GOP-MAGA Candidates are Ashamed of the Great Moron

For Republican-GOP-MAGA candidates running for the midterms, Trump has a stench about him that they'd rather not bring along in their campaigns, lest they lose the elections. Now that is very much how "loyalist" candidates should NOT normally conduct themselves.

If they had any gonads, they would break up with the Moron and be free, or they should promote him as their boss. But these are bigots at heart: That is how they use religion, a la carte, taking from it what suits them and ignoring the rest. With Trump, they probably hate him but do not dare break up with him. So, they drag him along like a digusting poor relative or an aging senile grandfather from the sticks, but hide him from view when talking to their electorate. So nice.

Republican campaigns are keeping President Donald Trump at arm’s length as they try to hang onto their seats in Congress. They already were expected to lose their majority in the House and the Senate even before their Great Moron launched his Zionist-prodded war with Iran and high gas prices. He never delivered on his campaign promises which he completely ignored and focused instead on implementing the extremist right-wing white nationalist "Project 2025."

Instead, lawmakers planning to run for re-election have decided not to tout their ties to Trump, according to Reuters. This strategy was discussed during a closed-door meeting of top MAGA officials, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and concluded by urging lawmaker candidates not to bring up their loyalty to Trump or his unpopular war with Iran. 

Lovely! 

MAGA "Warriors" Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller First to Duck at WHCD

The first cowards to duck when the shots rang out at the White House Correspondents Dinner are the most violent, racist, xenophobic members of the Dumb Administration.

PETE HEGSETH   .... STEPHEN  MILLER 

 

Trump is Racist Bozo the Clown

1- Trump is a racist white supremacist who is purging the federal administration of its African-American personnel. He and his Zionist friends see eye to eye on matters of racism: He, in the US, hates African Americans and they, in raped Palestine, hate Palestinian Arabs. 

2-Trump is an illiterate dumb idiot who thinks that science is a waste of time and money. For that he is known as Bozo the Clown.

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Trump Sued For Racial Discrimination, Accused Of Firing 75% of Black Officials At Independent Federal Agencies
Christopher Rhodes
Mon, April 27, 2026 


Lawsuit alleges racial discrimination in firing of Black federal employees under Trump administration.

Upon returning to office, President Donald Trump immediately implemented orders and policies against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in government and beyond while also slashing federal agencies and laying off employees. Now, a new lawsuit alleges that these policies have combined to target Black federal employees, as the Trump administration is accused of racial discrimination.
Lawsuit alleges racial bias in firing of National Transportation Safety Board official

Alvin Brown, a Democrat nominated by President Joe Biden who served as a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, filed a complaint alleging that his dismissal in May 2025 was done because of racial bias. Brown argues in his complaint that his firing cannot be explained by partisan reasoning. ‘Mr. Brown’s removal from the NTSB cannot be explained by the fact that Mr. Brown is a Democrat and President Trump might have wanted to exert Republican control over the Board,” Brown’s lawyer wrote in the lawsuit. “At the time of Mr. Brown’s removal from the NTSB, there were two other Democrats serving on the Board.” Rather, Brown is arguing that his removal is part of a systematic targeting of Black federal employees, and thus a violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.
Alleged pattern of firing or replacing Black people

According to Brown’s attorneys, 75% of Black officials of independent agencies have been fired under Trump. “President Trump has removed Black Senate-confirmed appointees; he has either nominated a non-Black individual for their replacement or has not formally replaced them at all,” Brown’s attorneys further allege. “This trend fits with President Trump’s consistent messaging criticizing diversity and inclusion and his clear and demonstrable emphasis on hiring white people.” A second Black former official, Robert Primus, has filed a similar lawsuit relating to his firing in August from the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, a position to which he had been nominated by Trump and then elevated to board chairman under Biden. In addition to race, Primus pointed toward his opposition to a massive railroad merger deal as motivation behind his firing.
Slashing federal jobs, dismantling agencies, and opposing diversity initiatives

Since returning to the White House, Trump has initiated a series of executive orders and policies against DEI programs and initiatives, which have been interpreted broadly to censor or remove information relating to Black people and other minority communities. Trump also dismantled federal agencies and conducted mass firings of federal employees, with DOGE initially taking a leading role in this process. Trump has additionally attempted to fire or even prosecute officials who previously opposed him or have current policy disagreements with him, such as Jerome Powell and Lisa Cook of the Federal Reserve Board.

The lawsuits filed by Brown and Primus challenge these policies. The suits push back against Trump’s efforts to fire federal employees and gut diversity initiatives, arguing that the impact of these policies has been active, disproportionate targeting of Black employees. In making these challenges, lawyers in the two cases have cited stunning statistics and patterns of Black employees being eliminated from federal positions or replaced, painting a picture of an administration actively hostile toward Black people in the federal government.
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Trump’s purge of National Science Board condemned as a ‘real bozo the clown move’
Josh Marcus
Sun, April 26, 2026

Trump’s purge of National Science Board condemned as a ‘real bozo the clown move’
The Trump administration reportedly fired all 22 current members of the National Science Board, a key body that advises the president and Congress on U.S. science policy and steers the National Science Foundation.

