When visiting a Synagogue, non-Jews are Required to Wear the Kippah...

Jewish women are often separated from men in public spaces and temples. Just as is the case with Muslim women.

When visiting the Pope in his Vatican, all women, Christian and non-Christian, are required to cover their heads with a veil.

When non-Jews are visiting the nagging wall in Jerusalem, they are also required to wear Jewish attire on their heads.

Jews, especially the radical fundamentalist orthodox ones, are always complaining of having to sit next to women on planes, trains and buses. Gender segregation is fundamental to Jews as much as it is to Muslims.

When non-Muslim women are visiting with Muslim officials and dignitaries (Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran...), they are required to cover their heads.

... but when non-Muslims visiting a mosque are asked to wear Muslim garb on heir heads, it's the end of the world. So xenophobic racist FOCKED NEWS makes it a point to tell about it. 

ISLAMOPH0BIA IS RAMPANT IN THE US.  Those who hate Muslims also hate Jews, mind you. 

The question for the story below is that the field trip to the mosque by the high school in question was organized, it seems from the individuals named in the FOCKED NEWS story, by Zionist teachers and school administrators. So what gives?
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California school district sued over field trip to mosque where students allegedly donned Muslim garb
Lindsay Kornick
Wed, August 26, 2026


Fulani men praying

A group of multi-faith parents has filed a joint lawsuit against Palo Alto Unified School District in California and Palo Alto High School's principal Brent Kline [who is a Zionist] over a field trip to a local mosque last year.

According to the August 7 lawsuit, as part of the school's Social Justice Pathway curriculum, students took a tour of a mosque hosted by the Muslim Community Association and took part in several religious activities and were allegedly encouraged to don religious garb without parental consent.

"During the Fall 2025 mosque visit, students who were minors allegedly were provided with Muslim religious attire and encouraged to wear it while on site," the complaint read. "During that visit, students allegedly were provided with Qurans and taught that Islam, in particular, promotes social justice."

"The field-trip activities allegedly included observation of a Dhuhr prayer, discussion of the meaning of worship, and engagement with participants in the Noor Hifz Academy, the host institution's religious youth program in which Islamic students memorize the Quran," the complaint continued. "Female students were provided hijabs to wear and that all students were gifted Qurans to take home for personal use."

The lawsuit, which was filed by a group of Jewish parents, also claimed that students spoke to Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who has come under controversy for making allegedly antisemitic statements in the past. [No one in the US, however, comes under controversy when insulting Muslims or Christians. The higher standing of Jews (having been chosen by Yahweh) relative to the rest of us Goyim contends that Jews ought not be criticized for the same backward thinking and practices they hold and share with the other monotheistic cults.]

In a comment to Fox News Digital, David Rosenberg-Wohl, who is representing the parents, said that the issue at hand is a public school like Palo Alto High School specifically promoting Islam in its Social Justice Pathway curriculum.

"In effect, kids are being told that if they are progressive and interested in social justice, Islam is the faith for them. That is not the business of a public school. It's not an issue of religion v. religion. It's an American one. The separation of church and state is a bedrock issue here," Rosenberg-Wohl said. [Meanwhile, primitive radical antisemites across the US, particularly in the Trump administration and in backward ultra-fundamentalist states like Texas, the Church is being shoved down the throat of everyday Americans who couldn't care less for the ten commandments displayed in public school classrooms, in courts of justice, on  state university campuses.... Trump's America is violating the "separation of church and state" principle, yet Zionists never complain about it because Trump's America is breastfeeding the genocidal Zionist colony in Palestine with money and weapons].

The Muslim Community Association stood by its original statement, saying that the organization was "deeply concerned" over the lawsuit. "Treating students' exposure to ordinary Muslim faith and practice as inherently coercive or threatening risks reinforcing the very Islamophobia and misunderstanding that that educational engagement should help overcome," the group told Fox News Digital.

Palo Alto Unified Superintendent Jason Glass [also a Zionist] informed Fox News Digital that he is reviewing the allegations but "will not comment further on pending litigation."

Though some parents were upset by the field trip, most students defended the outing, suggesting that the grievances were exaggerated.

Student newspaper "The Paly Voice" editor-in-chief Juni Thurston disputed claims that female students were forced to don hijabs and that students were indoctrinated with Islamic beliefs on these trips. [As you can see, the racist fundamentalist xenophobic vitriol is not being spewed by the students or their families, but by AIPAC-paid radical Zionist propaganda that does not want to share its hold on the dumb American public opinion with their alter egos, the Muslim fundamentalists]

"The vast majority of the people demonizing the teachers who arranged and chaperoned this field trip simply don't know them," Thurston wrote in an op-ed for the campus newspaper. "The idea that they would be working to indoctrinate students into Islam, or any religion, is an idea extremely foreign to me as a student who has had them as my teachers for the past two years. But this narrative is nonetheless dominating media coverage of the event." [Why is it dominating the media coverage? Because Zionist propaganda wants to elevate murderous genocidal Zionists to the level of angels and demonize equally murderous and intolerant Islamists in the minds of dumb Americans. Honesty and intellectual integrity require equal opportunity treatment of ALL ultra-religious barbarians, not just some.]

In a comment to Fox News Digital, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Adam Goldstein (another Zionist) said that if students were compelled to don religious garb, this would be in violation of the First Amendment. [Hence, wearing a Kippah by a non-Jew to enter a synagogue is also a violation of the First Amendment]

"Just as the First Amendment prevents public schools from forcing students to pledge allegiance to the flag, it prevents those schools from compelling them to wear religious attire. If students were required to do that as part of a curricular field trip, it would conflict with the First Amendment's bar on compelled speech," Goldstein said. [Therefore, Mr. Goldstein, next time the school wants to take the students on a field trip to the local synagogue, the students should not have to be made to wear the kippah or touch a Torah or listen to the barbarian religious drivel from a violence-laden goat parchment garbage - known as the Torah or Old Testament - written by primitive goat-herding nomads - known as Hebrews - during the Bronze Age. Not only would those instances be violations of their First Amendment right, but they would constitute statutory "intellectual rape" because they would indoctrinate underage students into the barbarian Jewish religion and diminish their ability to use Reason. Religious barbarity is a plague in the US which, as a country, is the most backward of all so-called "Advanced" countries and nations.]

Radical Right-Wing US Supreme Court Complicit in Trump's Plans to Wreck the Midterms

The Radical Rightwing-dominated Supreme Court of the US is endorsing Trump's schemes and plots to at least deny anti-Trump voters their right to vote and at worst to wreck the midterms by sowing disagreements and conflicts over their results. The rightwing extremist judges on the Supreme Court know Trump's cabal is losing the midterms and is trying to assist him in sowing doubt over the results.

The issue is mail-in voting ballots. Most people who vote by mail are handicapped, poor or from disadvantaged minorities that are targeted by Trump and his right-wing racist fascists because 1- they hate these voters from minority communities and 2- because these voters generally favor the Democrat Party.

This is just one of many deceptions and maneuvers Trump is planning to repeat the crimes he committed in 2021 by launching a Fascist white supremacist mob attack against Congress with the intention of preventing the certification of Joe Biden's election.

