith’s cases through trial if necessary.

Cannon said in her order that the special counsel’s position “effectively usurps” Congress’ “important legislative authority” by giving it to the head of a department – DOJ, in this case – to appoint such an official.

“If the political branches wish to grant the Attorney General power to appoint Special Counsel Smith to investigate and prosecute this action with the full powers of a United States Attorney, there is a valid means by which to do so,” she wrote.

COULD CASE BE REVIVED?

Cannon said in her ruling Monday that the Justice Department “could reallocate funds to finance the continued operation of Special Counsel Smith’s office,” but said it’s not yet clear whether a newly-brought case would pass legal muster.

“For more than 18 months, Special Counsel Smith’s investigation and prosecution has been financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near impossible,” Cannon wrote. “The Court has difficulty seeing how a remedy short of dismissal would cure this substantial separation-of-powers violation, but the answers are not entirely self-evident, and the caselaw is not well developed.”

She noted in her ruling that Smith’s team “suggested” at a court hearing on the matter that they could restructure the office’s funding to satisfy her concerns.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Pfeiffer at The Message Box:

The generally accepted — and oft-repeated — narrative about Trump is that he is a cult-leader who can bend the Republican base to his will. On issues like free trade and foreign policy, he broke with long-standing Republican orthodoxy and faced no repercussions. He attacked Republican stalwarts like the Bush family and John McCain. Not only was there no blowback, Trump also made these folks' personas non-grata in the Republican Party. Whether it’s indictments, his sexual assaults, or his dalliances and dinner dates with Nazis, Trump could force the Republican Party to go along. The GOP is Trump’s party and what he says goes. Trump is a man accountable to no one. This has benefited him politically and brought in folks who hate politics and distrust institutions. But that image became fuzzy last week when Donald Trump bent to the will of anti-abortion extremists in a stunning flip-flop on abortion that tells us everything we need to know about Donald Trump. He poses an existential threat to reproductive freedom for tens of millions of Americans.

The Flip-Flop to End All Flip-Flops

I have written about Trump’s abortion flip-flop a couple of times in the last week, so if you are a regular reader of Message Box, please feel free to skip ahead. If not… In an interview with Dasha Burns of NBC News, Trump implied that he would vote for the amendment on the Florida ballot guaranteeing access to abortion and effectively overturning the state’s six-week ban. Trump is now a Florida resident and many are unsure how he plans to vote on the amendment. Trump’s stated position on abortion is that it's up to the states. For crass political reasons he has been critical of Florida’s extreme ban. A day ago, Trump flip-flopped, telling Fox News that he would vote NO on the amendment. So what happened in the subsequent twenty-four hours?

Well, the evangelical community and anti-abortion activists went ballistic. They blew up the phone lines to Mar-a-Lago or wherever Trump  was laying his head last week. They argued that Trump’s new stance would depress turnout from his base. Ever since Dobbs, Trump cannot get it right. He watched his slate of hand-picked candidates get mowed down in 2022 and he sees the polls showing large majorities oppose the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the sorts of state and national abortion bans of which Republicans have long dreamed. Trump thought his “leave it to the states” policy would help. It didn’t. Floating the idea of voting for the abortion amendment was another desperate effort to get on the right side of the issue that has cost Republicans nearly every election. This time, Trump crossed a line. The anti-abortion faction of the party told him to reverse course and he did so immediately. One of the core tenets of Trump’s political philosophy is to never, under any circumstances admit to wrongdoing. Heck, Trump doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on defending and dining with Nazis. So the fact that Trump changed course so quickly and with so little resistance on abortion is quite notable.

[...] These folks will be calling the shots in a Trump Administration. They will influence policy and staffing decisions and that should scare the shit out of anyone who cares about reproductive freedom. Dobbs was the beginning — not the end — of the Far Right’s efforts.

Donald Trump being made to cry “uncle” and say that he is voting no on Florida Amendment 4 after being heavily criticized by anti-abortion commentators when he stated that he would initially consider voting in favor of Amendment 4 is proof that the anti-abortion extremists still call the shots in the GOP.

[archliches]

sorry i said no more posting but i lied: anyone else feel fucking crazy about people acting like we've just regressed into some pre-antebellum pre-diluvial hellfire epoch the likes of which we've never seen before. because last i checked 2020 was literally all of 4 years ago. my blog header has been the same longer than Biden was president. not enough time has passed for me to need my ID card reissued, or to get a TB shot, or to wear through a pair of shoes. and cops with riot gear have been beating protestors the whole time. all these trump voters were here last week and six years ago and will be here tomorrow. the US Government commits war crimes by proxy the same way they have every day that ends in y.

what is genuinely new here? what giant switch has been flipped? "the administration will do evil things more/louder/faster" i hate to break it to you but they were going to do evil things anyway. and they have been doing them. constantly. whether by vitriolic action or simpering inaction the material results are the same.