Critics are alarmed by the news that the Trump administration reportedly fired all 22 current members of the National Science Board, the body that steers the National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the president on top scientific issues.

In a statement on Saturday, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California called the decision a “real bozo the clown move.”

“This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” she said. “The NSB is apolitical. It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the Foundation.”

“Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won't stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries?” she added.

“This unseemly political maneuver must be seen for what it is: An attempt to silence independent scientists, shut down evidence-based decision making, and keep the public in the dark,” Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a blog post.

The Trump administration reportedly fired the entire National Science Board on Friday, a key body that steers U.S. science policy and advises the president and Congress (Reuters)

The National Science Foundation directed questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request from The Independent for comment.

The White House reportedly fired the members of the board on Friday with little explanation.

The advisory body, whose members serve six-year terms, helps guide the overall direction of the NSF’s more than $9 billion budget. It helps approve major expenses and sets long-term priorities for the agency, the engine of basic non-medical science and engineering funding in the U.S., which has had a hand in the creation of major technologies like GPS and the internet.

“What it means is that there won’t be any practical impediments to the administration essentially enacting their own budget and priorities and ignoring Congress’ directives or congressional law,” Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University who was among those fired, told The Lost Angeles Times.

“What we’re likely to see is a collapse of what has historically been a broad investment in American science and technology capabilities,” he added. “The most transformative discoveries are transformative because you can’t predict them in advance, so we invest foundationally in scientists and engineers to do basic science and engineering research.”

The Trump administration has taken other controversial steps around scientific policy, including removing the entirety of a key CDC vaccine advisory panel (Reuters) [Can you guess what the other Bozo - RFK Jr. - is really thinking from the way he is looking at Trump hurling his verbal diarrhea?]

The reported firings are the latest sign of uncertainty and upheaval at the NSF.

Last April, NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned from the agency, as personnel from the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn DOGE cost-cutting program were working inside NSF to cancel scores of grants.

The following month, board member Alondra Nelson resigned, citing the DOGE takeover, alleging the Elon Musk-led effort had “by fiat the authority to give thumbs up or down to grant applications which had been systematically vetted by layers of subject matter experts.”

Last year, the White House proposed a 55 percent cut to the NSF budget, which Congress rejected. The administration has again requested cuts as part of the fiscal year 2027 budget.

In March, the administration nominated Jim O’Neill, a former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and biotech investor, to lead the science agency.

O’Neill, who has yet to go for a hearing before Congress, would be the first NSF chief who lacked a formal scientific or engineering background.

The president has championed U.S. dominance in technology, and Silicon Valley CEOs donated to his campaign and inauguration (AFP/Getty) [here, a lineup of the Great Moron's asskissing billionaire friends]

In its first year in office, the Trump administration terminated or froze more than 7,800 research grants, while roughly 25,000 scientists and staffers at research-related agencies left the government, according to Nature.

Last summer, the administration removed all the members of an influential CDC vaccine advisory board, some of whom were replaced by vaccine skeptics.

The administration similarly removed members of an autism advisory board, installing members in their place who had previously made debunked claims linking vaccines to autism.

The president has a long history of denying well-established science, and he called the climate crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” last year at the United Nations General Assembly.

The president has proved supportive of the technology industry, though, championing artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

His administration has pushed to speed the development of AI data centers across the U.S.

Hegseth as Pentagon's Christian Mullah: Christian Sharia Anyone?

The very very bad sinner - alcoholism, women, violence...- Pete Hegseth, says he was "personally" saved by Jesus. Could Jesus "save" people collectively or impersonnally? I don't understand the "personal" in this miraculous conversion, tempered as it were by the fact that people don't really change. They might assume an outward personality that is the exact opposite of who they really are, something known as BIGOTRY.

As he tries to keep pleasing Jesus with his pseudo metamorphosis, Hegseth has gone so far as to begin turning the secular Pentagon into a Warmongering Church of Death. Which is the equivalent of the Rule of the Jurisprudents in Iran or the supreme Mullah of Afghanistan's Taliban. Such Christian idiots don't realize that you don't fight bigotry with bigotry. You don't fight Islamic fundamentalism by becoming a Christian fundamentalist. To do so is, at the very least, easy, primitive, reflexively stupid and short-sighted. Fundamentalism is bad, has always been bad through history, regardless of what religion it comes from. But would you expect anything else from the illiterate morons that Trump has selected to "serve" him?

Hegseth loves the Hebrew Torah/Old Testament for one reason and one reason only: It reeks of sexuality, violence, genocide, incest, human sacrifice, and self-ingratiation with the Big Zombie in the Sky who is a capricious sadist who is never satisfied with what humans do.