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Justice Jackson Rips Supreme Court Decision For Injecting 'Chaos And Uncertainty' Into Midterms
Li Zhou
Updated Tue, August 25, 2026 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a scathing dissent of Monday's Supreme Court decision on President Donald Trump's mail-in voting order, warning that it sows election chaos and leaves states scrambling to respond.

"This ruling…needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections," Jackson wrote. "It also lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges."

On Monday, the Supreme Court's conservative majority sided with the Trump administration regarding an executive order that imposes new restrictions for mail-in voting ahead of this fall's midterms. The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to send lists of U.S. citizens to officials in each state, and asks the U.S. Postal Service to make new rules on who it can transmit mail-in ballots from.

The panel did not rule on the order's legality; instead, it lifted a lower court's injunction blocking the implementation of parts of the proposal. Another nationwide injunction on one of the order's provisions remains in effect.

Previously, 23 states, along with the District of Columbia, sued to contest the administration's order, arguing that the Constitution grants states the power to administer elections. District Court Judge Indira Talwani concurred and said that parts of Trump's order "unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers." In June, she issued an injunction halting the order, which was reaffirmed by an appeals court.


US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks to the 2025 Supreme Court Fellows Program, on February 13, 2025, at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. JACQUELYN MARTIN via Getty Images

As part of their decision, the Supreme Court's conservative justices determined that the states had yet to be harmed by the administration's regulations, and didn't have sufficient standing to contest the policy.

Jackson pushed back on this rationale in her dissent, noting that states had already demonstrated that they've suffered injury and that this move marked a departure from how the Court has treated past election cases. She noted that it also offered states little clarity about when the right time to sue would be with the election fast approaching.

Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor also dissented in a separate statement.
The panel's decision leaves the door open for further legal challenges on the order itself. As CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck has explained, the U.S. Postal Service has issued new mail-in ballot rules as part of efforts to implement the order, and those could also be blocked.

Jackson emphasized that the majority's move on Monday fuels uncertainty for state officials, who are busy preparing for the November general election, which is just months away.

"A stay grant puts the Plaintiff States in a precarious position: Their election officials would have to scramble in the coming weeks to challenge or attempt to take on the potentially impossible task of complying with the President's new mail-in ballot regime," Jackson wrote.

Ultimately, she noted, the court erred in lifting the existing injunction, and removing one of the legal hurdles the administration faces as it attempts to bring the mail-in order to fruition.

"When the Government's obvious goal is to interfere with the Plaintiff States' practices and prerogatives in a manner that the Constitution does not authorize, it is both a serious legal error and a grave misuse of our equitable emergency powers to let the Executive proceed even one step further," Jackson wrote.

For more on rightwing Fascists' efforts to deny minorities their right to vote, check:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-appears-ready-to-make-voting-even-harder_n_69c16a2fe4b04b9b3f19563f?utm_campaign=yahoo-recirc

US Soldier Criticizing Biden Gets a Promotion. US Soldier Criticizing Trump Goes to Jail

 

US Air Force Maj. Jason Watson was arrested by police on the Capitol steps after calling for the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump, in Washington, DC, on July 1, 2026. - Allison Bailey/NurPhoto/AP/File


Trump criticism leads to rare criminal charges for Air Force officer who called for impeachment
Davis Winkie, Haley Britzky, CNN
Tue, August 25, 2026

A US airman who was arrested twice, once on the steps of the US Capitol while calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, was officially criminally charged Monday for his comments, according to a charging document his attorney shared with CNN.

Maj. Jason Watson faces the following charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to the document: three violations of Article 88 for alleged "contemptuous" remarks about Trump, five violations of Article 92 for allegedly disobeying orders and two violations of Article 133 for alleged conduct unbecoming an officer.

The rare Article 88 charges are connected to the Air Force officer's June interview with the Defenders of our Republic Substack newsletter, his July 1 protest in uniform at the US Capitol, and an August 17 CNN interview.

It can be considered a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to participate in uniform in any overtly partisan activity, such as a political protest, or to use "contemptuous words" against the president and other high-ranking civilian officials. Many low-level offenses of these rules are resolved informally, but Watson's violations were unusually high-profile.

Watson was first arrested in July while protesting in uniform at the US Capitol, and he was then arrested again last week just days after criticizing Trump again during a CNN interview. One of his attorneys, Chris Mutimer, told CNN that his client was ordered to remain in "pre-trial confinement" — an action analogous to a denial of bond in civilian court — pending legal action against him.

"Not only is (Trump) a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans," Watson told CNN's Erin Burnett during the interview. "And that is unacceptable to me."
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The disobeying orders charges against Watson allege that he violated Defense Department regulations barring troops from speaking out in favor of partisan causes; "wrongfully" wore his uniform at a Capitol press conference; broke leave regulations by traveling to Washington, DC; and refused to wear his uniform to work the morning after his CNN interview.

Air Force prosecutors also alleged that Watson's Capitol protest and CNN interview constituted "conduct unbecoming an officer."

Mutimer, Watson's attorney, told CNN's Erin Burnett on "OutFront" that he spoke with his client Monday and "he is basically in solitary confinement for his safety." Mutimer said, "He truly believes in everything about our constitution and what it represents, and the oath that he swore, and he stands by the fact that he did this so others wouldn't have to, and to share that to anyone who's scared and feels alone."

...............

Military courts-martial leading to "contempt of officials" charges are rare — a CNN review only identified two such convictions that have occurred since the modern Uniform Code of Military Justice was enacted in 1951.

In 1965, an Army lieutenant was convicted of the charge after he participated in an off-base protest against the Vietnam War in El Paso, Texas. Lt. Henry Howe was sentenced to a dismissal from the service — the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for an officer — and a year in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ultimately granted parole to Howe, ending his sentence early.

The most recent Article 88 conviction came in 2021, when former Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller pleaded guilty to contempt of officials and other charges linked to a series of social media videos he published criticizing the Biden administration's handling of the US military's withdrawal from Afghanistan. Scheller, who was confined to the brig for a period of time before his trial, was sentenced to a $5,000 pay forfeiture and resigned from the Marine Corps sans-pension as part of a plea agreement.

The Trump administration has since appointed Scheller to serve as a senior adviser to the Pentagon's undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

Frank Rosenblatt, a retired Army judge advocate and associate law professor said to CNN that the standard for "contemptuous" words is "less than precise" in guidance provided to military judges and panel members (similar to jurors).

Rosenblatt said that "contemptuous" remarks under Article 88 must be "insulting, rude, and disdainful conduct, or otherwise disrespectfully attributing to another a quality of meanness, disreputableness, or worthlessness."

He suggested that a pretrial hearing known as an Article 32 proceeding may be required to assess whether Watson's remarks instead "are true or are fair criticisms" of the president.
...........................

The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Monday. In an August 19 statement to CNN, an Air Force spokesperson said that Watson "is presumed innocent" and said that that Air Force District of Washington will oversee his trial "if (his) case is referred to a General Court-Martial."