[sonicboomseason3]

this is really fucked up, but one of the reasons why actors tend to not speak out on big political topics is because on some contracts, production companies will include clauses such as not being able to publicly contradict their political beliefs. this is enforced through either monetary penalties and non disparagement agreements, but they both serve the same purpose of having a legal precedent to publicly punish actors who do it

i was originally just gonna respond to this with an "ok" and nothing else but then i caught a good handful of people in my notes dickriding an actor who doesn't even know that they exist (and really only him because i haven't seen anyone doing the same for marsden or pally) so ykw how about i just take this opportunity to bring up a couple of other sketch things that keanu has done that show that he isn't nearly as cool as everyone wants to believe:

the party with netanyahu isn't actually the only time he's rubbed elbows with a prominent israeli - he actually trained with IOF special ops vet aaron cohen in order to play john wick (and on the off chance that anyone wants to dismiss cohen as some guy who was just in the IOF decades ago and left that shit behind, just take a look at his history here). cohen on his own is just an absolute piece of work and a cursory glance at his social media should tell you everything in case the past couple of sentences didn't

and since people want to play the fucking "keanu attended that party a decade ago!!1!" card with me (interestingly enough nobody's doing the same for marsden even though the thing with him was way back in like 2004) i'll go for something relatively recent: he's friends with killer cop toni mcbride. in 2020 mcbride shot and killed daniel hernandez and subsequently got sued by his family for it (guess whose movies they've requested that people boycott?). around the 0:10 mark of this video of the two of them meeting up, they make jokes about "shootin' newton," which is a chant lapd newton division cops came up with to reference the high amount of police shootings that happen there. also in case none of this is enough for you mcbride's a proud trump supporter so yeah she's just a full-on white supremacist and keanu not only decided to hang out with her for a day but also evidently knew enough about the lapd to know about "shootin' newton"

but back to anon's original point, am i supposed to care that he could potentially get fined for saying shit? this past week, hundreds of college students and faculty, most if not all of whom are significantly worse off than an a-list celebrity like keanu, have been brutalized and arrested for protesting the genocide on campuses. and somehow an actor with a net worth of $380 million can't say or do anything lest he run the risk of being fined or fired or whatever

[freetheshit-outofyou]

I could not read all of this propaganda, but that's not to say the media is not beating the drums of fear loud enough to scare the sheep. Over the last two weeks there have been more and more "stories" in the "news" paining those in the military and those who have formerly Served with honor in very broad brushes. None of those brushes are flattering, almost all those brush strokes are wrong. Three weeks ago it was DoD Directive 5240.01, something that has been in place since 1982 and updated for current technologies. Now this hatchet piece on all military members linking them some how this this turd. Don't get me wrong, it sounds like Arthur is a king sized turd. But that doesn't mean the other 17,038,807 million living Veterans in the Unites states are also. This propaganda goes out of its way to link white, male active and former military members to everything from the Oklahoma City bombing and white supremacy to January 6th. and how Mr. Trump is the king shit of all of it. This "writing" states: "Arthur isn’t an anomaly. He is among more than 480 people with a military background accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection." (I notice it makes no mention of Wenheng Zhao, Jinchao Wei, Shapour Moinian, Ji Chaoqun, Ron Rockwell Hansen, Kevin Mallory, Korbein Schultz, Baimadajie Angwang, I wonder why that is? Becasue their motives sure seem ideologically driven and extreme crimes.) Umm, there are 16.2 MILLION Veterans in the united states, using the numbers from this propaganda 480 former and or active military members have been "accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes". That's 0.0028170986384199% (or .00013% of the U.S. pop.) of the Veteran population, if we cut out the 230 Jan 6 folks because we all know they got fucked, that number changes to 0.0013498597642429% (or .000066% of the U.S. pop.). If those are not anomaly level numbers I don't know what is. For reference, you have a .9% chance of dying in a car crash over your life time, a 16.67% chance of dying from heart disease and a 14.29% of cancer killing you. And for those who are chomping at the bit to pull out some firearms factoid, there is a 0.01393392540896% possibility of being shot and killed in the U.S., 53% of that number are self inflicted changing that number to a scary 0.0073849804667488%. If you were told "Walk through that door and you have a 0.0028170986384199% of dying, but if you stand here and do nothing you have between a 14.29% and 16.67% of dying in before that door opens." your ass would sprint to the door. Once again the media is beating those drums of fear and the masses are walking lock step to the rhythm.