Firing chaplains, particularly Catholic ones, firing African American military leaders, firing women military leaders.... Hegseth's Warmongering Church of Death is also Racist White Supremacist, so much so that only Evangelicals like him, who get "personally saved by Jesus" (I still cannot wrap my mind around this notion), will go the heaven, just as only white Christian aryans (e.g. the South African white Nazi apartheid remnants) will be accepted as immigrants in the American wilderness. Hegseth wants to apply a Christian SHARIA LAW in America, which is the implementation of biblical law across the country. Stoning, lashing, hanging, crucifying... you name it. With hegseth the US will turn into a Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan in which suits and ties replace weird headgear and robes, in which women are men's property to be cornered into an exclusive career of getting pregnant, cooking and doing laundry.

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Pete Hegseth’s Iran war messaging echoes sermons from his extremist church
Jason Wilson
Sun, April 26, 2026 


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington DC, on 24 April 2026.Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/AFP/Getty Images(Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/AFP/Getty Images)

On 17 April, at a briefing on the Iran war, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth told reporters he had been “sitting in church with my family” the previous Sunday while the minister preached from Mark 3.

Hegseth then recast a passage about the Pharisees watching Jesus “so that they might accuse him” as a description of the US press corps, which has long been a target of his ire. “Our press is just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth said. He accused “the legacy Trump-hating press” of a “politically motivated animus” that blinded it to “the brilliance of our American warriors”.

The sermon Hegseth described as attending bears similarities to one delivered only days earlier at Christ Kirk DC, a Washington branch of the openly Christian nationalist Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the denomination to which Hegseth belongs.

The 12 April sermon, titled “The Fellowship of Grievance”, also exhorted worshippers to embrace a “biblically informed hatred”.

That sermon, other Christ Kirk DC sermons, and episodes of podcasts produced inside the CREC network show pastors who have preached to Hegseth’s congregation, and the most senior figures in the denomination, advancing a theocratic program that would restrict the vote, criminalise LGBTQ+ expression and apply biblical law through the courts.

Asked in an email whether CREC had shaped Hegseth’s worldview, CREC founder and pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Douglas Wilson wrote: “You would need to ask him that. But his worldview is broadly the same as ours.” Asked if he was a Christian nationalist, Wilson wrote: “Yes, that would be a fair description.”

Hegseth’s cabinet tenure continues to underscore the growing influence of CREC inside the US military and the Trump administration, including through his portrayals of the Iran war.

‘There are things that God hates, and it’s right for us to share that hatred’

The preacher at the 12 April service was Dr Benjamin Merkle. He is the president of CREC-aligned New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, a senior fellow of theology there, a teaching elder at Christ Church Moscow, the CREC’s flagship congregation, and the son-in-law of Wilson, the denomination’s co-founder.

Christ Kirk DC has met since July 2025 in a Pennsylvania Avenue building owned by the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Trump-aligned non-profit which, as previously reported in the Guardian, acquired the real estate to support activities including influencing Republican staffers and targeting government employees. The congregation uses a rotating roster of CREC preachers.

In the sermon, Merkle cast the Pharisees as having “gathered around simply so that in this moment they can find something prosecutable against Jesus, because of the hatred that they have in their heart”.

Merkle told the Guardian in a phone call that he had not listened to Hegseth’s press conference or seen any reporting on it.

“I wasn’t making a political observation, I was making a human observation,” Merkle said of his comments on the Pharisees. He added: “Secretary Hegseth’s application to that situation could very well be a very appropriate application of the principle that I was fleshing out.”

Despite speculating on Hegseth’s adaptation of the sermon, Merkle refused to confirm or deny Hegseth’s attendance at the service. When asked in an email to confirm his attendance, Merkle answered: “Sorry, I don’t want to be weird. But I don’t think I will do that.”

Similarly, the Pentagon would neither confirm nor deny Hegseth’s attendance. Asked to do so in an email, Hegseth’s assistant press secretary, Riley Podleski, wrote: “We have nothing further to provide”.

In the sermon, Merkle also said that the previous day he had been at a conference where “someone was lamenting how unified the left seems to be in their attacks on the right” while “the conservative right is very disjointed”. “When they all hate the same thing,” Merkle said, “it forms a temporary unity, a fellowship of the grievance.”

Asked about these remarks, Merkle said: “My point is that when you have a strong opposition from multiple different places to one particular figure or one particular movement or people, then you can find groups that would never have gotten along before suddenly kind of bond together. And I do think we see that in our current political situation. I think that’s one appropriate application of it.”

After spending 40 minutes contrasting the unity of the Christian church with the “grievance” unity of its opponents, Merkle told his congregation: “It’s also not true that those who love God are only united by our loves. We’re also united by the things that we hate. We share a hatred of evil. There are things that God hates, and it’s right for us to share that hatred.” Christians, he said, are defined “not just by love” but by “biblically informed hatred”.

Asked about the phrase, Merkle said: “I dislike how, particularly more liberal branches of Christianity, we start to define godliness as love – but love disembodied, love in its most general state.

“You’re supposed to hate what is evil, detest what is evil,” Merkle said. “But evil is defined by God’s word.”