This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN's Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, Carmen Conte Widman and Francesca

Antisemitism and Islamophobia Find Common Ground in the Alps

Europeans, in this case the French, dispense equal opportunity disstate (not to say racism) towards Muslims and Jews, especially the fundamentalist ones. The Jewish and Muslim "victims" share some of the blame: They don't mingle with the locals and demand special treatment (e.g. separating men and women). AND, there's too many of them.
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Tensions in the Alps after antisemitic video
Laure Valentin
Mon, August 24, 2026 


Tensions in the Alps after antisemitic video

Usually peaceful, the Deux Alpes resort found itself at the centre of controversy a few days ago after a video went viral on social media in which a shopkeeper, leaning on the counter of her refreshment stall, can be heard telling an Orthodox Jewish man: "The Jewish community, there are too many of you. At some point it gets on people's nerves."

An investigation has been opened following the incident. But it has cast a chill over the resort, which every summer, for decades, has welcomed Orthodox Jewish families.

"Let's say it has created a bad atmosphere in the resort; Orthodox Jewish tourists don't cooperate at all, they don't take part in anything, not the restaurants, not the bars, not the activities – well, only the children's activities, the games, that's all," explains Danièle, a regular visitor to the resort.

The case has also got people talking and highlighted tensions that can arise in Alpine resorts between local residents and holidaymakers.

"There are other people who, even when we walk down the street with the children, speak badly to them because they are wearing kippot. That shows that people are frustrated that there are children around, that there are a lot of Jews, so in the end this is not an isolated situation," says Hannah Lasry, a Jewish tourist.

The director of the Alpe d'Huez tourist office, Sébastien Merignargues, says: "When I was in Tignes, there were issues, for example with the swimming pool, about bathing – men, women – the lifeguards had to be the same sex as the swimmers, small things like that, and it's true that these are ways of operating that we don't have, so they can, I don't know if 'conflict' is the right word, but in any case there is a need for adjustment and sometimes they are simply sticking points."

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez was quick to condemn the antisemitic remarks. After hearings, the investigation was passed "for review" to the Grenoble public prosecutor's office, the latter said at the start of the week.

For several years now, Deux Alpes has hosted the Beth Loubavitch summer seminar (part of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic movement Chabad-Lubavitch), a major gathering for French-speaking Judaism that consistently attracts hundreds of people over three weeks. Created in the late 1960s, when hundreds of thousands of Jews from North Africa were arriving in mainland France, the seminar has since moved from resort to resort in the Alps.

This text was translated with the help of artificial intelligence. Report a problem : [feedback-articles-en@euronews.com].

Trump Proudly Demonstrates his Ignorance and Illiteracy... Or his Senility and Dementia?

 The Great White American Moron

But you know, the Great White American Moron (GWAM)'s ignorant illiterate followers love him for that reason and that reason only: He is as dumb as they are and they feel warm and comfortable with him. He spews his lies to their stupid faces and they happily believe his lies because they are dumb.

Tsk, tsk... the stable genius businessman with a long record of bankruptcies doesn't understand economics???? Or is he too senile and demented that he confused "bond market" with "Iran war"?

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Trump’s comments about the military and the bond market betray his economic illiteracy
Steve Benen
Mon, August 24, 2026

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump traveled to South Carolina to give appointed Republican Sen. Darline Graham a boost ahead of her primary runoff election, and at their joint rally, the president assured the audience that he and his allies have "turned this country completely around."

"Jobs are up, inflation is down," the Republican added.

If this were true, it would certainly be worth bragging about — but it wasn't true at all. Job growth has slowed sharply since Trump's second term began, and inflation is higher now than when he returned to the White House. His description of the economic status quo turned reality on its head.

But shortly before Trump left for the Palmetto State, he chatted briefly with reporters, one of whom asked about the bond market, which led him in an even more absurd direction.

"The yields have come back up since [Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's initial intervention in the bond market]," a reporter reminded the president. "Have you talked to him about another type of intervention? Is that something he will be doing?"

Trump replied, "We have many types of intervention. That's one. The ultimate intervention is our military, and if we have to use that, we will."

It's not exactly groundbreaking to note that the incumbent American president routinely makes bizarre declarations, but even by Trump standards, this was utterly baffling. The Q&A quickly moved on, but the idea that he could somehow deploy the U.S. military to intervene in the bond market is obviously insane. It's not even theoretically possible, unless the Republican intends to have armed service members literally attacking bond traders.

But since that's (hopefully) an implausible scenario, we're left with a different kind of problem: Trump's comments betrayed his economic illiteracy. He raised the specter of military intervention in the bond market because, in all likelihood, he has no idea what the bond market is.

Despite his lengthy career in the private sector, and despite the fact that he's led the executive branch of the world's preeminent superpower for nearly six years, Trump routinely says things that suggest he's never taken an Economics 101 course.

He's struggled to understand the gross domestic product (GDP). He's struggled with the difference between quarterly and annual growth. He's flunked arithmetic on foreign investment rates. His entire approach to the economics of trade tariffs has been largely incoherent.

If this were simply a matter of dishonesty and deception, it would be easier to understand. After all, Trump's reputation as a prolific liar is well deserved and has been earned over the course of many years.

But his comments about "the ultimate intervention" being "our military" when asked about bond yields are a qualitatively different kind of problem: The president, in a rather literal sense, just doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to economic policies he really ought to understand.

The post Trump's comments about the military and the bond market betray his economic illiteracy appeared first on MS NOW.

Obama-Biden Ghosts Still Haunting the Criminal MAGA Republican Morons

Black African-American President Barack Obama completed his second term in 2016, that is ten years ago.

Yet, according to the Radical right-wing racist morons of Donald Dumb, it still is Obama's fault for ground beef topping six dollars a pound, for a failed war against Iran, for electric bills doubling over the past two years, for inflation somewhere near 4%, for America to have become the laughingstock of the world for electing a criminal felon moron to office, for the national debt crossing forty trillion dollars this month, and for Donald Dumb himself illegally making some $2.4 billion in one year on office.

Even though the Great White American Moron (GWAM) Donald Dumb has perpetrated every crime he could think of to fix Obama's legacy, he has so far failed. The Obama tattoo seems indelible, unlike that of the dumb asshole which has already faded from some 70% of the American people, including his erstwhile dumb supporters among the white racist farmers and peasants whom he is shafting with tariffs and with beef import gifts to his buddy moron in Argentina. 

For example, last Friday, Jon Husted (who was appointed - not elected - Senator for Ohio to replace the hillbilly Yale-DEI graduate J D Vance) was pontificating his republican drivel in a steel mill in Middletown, Ohio, with the imbecile JD Vance right next to him, when workers asked him about high electricty prices.

"You want to have lower electricity prices, I want to tell you why they're rising," the appointed unelected senator said. "Because Congress and, under the Obama administration... they closed 23 power plants in the state of Ohio, representing half the electricity we use on a daily basis. Radical climate policies did that."

Ohio's average electric bill has climbed more than 53 percent since 2021, well past the national pace, and the reason isn't Obama. It's demand from data centers — the sprawling server farms now going up across the state. Ohio has one proposed campus in Pike County carrying a price tag north of 500 billion dollars and an appetite of ten gigawatts, more than half the state's typical load.

Just three days before the Ohio moron spoke, the National Republican Senatorial Committee circulated a memo warning that data centers had become a "sleeper issue" capable of costing Republicans seats, and calling them the anchor around Husted's neck. His colleagues are nervous about the exact thing he blamed on Obama.

