Stoking Fear 🤯😱🌻✡️😱🤯

STFU:  The government is still closed. Effects of the shutdown are becoming apparent as notices regarding next year’s health care premium bills have begun appearing in mailboxes and overtaxed, unpaid flight controllers have started calling in sick resulting in flight delays and sporadic airport shutdowns throughout the country.  Trump’s response is his usual song and dance of lies, threats, and blame shifting because everything is the fault of those radical Democrats, particularly Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. To build up pressure against those two radicals and their nefarious caucus, he’s threatening to fire government workers and to withhold the backpay that is typically paid when shutdowns end.  It’s unlikely that either threat is legal, ironically Trump signed a law requiring that backpay be paid during his first administration, but legality doesn’t appear to be an impediment to Trump or to OMB’s Russell Vought, whose office has circulated a memo justifying the elimination of backpay, a plan that’s caught both Speaker Johnson and Senate leader Thune off guard with both stammering that, of course, workers will get their backpay. And by the way, Johnson who is still refusing to swear-in Democratic Congresswoman in waiting Adelita Grijalva because he fears triggering the discharge petition that will force the release of the Epstein files, doesn’t know who Bad Bunny is but thinks it’s a bad idea for him to headline the Super Bowl show. 😊  As to health care, the issue that Democrats are hanging their hat on because it is a real issue, Trump claimed that he was negotiating with Schumer and Jeffries but then after they denied that he’d was, he backtracked, a problem for MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene whose bigly upset that her adult children, and her constituents but mostly her children, have received notices informing them that their health care premiums will double as a result of the expiration of the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Greene is now lashing out at Republican party leadership saying that no one warned her that premiums would skyrocket as a result of the big ugly bill that she voted for.  She’s now calling for the subsidies to be reinstated.  The Republican position as articulated by Thune is that he’s open to discussing a healthcare “solution,” but that Democrats have to first provide enough votes to pass the continuing funding resolution. At least so far, that’s not happening, and it shouldn’t because even if Thune genuinely means that, and he probably doesn’t, Trump who keeps on defunding Congressionally mandated programs, can’t be trusted.  Even Maine Independent Angus King, who usually votes with the Democrats but who voted for the continuing resolution has his doubts about Thune’s credibility.  He’s now threatening to flip his vote.

Civil War? The shutdown is a problem, but it pales in comparison to Trump’s military build-up in Democratically run cities, those places he’s taken to calling warzones. His efforts to send troops into Portland were put on hold after one of his appointees, Oregon federal district court judge Karin Immergut, issued a temporary restraining order preventing their deployment but after another district court judge, Illinois’ April Perry, opted to schedule a hearing for Thursday morning rather than issue a similar restraining order against Texas National Guard troops being sent to Chicago, they started arriving last night.  Again, troops from a southern Republican run state are in the process of marching into a northern Democratically run one over the objections of that state’s Governor Jay Pritzker.  To make matters worse, Trump insists that if judges continue to block his plans, he’ll invoke the Insurrection Act.  There is no insurrection, the cities while not crime free, are not war zones overrun by “illegal aliens,” in fact while Trump was railing against Portland, runners there completed a full 26.2-mile marathon.  As Pritzker put it, Trump and his goons are all in on stoking fear with the intent of instigating violence to “justify” a military response.  He’s already told us that Warlord Pete Hegseth’s troops should consider US cities as good training grounds.  Trump might not be planning to cancel future elections, but he is trying to make people fearful about turning out to vote.  Why else would his thugs be pointing guns at citizens, threatening to arrest and in some cases physically accosting those brave enough to lawfully capture them on phone cameras.

Bondi Bombs:  The Attorney General isn’t supposed to be the President’s lawyer, she’s supposed to enforce laws and protect the public interest, not her dear leader. While testifying before Congress, the AG is supposed to be respectful and as responsive as possible because Congress’ role is to provide oversight.  However, these are not ordinary times so yesterday AG Pam Bondi was combative, rude, and evasive during her Senate appearance. California’s Adam Schiff aptly summarized her performance as follows: she refused to say whether she’d consulted with career ethics lawyers when approving Trump’s $400 million gifted plane from the Qataris; she refused to discuss her role in having the FBI scour the Epstein files for Trump’s name including any possible pictures of him with scantily dressed minors; she refused to answer questions about Border Czar Tom Homan’s on video acceptance of a $50,000 bribe and whether or not that money, which he still hasn’t denied receiving, was ever returned to the FBI and if it wasn’t whether or not he declared it on his taxes; she refused to answer questions about why former FBI Director Comey was indicted when career prosecutors found insufficient evidence to pursue charges and whether he was charged because Trump’s insisted he be charged something we all know because Trump posted his demand on Truth Social; she refused to answer questions about the legality of engaging in military strikes on boats in the Caribbean; she refused to respond to questions about the firing of career prosecutors who participated in the January 6 investigations while also refusing to say whether she supported a restoration fund for convicted violent insurrectionists; and she refused to say whether immigration officials have to abide by court orders. Those questions were primarily asked by Democratic Senators however, Louisiana Republican John Kennedy, the Rhodes Scholar who frequently plays dumb but isn’t, also threw a few tough ones into the mix. In response to Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s statements on a recent NY Post Pod Force One podcast that his one-time NYC neighbor Jeffrey Epstein was the “greatest blackmailer ever” and a pervert and that anyone who ever spent anytime with him had to know it and probably participated in his crimes, Kennedy asked if the DOJ had any plans to interview Lutnick.  Bondi hemmed and hawed saying that interviewing Lutnick, like finding out whether Homan paid taxes on his ill-gotten $50,000 bribe would be a decision for FBI Director Kash Patel to pursue. Of course, she is Patel’s boss so that buck stops with her, but only when convenient. When it comes to pardons and commutations the buck stops with Trump and it’s fairly obviously he’s going to pardon Epstein’s partner in pedophilia Ghislaine Maxwell because after he was asked about the Supreme Court’s recent announcement that they would not take up Maxwell’s appeal he said he said he’d be “allowed to pardon her if he wanted.”  As to the firing of career prosecutors who don’t follow his commands, another one is probably on the chopping block.  It’s been reported that career federal prosecutor Elizabeth Yost who oversees major criminal cases in the Norfolk office for the eastern district of Virginia plans to tell Lindsey Halligan, the Trump stooge who was hired to indict Comey that she does not believe there is probably cause to file criminal mortgage fraud charges against NY AG Letitia James. It’s highly likely that Yost has started cleaning out her desk. Queue the ketchup bottles.  

#BringThemAllHomeNow