Asked whether believers were to hate abstract evil or the people who do evil, Merkle said: “It’s a classic evangelical trope to say we hate the sin and not the sinner. But the problem is, in the end, God throws sinners into hell. So I don’t know that it’s right to draw that distinction as if I can just hate this thing that was done but not the person that did it.”

Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, has studied the CREC for decades. She told the Guardian: “The CREC motto ‘All of Christ for All of Life’ refers to their view that there is no area of life that is not governed by God’s law. This version of Christianity allows for no realm in which there can be neutrality: not church and state, not religion and the courts, not education or the military.”

She added: “Not only do they want the US to be a Christian nation, but they also want all nations to be Christian nations.”

Merkle’s father-in-law, Wilson, is a co-founder of Christ Church Moscow, CREC and New Saint Andrews, and one of the most prominent Christian nationalist leaders in the US. Wilson and his church teach that civil authorities should enforce Old Testament law [hence, a Christian Sharia Law), and that both homosexuality and abortion warrant death penalties under that law.

Wilson told the New York Times in October that he looks forward to a future in which “there aren’t any Pride parades and there aren’t any drag queen story hours”.

Asked if his sermon connected to CREC demands for abortion to be outlawed and severely punished, Merkle said: “I would absolutely make that connection. I mean, I hate abortion.

“And I really reject the claim that it’s this private, personal decision. It’s the execution of a child, and I think it’s grotesque that our culture accepts it, and I want to see that eradicated,” Merkle said. “I think it’d be a great blessing to our nation to see the widespread murder of our children eliminated.”

Asked if LGBTQ+ people merited biblically informed hatred, Merkle said: “I think God is clear that he made a woman to go with a man and a man to go with a woman, and that’s what a marriage is.”

He added: “I think that the acceptance of homosexuality not only has done great evil to America, but I think it does great evil to those that are practising it. I think it does great harm to them, and I think they’re greatly blessed to be delivered from it.”

On abortion and homosexuality, Merkle said: “If we were to hate what is evil, I think those two things are evil. So I think that’s a pretty simple syllogism.”

‘I hope that God kills him’

At key moments in his cabinet tenure, Hegseth has given CREC pastors a platform in services that have put Christian nationalism at the centre of the US military.

Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth’s pastor in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, presided over the first worship service in a monthly series Hegseth initiated at the Pentagon in May 2025. Potteiger returned on 21 January 2026 for the first service after the US operation that captured deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

In a 4 March blog post, Wilson announced that Potteiger had “accepted a call and will be coming to serve as an on-site pastor” of Christ Kirk DC starting in July.

Potteiger has been described in reporting as Hegseth’s spiritual adviser. Asked if that was accurate, he told the Guardian in an email: “I’d simply say he’s been one of many parishioners at church that I’ve had the privilege of ministering to.”

Potteiger drew media attention in March after appearing on the Reformation Red Pill podcast with its host Joshua Haymes. Discussing Texas Democratic senate candidate James Talarico, Haymes said: “I hope that God kills him.” Potteiger responded: “We want him crucified with Christ.”

Asked about the exchange, Potteiger said: “Being ‘crucified with Christ’ is a quote from the apostle Paul in Galatians 2:20 talking about conversion. Mr Talarico claims to be a Christian but teaches contrary to Christ. Far from wishing him harm, I wish for him to have a true experience of salvation.”

On 17 February, 11 days before the US joined Israel in the first attacks on Iran, Wilson presided over a Pentagon worship service. “God can do what he likes,” Wilson told the assembled personnel, “and as we should know by now, what he likes to do is to take the most unlikely materials and do something glorious with it.”

Hegseth’s own public rhetoric has increasingly drawn on the vocabulary of Christian nationalism.

On 5 March, at a counter-cartel conference, Hegseth told Central and South American leaders that with the US they were “western nations with distinct characteristics” and “Christian nations under God”. On 19 March, he asked the American people to pray for US troops “on bended knee” and “in the name of Jesus Christ”. On 25 March, he read from Psalm 18 – “I thrust them through, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet” – and prayed that God would “break the teeth” of US enemies. On 16 April, he offered a garbled passage of Ezekiel filtered via Pulp Fiction.

The Guardian previously reported that Hegseth said on Haymes’ podcast in 2024 that moving his family to a CREC church had brought him “a whole view of the world that has changed the way we think, too”.

In response to questions about his relationship with CREC, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement: “The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said: “Hegseth has aligned himself with some of the most extreme Christian nationalists in the country. Their anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs and extremist views about women should give anyone pause, as well as his ‘biblical’ attacks on journalists, especially when Hegseth is sharing them with our soldiers and blasting away at the separation of church and state.

“But even more worrisome is his infusion of his Christian beliefs as the basis for our war in Iran,” Beirich added. “Our national security should not be based on fanatical holy war fantasies, but that is what Hegseth, and by extension Trump, have wrought.”

Trump's Mysogynistic Photo With U. of Georgia's Women's Team ...

University of Georgia women's tennis team recently visited the White House to celebrate their NCAA championship. Then, the photo op came up and this is WHERE Trump and his lackeys thought the women - whose celebration this was - should be... BEHIND THEM.