The day before, on Aug. 20, when Texan moron Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, was asked about the skyrocketing price of beef, she reflexively exhibited her anti-Obama/Biden antibodies. She, like most Trump admin morons, was immunized by a voodoo vaccine concocted by the dynamic moron duo of RFK Jr and CMS director the Turkish Muslim Doctor Mohammad Oz: "What we are facing in America today is the direct result of a war on cattle by the previous administration," she said. Only two days ago, Donald Trump allowed his Argentinian moron buddy, Javier Milei, to import some 300,000 metric tons of Argentinian beef into the US to drive market price down by 25%, thus enraging the American beef industry that voted massively for him in 2024, not to mention high feed and borrowing costs due to rising oil and energy costs and a parasite outbreak in the states bordering Mexico. 

For more on the beef treason: https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/argentina-fighting-life-trump-defends-121700734.html

That same Thursday, Aug. 20, hillbilly Yale-DEI graduate JD Vance had an explanation for the 40-trillion dollars mark that the national debt surpassed last month. The inbred Appalachian genius declared, "Even though the debt is too high, even though we inherited this debt bomb from the Biden administration, we actually do have a plan to get the economy growing faster than the debt," the vice president declared.

The 40 trillion mark in fact arrived months ahead of projections, in part because of billions in revenue the government lost when its own tariffs were struck down in court. And the debt has kept climbing on this administration's watch: by Treasury figures, roughly 3.8 trillion dollars added in the first year and a half of the term. The debt got handed over, sure. Nobody has slowed it down since.

The real question is: If Donald Dumb and his coterie of morons knew when they elected him that he will be inheriting disasters from Obama and Biden, how come they did not have any plans tro counter those disasters? How come they have failed in two years in power to rectify Obama and Biden's failures? Can Americans in November vote against Obama-Biden ghosts? Or will they be voting for the criminal Republican morons who are running this country down?

Per the Previous Post: Moronic Quotes from Inbred White Republican "Leaders"

If these are the Republican leaders, can you imagine how much dumber their followers are?

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17 Baffling Quotes That Actually Came Out Of Republican Politicians' Mouths
Jamie Ko
Sun, August 23, 2026

Politicians say a lot of things you wish you could unhear, but every once in a while, a quote comes along that really is something else. So, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to share the most unbelievable things they've ever heard politicians actually say, and lucky for us, they had plenty to choose from. Here are 17 real quotes that came out of the mouths of people who were elected, sworn into office, and trusted to help make our laws:

Note: Some submissions are from a Reddit thread.

1. Then-Rep. Todd Akin said in a 2012 interview with a St. Louis TV station, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Chris Maddaloni / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

2. President Donald Trump asked during an April 2020 White House COVID-19 briefing, "Is there a way we can do something like that by injection, inside, or almost a cleaning?" referring to the possibility of injecting disinfectants into the body to combat the coronavirus.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

3. Then-Rep. Louie Gohmert asked a US Forest Service official during a 2021 House Natural Resources Committee hearing, "Is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit around the sun? Obviously, that would have profound effects on our climate."


Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images

4. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said during a 2022 One America News appearance while accusing Capitol Police of spying on members of Congress, "Pelosi's gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives."

Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images

5. Former president Richard Nixon said during his 1977 interview with David Frost, "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

John Bryson / Getty Images

6. Donald Trump said during a 2006 appearance on The View with his daughter Ivanka, "I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."

Newsday LLC / Newsday via Getty Images

7. President George W. Bush said during a 2002 speech in Nashville, "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

LUKE FRAZZA / AFP via Getty Images

8. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin told reporters amid statewide teacher protests in 2018, "I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today, a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them."

John Sommers II / Getty Images

9. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens explained while arguing against net neutrality rules in 2006, "The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."

Scott J. Ferrell / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

10. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said during a 2015 campaign rally in South Carolina, "Nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago."

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

11. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said during a 2022 Facebook Live while discussing lab-grown meat, "Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish." [The illiterate moron meant "Petri dish", the standard laboratory container in which much of biological research is done]

MS Now / Via youtube.com

12. Vice President Dan Quayle said in a speech to the United Negro College Fund, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

Bob Riha Jr / Getty Images

13. President Donald Trump said during a 2019 Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, "I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I've studied it better than anybody I know."

Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images

14. Then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush asked during a 2000 campaign speech in Florence, South Carolina, "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"

Brooks Kraft / Sygma via Getty Images

15. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in 2014, "'Net neutrality' is Obamacare for the Internet."

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

16. Then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush said during a 2000 campaign speech in Saginaw, Michigan, "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."

Najlah Feanny / Corbis via Getty Images

17. And last but not least, Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asked an audience at a 2016 campaign event in New Hampshire to "Please clap."

JIM WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

Trump's Orwellian and Racist Quest to Bleach America WHITE

Cuban immigrant's son, Marco Rubio, speaks as his criminal felon boss Donald Dumb sleeps 

Trump and his sidekick immigrant's son Marco Rubio want to bring only white immigrants (e.g. the South African white Nazi apartheid Afrikaners) to the US while denying visas from 75 countries with dark-skinned people. Immigration from Europe has long ceased so the white stock of Americans is slowly diluting. Don Quixote Trump and his Sancho Panza sidekick Rubio have been frenetically deporting all the dark- or brown-skinned immigrants and migrants they can hunt down the streets under various pretexts, including as as having not paid for a speeding ticket.

What a pathetic and stupid way to bleach America white. White American men hold the firm belief that they own America, after slaughtering 15 million native Amerindians and enslaving some half a million Africans. Not to mention the Chinese bonded slaves brought to the US to build the railroad, then were deported or denied immigration with several Chinese Exclusion Acts passed by the all-white anglo-saxon protestant brutes that took control of the US during the early decades of the country's history.

During the mid-to-late 20th century, the US built itself over the sweat and blood of immigrants from across the globe who were "allowed" into the country because the white anglo stock was largely dumb and illiterate peasants (themselves immigrants from the boonies and sticks of Europe), and needed smart engineers and scientists.

That history continues to this day in repetitive cycles:

Educated and hard-working immigrants are allowed in because the country could not make any progress without them. These immigrants build industries and enterprises, and make scientific and technological advances that are then hijacked by the white idiots to claim supremacy and maintain their hold on power. What would Silicon Valley be without the tens of thousands of smart immigrants? The US would not have been able to sequence the entire human genome without the tens of thousands of immigrant scientists? When the need for immigrants plateaus a bid, the white racist idiots from the sticks start harassing immigrants and denying further immigration, fearing a dilution of the white skin with darker skins. A couple of decades goes by and the US start falling behind, which prompts the white imbeciles to open the floodgates of immigration and takes in a new wave of immigrants, and the cycle repeats itself.

Donald Dumb and his racist morons in his administration is right now at the point where they are satisfied with the state of progress of the country thanks to the immigrants of the late 20th, early 21st century. So they are shutting down immigration and deporting any immigrants they can get their hands on. It's an established fact that the pre-college school system in the US is mediocre at best: every test and every poll demonstrates students emerging from schools are very poor in writing, math and general knowledge. Pre-college American schools believe their mission is more to produce smug individuals with oversized pride who are more interested in brainless sports than to produce genuinely educated and literate scientists and engineers. For the latter, the country relies on educated immigrants that staff the faculties of most US universities and who spend their time repairing the damage done to the children by the domestic primary, middle and high school system.