 

Then AI came to the rescue and showed us what the photo should have looked like.

 

or...

or... 

 

It must be MAGA's Family Values that prevailed. 

Trump's Deliberate and Relentless Campaign Against the Free Press

 

He wished he could do in the US what Putin has done in Russia: Hound journalists with assassination attempts, threats to their lives, use poison in assassination attempts, etc... As we speak there is no opposition to Putin. That is a dream for Donald Dumb: to extinguish opposition. Which he is doing by constant harassment, threats, verbal abuse and lawsuits.
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A Full List Of The Trump Administration’s Efforts To Intimidate, Silence Or Otherwise Harass Journalists
Lydia O'Connor
Sat, April 25, 2026

Donald Trump will attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as president for the first time on Saturday.

It’s not completely clear why Trump chose now to end his boycott of the annual event dedicated to celebrating the importance of the free press he so regularly scorns. Maybe he’s hoping to intimidate journalists in the room, but they’ve gotten used to that. Here’s a list of some of the current Trump administration’s most notable attempts to browbeat the press.
The ‘Your Mom’ Incident

In October, when HuffPost White House Correspondent S.V. Dáte reached out to administration spokespeople with an innocuous question about who chose Budapest as the site for a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to answer. Instead, she replied with a bizarre schoolyard joke.

“Your mom did,” she retorted.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung had more to add shortly after: “Your mom,” he repeated.

Leavitt fired off a round of insults when Dáte asked if she thought the “your mom” quip was funny.

“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal [sic],” she wrote back. “You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and ******** questions.”

President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters in October. via Associated Press

A Whole Bunch Of Lawsuits

The Trump administration has filed numerous lawsuits against media outlets over reporting the president deems unflattering, often seeking massive damages in the millions and even billions.

Some of the biggest sums he demanded came in lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal ($10 billion) and The New York Times ($15 billion). The courts tossed out both of those cases, with the judge in the Times case accusing Trump of using lawsuits as “a megaphone for public relations.” A $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the BBC is set to go to trial next year.

Trump also has active lawsuits against CNN, the Des Moines Register and the Pulitzer Board for awarding prizes to coverage of Trump’s Russia scandal. And earlier this week, Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic for reporting on allegations he was behaving erratically and abusing alcohol, demanding $250 million.

Trump has successfully gotten some media operations to settle with him, nabbing $15 million from ABC shortly before he started his second term and $16 million from Paramount last summer.

Trump speaks to the press aboard Air Force One in April. JIM WATSON via Getty Images

Outrageous Searches, Investigations And Arrests

Lawsuits aren’t the administration’s only intimidation tactics.

Last year, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into watchdog outlet Media Matters for America in connection with its court battle with then-Trump ally Elon Musk, who’d accused the group of orchestrating advertiser boycotts of X.

Media Matters said last summer that it had racked up $15 million in legal fees to defend itself against the FTC probe, Musk’s lawsuit and another investigation by Republican state attorneys general, forcing it to slash staff, scale back its criticism of Musk and the FTC, and contemplate shutting down entirely.

Then, in January, federal agents arrested independent journalist and former CNN host Don Lemon over his coverage in a Minnesota church of a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lemon was charged with conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of the church’s congregants. Agents also arrested independent journalist Georgia Fort.

That same month, the FBI raided the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, seizing both her personal and work laptops, her phone and her watch. A month prior, she’d co-bylined a deep dive on how Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the White House “broke the federal government.” The raid came after then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rolled back a policy banning the use of search warrants and subpoenas to seize reporting materials.

Trump speaks to a crowd of reporters in April. Anadolu via Getty Images

Outright Blocking Of Press Access

The month after Trump started his second term, Leavitt rolled out a new policy for press coverage access, ending a decades-long system in which the White House Correspondents’ Association determined the rotation of reporters who fill spots dedicated for radio, television, print and wire service reporters each day.

Instead, she said, the White House would take control so that it could ensure newer outlets had access, but it quickly became clear the White House could potentially use its newfound control over press scheduling to retaliate against outlets.

Hours after the announcement, the White House kicked Dáte and a Reuters reporter out of their spots in the pool the next day. Axios ― an outlet focused on brief, straightforward coverage ― and two right-wing outlets ― The Blaze and Newsmax ― were given spots that day instead.

The timing was suspicious. Weeks earlier, Dáte had sparred with Trump aboard Air Force One.

HuffPost’s removal from the rotation came on the heels of Trump’s spat with The Associated Press over its decision to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico by its long-standing name instead of using Trump’s new moniker: “the Gulf of America.”

The move outraged Trump, prompting the White House to bar the AP from several coverage events. So the AP sued, setting off a back-and-forth legal battle.

Later in 2025, Trump’s Defense Department announced that if reporters wanted to keep press access to the Pentagon, they must agree to a series of demands, including an agreement not to obtain any information not expressly allowed by the Defense Department. HuffPost, along with several other news outlets, refused to comply, and a judge overturned the policy last month.

Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in 2011. Bloomberg via Getty Images

Relentless Personal Attacks On Female Journalists

Trump’s disdain for reporters is well-known, but his vitriol toward female journalists, in particular, has been extreme during his second term.

The president’s hostility toward women in the press room began ramping up last fall when he started making highly personal attacks on them when they asked him questions. Perhaps most infamously, in November, he scolded Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, a veteran White House correspondent, with a jaw-dropping “Quiet, piggy!” and finger wag when she pressed him about Jeffrey Epstein.

Later that month, he slammed the female author of a New York Times story about him as “ugly” and a “third rate reporter,” saying absolutely nothing about the man who co-wrote the story.

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Check this:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/york-times-decries-alarming-probe-151830669.html

The Most Corrupt First Family in US History

 

Trump's disastrous antics on social media play the markets: bad news post by the Orangutan... Stocks fall...Trump family and GOP friends buy on low. Two days later, good news post by the Orangutan, stocks rise and they sell with a hefty profit. But the corruption and nepotism coming out of the White House have spread across the government system.

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‘Most Corrupt First Family Of All Time’: Lawmakers Torch Eric Trump Over Pentagon Deal
Lee Moran
Fri, April 24, 2026

Democrat lawmakers have blasted the Pentagon’s decision to award a $24 million contract to a robotics startup tied to Eric Trump, the son of President Donald Trump.

The company, Foundation Future Industries, where Eric Trump serves as chief strategy adviser, secured the deal to test humanoid robots, a move critics said raises serious ethics concerns and has prompted accusations that the Trump family continues to profit from the president’s time in office.

Eric Trump touted the contract, which comes amid his father’s ongoing war on Iran, during an appearance on Fox Business’ “Mornings With Maria” with Maria Bartiromo on Thursday.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) bluntly asked in response on X, the Elon Musk-owned platform: “Is the Pentagon just a cash machine for Trump’s kids now?”

She added, “This looks like corruption in plain sight.”

Eric Trump went on FOX to brag about winning ANOTHER multimillion-dollar contract from the Trump administration.

I've been sounding the alarm and pushing for answers.

Is the Pentagon just a cash machine for Trump’s kids now?

This looks like corruption in plain sight. https://t.co/kRYgFqYSmV

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) April 23, 2026

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) wrote: “You can’t make this stuff up. The most corrupt first family of all time.”

You can’t make this stuff up. The most corrupt first family of all time. https://t.co/qMaud4skXo

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 23, 2026

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) chimed in: “For your family the war in Iran means paying more. For Trump’s family the war in Iran means making more.”

For your family the war in Iran means paying more.
For Trump’s family the war in Iran means making more. https://t.co/v5ZZItMTED

— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) April 23, 2026

Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) wrote: “The Trump Family gets rich off of Trump’s war. Working people get higher prices.”

The Trump Family gets rich off of Trump’s war.

Working people get higher prices. https://t.co/WFJpTGKdhK

— Rep. Shontel Brown (@RepShontelBrown) April 23, 2026

And Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) accused Eric Trump of “bragging about corruption openly.”

He added, “That’s where the Trump family is at now, at this point. A political reckoning will be coming soon. It’s only a matter of time.”

Bragging about corruption openly. That’s where the Trump family is at now, at this point.

A political reckoning will be coming soon. It’s only a matter of time. https://t.co/ksSMWgzUkZ

As the Tide Turns, FUX News Flip-Flops Into Democrat Territory

The white aryan morons of Fucks News have enabled Donald Trump. They promoted his lies as facts, invited him to speak his nonsensical verbal diahhreas almost every day. They catered to the MAGA herd of morons peddling Trump's insanity as a necessary pathway to "save America". Not only did they kiss the ring as the tyrant was on his way up, but they also marketed his deeply unAmerican brand as "the exclusive American Way". They excessively covered every single bit of bad news about immigrants such that only crimes committed by immigrants deserved Angel Moms, but totally ignored the far greater crimes committed at alarming rates by white aryan Americans.

But now that the tyrant has gone full-blown demented, now that he has proven his unworthyness and his deception, and now that the American people are finally realizing they elected a creep, a liar, a greedy moneybagger, a narcissistic idiot, and a subordinate to the Zionist rulers of America, Fucks News has in recent weeks began a makeover of sorts: They challenge the Great Moron with tough questions, and he replies to them with venom laden with insults against their own reporters. Megyn Kelly, one of the top bimbo arses at Fucks News just discovered - after twenty years of evidence she chose to ignore - that Donald Dumb "is not a moral man". After twenty years? That is how long it took this bieatch to understand him as the criminal con man?

So much so that Jeanine Pirro, the Lebanese-American Semitic (not Aryan) political wench of Donald Dumb, is now claiming that Fucks News was better under Obama than it is under Trump. She says, "There’s no respect for the office [of President]" without explaining that it is Trump's own vulgarities and disrespect for reporters and journalists that have prompted the latter to become impatient with a demented insane weasel as president.