Give it a decade or so, when the inbred white morons of the Donald Dumb administration are history, and the US will again start siphoning the educated young people of other countries - the so-called brain drain - with enticements of an overrated American Dream that straps people to endless debt to the corporations of the United Scams of America.

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Federal judge blasts Rubio’s 75-country visa freeze as ‘Orwellian,’ strikes down policy
Elaine Mallon
Sat, August 22, 2026

A federal judge struck down the Trump administration's freeze on immigrant visas from 75 countries Friday, ruling Secretary of State Marco Rubio lacked the legal authority to order denials for applicants otherwise found eligible to enter the United States.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan vacated the State Department policy and any visa refusals based solely on it, directing the government to revisit those cases.

"The Court holds that the Policy is contrary to law and was issued in excess of Secretary Rubio's statutory authority," Vargas wrote in her 61-page opinion.

The State Department enacted the policy in January, suspending immigrant visa issuance to nationals of 75 countries the department deemed at high risk of becoming dependent on public benefits. The list spans Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Rubio's policy instructed consular officers to review each applicant individually. But even applicants who passed that review showed "additional evidence that demonstrates he or she overcomes the public charge refusal" and had no other reason to be denied were still refused visas if they came from one of the 75 designated countries.

"While the Policy permits consular officers to exercise their normal functions up to a point, whatever determinations they make as to eligibility for the applicants subject to the Policy are ultimately irrelevant," Vargas wrote. "The outcome is predetermined. The visa will be refused."

The judge said the directive effectively imposed a nationality-based ban on immigrants from nearly 40% of the world's countries and sidelined the consular officers Congress charged with deciding whether individual applicants qualify for visas.

"The Policy thus displaces consular officers from the role Congress assigned them in the visa issuance process," Vargas wrote.

"In addition to its other defects, the Policy also exceeds the statutory authority that the INA vests in the Secretary of State," Vargas continued.

"Specifically, Secretary Rubio's Cable directing consular officers that they 'must refuse' immigrant visas to nationals of certain countries cannot be reconciled with Congress's express limitation on his authority as Secretary of State."

The Trump administration has been aggressive about revoking visas of foreign nationals, having revoked 100,000 visas in 2025.

The Trump administration argued the refusals were lawful because officers formally issued them under Section 221(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, an existing provision governing visa refusals. Vargas rejected that rationale, saying the government had failed to identify a law allowing an officer to deny a visa to an applicant already found eligible.

"The Government engages in what is best described as an exercise in Orwellian logic," Vargas wrote.

She found the policy violated the INA's bar on nationality-based discrimination in immigrant-visa issuance, as well as provisions allowing visa refusals only when an applicant is legally ineligible. The administration's approach, she wrote, drew "pernicious distinctions based upon nationality."

Vargas also rejected the administration's argument that the policy preserved consular officers' authority because they still entered the denials themselves.

"The fact that the mandatory visa refusal is ultimately effectuated by the consular officer hardly means that the consular officer's role in the statutory scheme has not been usurped," she wrote.

The judge distinguished the policy from the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling upholding Trump's first-term travel ban. That case involved presidential authority over who may enter the country, Vargas noted, while this case centered on whether the State Department could refuse immigrant visas to applicants otherwise eligible under the law.

The ruling does not invalidate visa denials based on other independent grounds of ineligibility, but it wipes out refusals based solely on the 75-country freeze and returns those cases to the government for further proceedings consistent with the decision.

The lawsuit was brought by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC); African Communities Together (ACT), a Harlem-based immigrant advocacy group; five prospective employment-based immigrants; and six U.S. citizens seeking to bring family members to the country.

It's Kinda Not a Secret Anymore: Donald Dumb Wears Adult Diapers

I wonder if Natalie Harp pinches her nose when she changes them for him.

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Social Media Thinks Donald Trump Wore An 'Adult Diaper' At Recent Rally
Mariam Qayum
Sat, August 22, 2026


Shutterstock.com/Bonnie Cash/UPI

Donald Trump has faced plenty of speculation about his health over the years, but his latest viral moment has social media users focused on his appearance.

A video of the president walking away from a stage at a rally in New York has sparked a wave of online reactions after viewers noticed what appeared to be an unusually shaped bulge beneath the back of his suit jacket.

The footage was shared on X by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who described the moment as "beautiful." In the clip, the 80-year-old can be seen leaving the stage during his speech to embrace Migdalia Martinez and retired NYPD Sergeant Jesus Freytes, whose 12-year-old son, Jacob, was tragically killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx.

x.com/PressSec

Social Media Divided Over Donald Trump's Latest Appearance

"In a beautiful impromptu moment, President Trump exits the stage in the middle of his speech to embrace Migdalia Martinez and retired NYPD Sergeant Jesus Freytes, whose 12-year-old son Jacob was tragically killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx," Leavitt wrote in the caption.

The video quickly spread across social media, with viewers focusing on the back of Trump's suit as he walked down the stage. Some users speculated—without evidence—that the bulge could be a diaper.

"America, run by a man in diapers," one person wrote. "I know a full diaper when I see one," another commented.

"We've got Trump's BBL before GTA 6," someone else joked.

"That is definitely a diaper," one user claimed, while another wrote, "Spent too long with Nicki Minaj."

"Looks like an adult diaper," someone else added.

Others pushed back against the speculation, suggesting there could be an entirely different explanation for the appearance beneath his clothing.

"It's probably some sort of bulletproof undergarment," one person suggested.

Another commenter questioned why Trump's health is being scrutinized in this way, writing, "So you're telling me nobody ever questioned Biden's health but now people are questioning Trump's health." [Biden was persecuted by Trump's Radical Right extremists as he was aging in office]

"Diaper is not something to be ashamed of. We all wore one," another person wrote.

There is no confirmation from Trump or his representatives that the bulge seen in the video was related to a diaper or any health condition.

The viral clip alone does not establish what was beneath his jacket or provide evidence of a medical issue.

President Donald Trump's health has become a topic of public discussion, with the White House insisting that he remains in "excellent health" and fully capable of carrying out his duties.

However, critics and outside medical experts have pointed to what they describe as visible signs of aging, physical strain and fatigue.

Trump Hates the Living Suckers and Losers as Much as the Dead Ones

The senile demented criminal with his Saved-by-Jesus drunkard womanizing "warrior" Secretary of Whore

He dodged the Vietnam War draft 5 times by claiming he had bone spurs in his feet, the poor darling. He was after all from the New York elite and would not mingle with the plebeian Americans (Blacks, Asians, Hispanics...) that make up the bulk of the US Armed Forces and who have been hunted down by Trump's own ICE-GESTAPO. For this arrogant billionaire, he is much much better than all the "riffraff" that make up the troops, which makes it easy for him to send them to their death for the sake of his genocidal Zionist friends.

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Trump Hates the Troops. The Troops Are Taking Notice
Jason Linkins
Sat, August 22, 2026 

If you want to get the unfiltered skinny on how the never-ending war with Iran is going, it's written in the dust. Responsible Statecraft's Trita Parsi reported this week that U.S. service members marooned in the Persian Gulf have been expressing themselves in messages fingered onto a dusty aircraft flap. The anonymous graffiti, which calls to mind the helmet scrawls of disgruntled soldiers in Vietnam, include "Operation Epstein Fury," "Peace deal #64 incoming … ALL THIS FOR THE HOLY LAND," and "Bibi's cucks." Sounds like things aren't going so well! "I have no frame of reference, I can't compare it to the sentiments of U.S. soldiers in previous conflicts," Parsi wrote. "But I suspect these are new sentiments, or at least a new willingness to express them this openly and directly."

Whether these sentiments are new is indeed unclear, but it's not without a frame of reference. Trump has always been fairly explicit in his disrespect for the grunts who do most of the work—and all of the dying—in this racket that we call "war." But only now is a seemingly unwinnable war bringing this all to a head. It's no longer possible to pretend that the president doesn't have boundless contempt for U.S. service members. They're trapped in a war that was essentially kicked off to distract from all the other terrible news the Trump administration generates—or at least to turn attention away from the Epstein files. (Though if these dust etchings are any guide, Trump failed in this attempt to wag the dog.)

In recent weeks, this dynamic has been playing out on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been on a nine-month deployment to support Trump's war with Iran. Conditions on board the carrier have deteriorated to the point where some seamen have jumped overboard in an attempt to escape the misery. The crew has, for several weeks, been dealing with food shortages and grotesque sanitation issues. As TNR's Hafiz Rashid reported, "In recent town hall meetings with military leaders, including acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, things have gotten heated, with family members expressing fear and worry over mental health and the risk of self-harm for the ship's personnel."

As it happens, this trouble is not confined to the USS Lincoln: Crews on the USS Benfold, Carl Vinson, and Tripoli have also reported miserable conditions in recent weeks. Pete Hegseth, our self-styled "secretary of war," has gone to great lengths to downplay and even deny these accounts, characterizing them as misrepresentations while covering up the reason the Lincoln, which is now finally coming home, wasn't resupplied. The dust scribbles surfaced by Parsi tell a different story.

If anything, the story is an old one. There has always been good reason to question Trump's respect for U.S. service members. As The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reported in September of 2020, Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Paris, questioning his senior aides as to why he should go to a cemetery full of "losers." Per Goldberg, "In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as 'suckers' for getting killed." All of this came about because he didn't want to get his hair mussed in the rainy conditions. (Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, would later confirm Goldberg's reporting.)

Trump's disparagement of the military is pretty consistent. He's slagged off the armed forces' top officers as "dopes and babies" and compared them unfavorably to the military leaders he, for whatever reason, holds in high esteem: Adolf Hitler's generals. He's complained about having to see disabled veterans at military events, and has advocated for the exclusion of wounded soldiers at official functions because, "Nobody wants to see that." These kinds of insults were a staple of his first run for office, during which time he mocked Gold Star families and, famously, Vietnam POW survivor John McCain.

But Trump's disregard is hardly limited to mere aesthetics. As The Huffington Post's David Wood reported in 2017, Trump's gigantic military buildup shoveled billions of dollars to the Pentagon, but not much of that kitty ended up benefiting the working grunts who risk their lives on our nation's behalf.

Only the outlines of Trump's proposal to lavish money on the military have been drawn up. There's a request for Congress to add $30 billion to this year's defense budget and a vague plan to add $54 billion to next year's spending. Not included in those plans: money for the best infantry weapons, the safest troop-lift helicopters, the most protective lightweight body armor. Instead, grunts will have to settle for budget leftovers with antiquated rifles, helicopters built for their grandfathers during the Vietnam War, and communications gear that is overweight and unreliable.

The least surprising observation you can make about Trump is that he is an asshole and a cheapskate. Still, the president's Iranian misadventure has fully exposed both his ineptitude as commander in chief and the consequences of this lack of care for military members and their families. As conditions on U.S. ships erode, the administration is finding itself in a media war with the concerned families of troops deployed to the region. Stockpiles of vital munitions are being burned through at an alarming rate. And for some reason, Trump has picked this moment to order a bizarre retrofitting of U.S. aircraft carriers, demanding that they be kitted out with obsolete steam catapults. (TNR contributor Brynn Tannehill has the lore drop you need if you've been confused by this story.)

Public opinion about the war in Iran has been consistently awful for Trump, whose overall approval hit a low of 33 percent this week. As Parsi reports, those who are stuck on the front lines of this folly are not likely to disabuse their fellow Americans of this being anything but FUBAR. As one service member told him: "What people in the media don't understand when they compare past conflicts to this one, is this operation has no morale behind it. That makes a world of difference to service members deployed to undesirable locations indefinitely." Parsi thinks that the only thing left to do now is to "simply end" the war. But Trump is knee-deep in this big muddy, and there truly is no end in sight.

Introducing the New Moron on the MAGA Block: 'Daarleen' Graham. ...

... who is replacing her dead brother, Lady Lindsey Graham.

Appointed - not elected - to replace her brother in the US Senate, this southern moron from the slavery state of South Carolina, she admitted she knows nothing of foreign policy and national security while Donald Dumb, who prefers to be surrounded by imbeciles like him, emphatically declared yesterday that 'Daarleen' will vote in the Senate according to his wishes, and not to her conscience.

Just like his "binkie blonde" slave Natalie Harp, "Daarleen" joins the coterie of dumb-blonde yes-women that hover around the Great American Moron. I bet you that "Daarleen" is stepping into her brother, Lady Lindsey's shoes just because she's, in southern tradition, a subservient, submissive kitchen-bound female who will do what "they" tell her to do.

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South Carolina Republicans split over Darline Graham’s ‘eyebrow-raising’ debate performance
Patrick Svitek, Dianne Gallagher, CNN
Fri, August 21, 2026


Sen. Darline Graham listens to a question at a campaign event in Florence, South Carolina, on August 19. - Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Fresh off the losses of three candidates he endorsed in Republican primaries, President Donald Trump faces a much higher-profile test of his political power in South Carolina.

Trump is set to hold a rally Friday night in Myrtle Beach with Sen. Darline Graham, whom he endorsed for her late brother's Senate seat and whose campaign was shaken by a recent debate when she couldn't answer a question about Taiwan and the South China Sea because she was "not that informed about national security." [She has also declared that South Carolina has a 50 million population!!!. She seems to be uninformed even about the state in which she lives.]

Both Trump and Graham are at a crucial moment. Some stalwart supporters of the president are openly rejecting his pick in Tuesday's Republican primary runoff, despite a strong effort by the White House that included Trump calling old rivals to push them to endorse her.

A defeat in South Carolina would further call into question the second-term president's ability to keep his party ranks in line.

"The entire world is laughing at South Carolina right now and laughing at Darline Graham Nordone," said former state Rep. Adam Morgan, who is supporting her opponent Rep. Ralph Norman. He used the full name for Graham that some of her critics like to invoke to distinguish her from Sen. Lindsey Graham. Morgan added that Darline Graham's debate flub had to be a "serious gut check" for Trump and his political team.