[More on Megyn Kelly's anticipating GOP-MAGA disaster and trying to save her own hide from eternal shame]:

Conservative media FUCKS NEWS's shill Megyn Kelly is stunned by Donald Dump’s disastrous polling in recent weeks. Republicans seem to be headed straight into a gargantuan defeat and stand to lose their majority in the House. Some polling suggests they might lose control of the Senate too. Former FUCKS NEWS's Kelly is now begging the GOP to "do something", which is both pathetic and hypocritical. “More polling has just come out for Trump and the Republicans, and it’s more potential trouble,” Kelly said on The Megyn Kelly Show on Sirius XM. Too late, jerk. You made Trump what he is today. You can't undo the damage you brought to America by backing the Russian and Zionist stooge. 

“It’s important to talk about it now, when we’re several months in advance in the midterm, maybe something could be done,” she added. Again too late, bimbo. Nothing can be done other than watch the Great moron turn increasingly unsettled and unhinged. Plus, your GOP-MAGA-Republican Mafia have their heads so high up inside the Dumb Criminal Idiot's rectum that it is very difficult to see a way out, no pun intended.

Kelly looked at Trump’s disastrous polling and concluded that the GOP is “f---ed” come November's midterm elections. “President Trump had his worst poll of his second term, with the AP showing just 33 percent of Americans approving of his job performance,” she said. “When you look at the cross-tabs in the all-important independent voters, Trump has cratered.”

“It’s like not even present tense anymore. It’s done!” Yup, Miss Apologetica. It's done. You're done. Who would ever want to hire you other than the white aryan racist cesspool that your FUX News is. She goes on, “Just 23 percent approve of his overall performance. That ticks up to 30 when it comes to how he’s handled immigration, and then from there it is all downhill,” she continued. Oh, poor baby. Didn't you have a single neuron in your empty skull to see where Trump would eventually end up? Didn't he display, back in the early 2010s, all the qualifiers for the dumb, idiot, mysogynistic, corrupt, criminal, liar, racist SOB? How did you miss all that? And now you act surprised that the American people are ready to vomit him with a giant hurl come November? 

“21 percent of independents support this war on Iran. 21. You’ve got 79 percent of independents who are against–folks you cannot win elections like that!” she declared. “Democrat or Republican. You got 80 percent of the independents against you? You’re f---ed! You need to adjust something ASAP,” she says.

You know what they say about dumb blondes in French? "Sois belle et tais-toi". Well, you're far from belle, but you sure need to finally shut your racist white supremacist piehole.

Kelly's swan song has it that Trump was already sinking with independents on the economy and cost-of-living before he became very unpopular with his Zionist-prodded unwinnable war in Iran. “They were already suffering, and they were blaming him, and then we launched a war of choice that was not necessary, and their gas prices went up,” she said. Can you imagine the coming disaster if the dumb moron does get a deal with Iran with less than all the hifaluting demands he has put as conditions? Even if a new deal with Iran (after the 2015 JCPOA that Netanyahu told him to walk out from) is slightly better than the JCPOA, it would still be a victory for Iran and yet another defeat for America (after, you know, all the other defeats in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan....). 

As a registered "unaffiliated" or "independent", I personally have voted almost exclusively republican (Bush, McCain, Romney...) for as long as I remember. But with Trump, a huge firewall erupted inside me that completely turned against not only the MAGA cult itself, but against the standard republicans who, like you, chose party over country and proceeded to support Trump and shield him from any accountability. I suspect FUX NEWS will go down fast right after the midterms. The American people will not forget your complicity with the racist, white supremacist Project 2025 that Trump said he knew nothing about during the campaign, only to drop all his other promises and begin to implement every one of its clauses.

The MAGA republican defectors (maybe defecators too), those "early birds" Kelly, Carlson, Taylor-Greene and others, are the canaries in the mind: Watch as the cascading wave of those breaking with Trump will accelerate at supersonic speed as we approach November. Megyn, Trump has called you “Low IQ,” and “NUT JOB, TROUBLEMAKER,” because you have begun casting doubt on him from within the MAGA Cult. He will soon be calling you traitor who should be executed or even suing you for slander!  “They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” the Great Moron hurled in one of his boring Truth Social rants.

MACA is about MAKING AMERICA CANCEROUS AGAIN, for all the illiterate ignorant MACAques out there in Middle America who voted for him.

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Jeanine Pirro Suggests Obama-Era Fox News Was More Respectful Than ‘Unhinged’ Media Under Trump
"There's no respect for the office," the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia says
Alyssa Ray
Fri, April 24, 2026 


Jeanine Pirro (Photo credit: "We'll Do It Live"/YouTube)

Jeanine Pirro didn’t hold back when commenting on the media currently covering Donald Trump’s second term, blasting today’s journalists as “unhinged.”

The former Fox News host, who currently serves as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sounded off on the press corps and other members of the media during her Thursday appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s “We’ll Do It Live!” podcast.