Trump is showing no signs of backing away from his exclusive support for Darline Graham or making a double endorsement like he did in the South Carolina governor's runoff after his first pick didn't win the primary.

"President Trump's endorsement is the most powerful endorsement in the history of American politics," White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said in a statement. "Anyone claiming otherwise is a complete and utter fool." [I beg to differ: In the disastrous state that Trump has plunged the country in, Trump's endorsements are deadly to his candidates, as primaries around the world have revealed.]

As Trump headed to Myrtle Beach, Graham won the endorsement of the state's governor, Henry McMaster.

"Throughout her time in the U.S. Senate, she has stood for the values that South Carolinians live by, continued Lindsey Graham's work, and stood firmly with President Trump to advance his America First agenda," McMaster wrote on X.

How the White House ramped up its backing of Graham

Trump moved quickly to consolidate GOP support behind Graham after she finished first in the August 11 primary but did not get enough of the vote to avoid a runoff. Trump called at least two of her opponents that night – Rep. Russell Fry and former Gov. Mark Sanford – and asked them to endorse her, according to sources familiar with the calls.

The results were mixed.

Fry was not ready to immediately back Graham and waited until three days later, after at least one other call from Trump, to do so. They talked about Trump possibly coming to South Carolina to stump for Graham in the runoff, and Fry suggested a place in his district, the Myrtle Beach area, as a good location.

Sanford, who also ran a long-shot campaign against Trump in the 2020 presidential primary, backed Norman on Friday in an X post touting his "experience in legislative circles, matched by a conservative voting record and conservative stands."

Businessman Mark Lynch, who ran against Lindsey Graham in the June primary, told CNN he had not spoken to Trump. He endorsed Norman within hours after losing the primary.

"South Carolinians do not want 'Queen Darline' appointed as their senator by D.C. special interests and Democrat PACs," Lynch said in a statement to CNN.

Graham's campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story. But she shrugged off the debate flub while speaking with reporters afterward, saying South Carolinians are "worried about their pocketbooks more than they're worried about the South China Sea." [Of course, stupid, ignorant, illiterate South Carolinians don't even know where the South China Sea is or how their moronic lives could be affected by Taiwan or whether they may have to send their children fight against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. They are more worried about their pocketbooks that their idol, Donald Dumb, has been emptying so that he can make billions trading stocks on his on-off war with Iran.]

During a campaign event Wednesday in Florence, an audience member asked if she had any concerns about "credibility" in the Senate in light of the debate answer.

"Is national security important? Absolutely," she said. "Can I learn? I'm smart. Yes, I'll learn. I'll become informed. Everybody has a first day on the job. President Trump, was he a politician? Has he done a good job? Yes, he has."

[The idiot is right. The Great Moron Donald Dumb has been learning on the job, which is why the country has spiraled into uncertainty, exploding national debt, foreign wars, skyrocketing inflation, and a regression on all the advances made over past decades. Can you imagine a company hiring someone with no education or experience to a top managerial position because she is a relative of a friend of the CEO, and without an interview? Is NEPOTISM a really good business practice by someone who claims to run the country like a business].

Trump also defended Graham's debate answer on Friday, saying that "she's surrounded by very good people, and she said that she's totally for the military." He added that Graham will "do what the military wants, and really, what the president wants."

Yet even some Graham supporters cringed at the moment, which came when a moderator, journalist Greta Van Susteren, asked Graham if Taiwan and the South China Sea were "national security issues for the United States." Struggling to answer, Graham voiced general support for the military and added national security is "not my thing."

A Republican lawmaker who endorsed Graham after she made the runoff called her debate performance "eyebrow-raising" and said it "didn't inspire confidence."

"I'm a little surprised she didn't have a better pivot than 'I don't know about that'. She won't make that mistake again, that's for sure. I would think she'll be able to learn more during the rest of this term," the lawmaker said. "She had decent answers about domestic issues."

A GOP source told CNN Graham's team was downplaying the gaffe to donors and Republicans who'd endorsed her, echoing the candidate and telling them that "people struggling with affordability aren't concerned about the South China Sea."

Dorchester County GOP Chairman CJ Westfall, a Graham critic, noted his group texts with state Republicans started lighting up when Graham gave that answer.

"The people who were watching that are the hardcore Republicans," said Westfall. "And a special runoff? Those voters are the most hardcore of the hardcore."

Critics of Graham are piling on


Rep. Ralph Norman, left, and Sen. Darline Graham take part in a special GOP Senate runoff debate in Newberry, South Carolina, on August 18. - Meg Kinnard/AP

The debate moment appeared to be a turning point for Republicans who had previously been holding back on airing reservations about her candidacy.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a longtime Norman ally who ran against Trump in 2024, said on X that Lindsey Graham was "well informed" about national security and it is "not something you inherit." Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation and a strong Trump ally, called Darline Graham's answer "embarrassing and inexcusable."

"Can we just stop this ridiculous experiment in nepotism now???" former Trump adviser Steve Cortes wrote on X.

Graham's critics also noted that she said during the debate that South Carolina has a population of 50 million people when it is actually about a tenth of that size. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Norman supporter, highlighted Graham's error on social media and said, "I can't even right now with this Senate race."

Beyond the national security question, the debate signaled that the race had entered a new, more contentious phase. Graham seized several opportunities to attack Norman, including in a closing statement that was particularly animated.

"Fact is, I've done more in 20 days than you have done in 20 years," Graham told Norman, a five-term congressman.

Norman largely shrugged off her jabs as part of "silly season," but his allies are sharpening their rhetoric against her. A pro-Norman super PAC, Palmetto First PAC, is running a TV ad that says Graham "inherited" the seat and asks, "What if Darline Graham had any other last name?"

The cast of outside groups backing Graham has only grown in the runoff. The latest entrants include two super PACs aligned with artificial intelligence industry and a third group focused on clean energy, Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC, that recently helped unseat Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, in his primary.

Norman has sought to make up for the overwhelming outside funding backing Graham by self-funding his campaign. He loaned his campaign $1.3 million on Monday, according to a campaign finance filing, adding to the $400,000 he put into his campaign last week.

As for endorsements, Fry is not the only big name in South Carolina politics that has coalesced behind Graham since the primary. She has also picked up endorsements from Sen. Tim Scott and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette. Evette was Trump's initial choice in the primary for governor but lost to Attorney General Alan Wilson in the runoff.

Graham has also garnered endorsements from some anti-abortion groups as intra-party critics question have highlighted her friendship with — and two past small political donations to – a former GOP state lawmaker who fought the state's near-total abortion ban. One of the organizations, the Susan B. Anthony List, followed Trump's lead and backed Graham even though Norman has an "A+" rating on its legislative scorecard.

"I have gotten to know Darline Graham and I am confident she is 100% committed to advocating for unborn children and their mothers in the U.S. Senate," Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement.

Dannenfelser visited South Carolina on Thursday to campaign with Graham, as did the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, Majority Whip John Barrasso.

Norman has gained some interesting, if lower-profile, endorsements in the runoff. Among them is the Republican Party in Lexington County, Graham's home county and where she got the most votes in the primary.

Mark Weber, the chairman of the Lexington County GOP, said he moved to South Carolina from California in 1989 and has come to appreciate that the state "truly believes in state's rights and local control."

"While I am a Trump support[er] and Lexington and SC is Trump Country," Weber said in a text message, "SC voters don't want anyone to twist our arms or tell us how to vote."

How to Overcome Hopelessness in the Trump Era

Even Trump will pass in the trash bin of history. We've been there before in the late 1880s, 1930s, 1960s...Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States from 1877 until the mid-20th century are the precedent form what Trump is doing to the US.

The Jim Crow era effectively ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed legal segregation and discriminatory voting practices. Trump and the Republican party are trying a reprise of these laws, but while Jim Crow laws persisted for nearly a century, Trump's foulness will not persist after he's gone. 

Back in the 19th century, the country was still an infant and an acneed teenager with violent spells. It has slowly matured into a powerful but responsible country, with ups and downs along the way. The Trump phenomenon is but a hiccup caused by the immature republican morons who refuse to grow up. They want to take the country back to the 19th century and Jim Crow laws. One has to be an idiot to believe they can succeed.

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How to Overcome Hopelessness in the Trump Era
Skye Perryman
Thu, August 20, 2026 


How to Overcome Hopelessness in the Trump Era

Democracy Forward is a national legal organization that has made a habit of filing lawsuits against the federal government since Donald Trump retook office in 2025, challenging everything from the administration's actions against immigrants to its proposed "anti-weaponization" fund. Skye Perryman, the group's president and CEO, is publishing Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times, a new book about resisting authoritarianism and the actions big and small people can take in their lives to do so, on August 25 via Penguin Random House. In the following excerpt, Perryman writes about how the only way to lift a nation out of oppression is for its people to fight through it.

"IT DIDN'T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT." I had asked my grandmother how long it took for the Southern magnolia trees in my grandparents' small Texas town to go from bulbs to majestic blooms. "Years and years," she said, "It takes care, time, and sun."

My grandparents lived in Magnolia, a small east-Texas town. The town was known for its tall pine trees, its railroad, and, yes, its magnolia trees. But when my grandmother moved to Magnolia decades before I was born, there were no magnolia trees on her farm or in her yard. So, she began planting. She planted magnolia trees on her farm, in her yard, and also in city spaces, like at the public school and town hall. By the time I was growing up, I would never have known that her farm once lacked magnolia trees amidst its already mighty pines. The glorious white blossoms and distinctive dark green leaves are in the background of so many of my memories — and all because of my grandmother's work of planting and tending over the decades. As a child of the Great Depression, material things were not where she found her comfort. Instead, she appreciated the beauty that could emerge from planting a single bulb or seed and the years of nurturing that followed — for her it was the greatest inheritance she could leave.

I have found myself thinking of those magnolia trees often these last months as I have traveled the country and spent time with so many people experiencing despair, and as I, too, have struggled with moments of deep doubt and feelings of helplessness. Many of us find ourselves lost — afraid of where the nation is heading and desperately wanting to flip the proverbial switch but overwhelmed by the fact that there isn't just one switch to flip. 

There are concerns at the state and local levels. At the Supreme Court. In Congress. And, in the White House. People are angry at the daily incursions on their rights, at the layers upon layers of corruption as a president and his allies enrich themselves while millions struggle to make ends meet. They have witnessed innocent people, including American citizens, be killed at the hands of their own government. They are scared by the deportations, disappearances, and detentions. They have woken up to masked agents on the streets and community members afraid or, worse, gone. They are bewildered and enraged by overreach and lawlessness, by the blatant disregard for our rights. They are angered by the Supreme Court's decimation of voting rights, and by the historic numbers of unexplained decisions on its shadow docket that prevent people from being protected by lower court rulings by not considering the full record or hearing argument. A friend said to me, "Even when we see the wins your team achieves in court, or are inspired by millions in the streets, or are encouraged by off-cycle election victories, we wake up the next day to another nightmare. It seems as if nothing we do matters." This is an understandable and real feeling.

And it may not go away.

The feelings of hopelessness, defeat, and powerlessness are a feature, not a bug, of the political machine replacing our democracy with autocratic rule. In fact, the number one tool that autocratic leaders use to consolidate power is not voter suppression, election denialism, or gerrymandering — it is convincing people that there is nothing they can do to change their circumstances. That they have no power. Convincing people to give up. That any effort to save our nation is too late, too futile, and too naïve.

And that's why, despite these feelings, or in the face of these feelings, we must keep going.

We must commit to ourselves — and to one another — that we will not succumb to the belief that we have no power. We DO have power. And we need to find and use it.

We must also have the determination to look at where we are — at the harms and the realities and heartbreaks — and to not look away. To see it for all that it is. We are living in a nation that is rapidly backsliding into autocracy. Our institutions were not delivering for us before and now, stressed and tested to the point of collapse, they are delivering even less. We must be able to see what is happening and understand: This is where we are. There are no shortcuts out of this. The only way out is through.

But we are far from powerless.

We must do everything we can in our communities and in all upcoming elections to halt the backslide to autocracy. We also have to remember that the work must continue over time. Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum, who has studied rising authoritarianism across the globe, reminds us that autocratic threats "cannot easily be defeated or dismissed in one electoral cycle." Just as magnolia trees can take decades to reach maturity, and need steady tending along the way, creating a society that cares for all of us needs active, ongoing efforts. There are no quick fixes to a long-term challenge.

As I have talked with people who are in despair about the seemingly impossible task we have ahead, I have turned to the words of muckraking photojournalist Jacob A. Riis, who documented the seemingly immovable abject poverty faced by people in New York City in the late 1800s as the rich lived in gilded mansions. I first discovered Riis when studying economics, learning how the inhumane conditions experienced by many at the end of the Gilded Age, documented in Riis's powerful photojournalism book How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, gave rise to the progressive movement in the early twentieth century. In law school, I learned that this movement had to work against every institutional power structure — including the Supreme Court — to demand real change. 

Riis wrote in his memoir, The Making of An American, "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."

Eventually, Riis's work helped shine an important light and contributed to a movement that brought about significant social reforms — from wage and hour laws to worker safety laws, child worker protections, and more. But the work was long and arduous. It was not solved in one election cycle or through one initiative.

The work we must do now is day-by-day, hammer-by-hammer, step-by-step work. We must do what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the work to "hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of Hope." We must remember too, that though some may consider this a new fight, we are building on the movements and actions of people who have been hammering away at the struggle for representation, freedom, and justice for a long time — including those in the Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, and LGBTQ communities. Movement builders and communities with the lived experience of persistent injustice know that the work continues beyond one election cycle.

The only way out is through. The work of justice has always been urgent. The ultimate action that strikes the blow to injustice — and, yes, to autocracy — will make its mark because of the work of ordinary people like you who in this extraordinary time took singular steps, day by day, conversation by conversation, to move the mountain of despair. The majestic magnolia blossoms started from a single bulb that did not develop and bloom until years later. The ultimate split in the rock happens after many hammers. Both recent events and our rich history teach us that what is on the other side of this crisis is, in fact, up to us. But it will take us all doing our part. There are no shortcuts. The only way out is through.

Excerpted from Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: How to Reclaim Your Power, Fight for Freedom, and Reimagine Democracy by Skye Perryman. Text copyright © 2026 by Skye Perryman. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.