After O’Reilly lamented that most of modern media is “anti-Trump,” he reiterated his warning around the White House Correspondents Dinner. “I don’t want the office of the presidency attacked at a stupid dinner,” he said, garnering approval from Pirro.

“I appreciate that,” she responded. “These these people are unhinged. There’s no respect for the office.”

As Pirro went on, she reflected on the coverage Fox News did for former President Barack Obama during his tenure in the White House.

“I mean, the way we treated President Obama was — we disagreed with him, but we didn’t create chaos,” she said. “They disagree with us and they create chaos, violence and all kinds of problems.”

However, when asked if the alleged “chaos” impacted her job at all, Pirro responded: “No. And my job, though, Bill, is to turn that office around from a neglected office.” Watch her comments below.

Fox News, where Pirro worked for over 15 years, infamously had an adversarial relationship with Obama and his White House, with the network criticizing everything from the former president’s policies to his tan suit.

In response, Anita Dunn, the White House communications director at the time, accused Fox News of operating “as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican party.”

Additionally, Obama himself chimed in with, “If media is operating basically as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing, and if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another.”

More in Politics

Dozy Don taking a nap during a White Outhouse meeting 

Yet, this drama pales in comparison to the current tension between the Trump administration and the media. Not only has Trump and his staffers blasted legacy media as “fake news,” the president has also sued a number of media outlets, including The New York Times, the BBC and the Des Moines Register.

He’s also faced backlash for his repeated verbal attacks against female reporters, slinging insults like “nasty,” “piggy,” “terrible,” “ugly” and “incapable” in their direction.

Last year, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson defended that “President Trump has never been politically correct, never holds back, and in large part, the American people re-elected him for his transparency.”

She added: “This has nothing to do with gender – it has everything to do with the fact that the President’s and the public’s trust in the media is at all time lows.”

Dwindling Weapons Stocks Forcing US to Cancel Weapons Sales to Allies

 

Hegseth Just Sent an Alarming Message to the Rest of the World
Fred Kaplan
Fri, April 24, 2026 




Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called Estonia’s defense minister on Monday with some bad news: Because of its own needs in the war with Iran, the Pentagon would have to delay delivery of six units of a high-tech weapons system that Estonia had contracted to buy from the United States government.

The weapon is the Army’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, each of which can fire six rockets or one missile at ranges of up to 185 miles. The United States had signed the contract to sell these weapons back in 2022, after they’d proved their worth in Ukraine. The first launchers were delivered last year, with the U.S. Embassy in Tallinn calling the purchase “one of the most significant capability upgrades in Estonian military history.”

But now, according to a story in Stars and Stripes, Hegseth informed his Estonian counterpart that delivery of the munitions—the rockets and missiles that fit into the launchers—will be delayed at least until the war with Iran is over, perhaps for longer still.

The implications of the delay are staggering on several levels.

First, the Pentagon’s civilian leader is telling a NATO ally—a tiny front-line nation whose military budget totals 5.4 percent of its GDP—that its defense needs to take a back seat to a war instigated by President Donald Trump, whose purpose has never been explained (in part because it has no real purpose).

Second, other allies, many of whom have been buying American-made weapons for decades, can infer from this slap in the face that they should start looking elsewhere, because the U.S. government cannot be relied on to keep its word—even when codified in a legal contract.

This is already beginning to happen. Largely as a result of Trump’s open indifference or hostility to NATO, the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, and Germany have been talking for a while about buying each other’s weapons rather than continuing to rely heavily on the United States.

Now even Estonia, one of America’s most loyal allies, is moving away. “This delay will not help out deterrence very much,” Stars and Stripes quotes Estonia’s defense minister, Hanno Pevkur, as saying. If the delay goes on much longer, Pevkur adds, “we would certainly have to review our decisions” about where to go shopping for armaments.

This holds enormous economic, as well as geopolitical, consequences. U.S. arms sales to foreign countries last year totaled $331.18 billion. In many cases, foreign sales offset a large share of the costs that the U.S. armed services incur in buying the weapons for their own arsenals.

Hegseth’s call highlights another gasp-worthy consequence of the war: the extent to which a mere 39-day bombing campaign against Iran—a country that is far from a major military power—has depleted America’s stocks of crucial weapons.

According to a study released this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. military used up more than half of its pre-war inventory for four of the seven types of weapons that it calls “key munitions” for fighting a war—and it will take, in some cases, more than four years for the stockpile to be replenished.

Though the study was released a few days before news reports of Hegseth’s phone call to Estonia, it helps explain the secretary’s panic. A key example cited in the study is the Precision Strike Missile, the main munition of the HIMARS rocket system that Hegseth held back from delivery to our NATO ally. The U.S. military had 90 of these missiles before Trump started bombing Iran. During the five and a half weeks of war, it fired off 40 to 70 of them. (The study’s estimate is based on published sources; hence the imprecise range.) The study concludes it will take 46 months—nearly four years—for manufacturers to refill the U.S. inventory.

Similarly, the U.S. had 360 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems before the war started. In shooting down Iran’s ballistic missiles, U.S. service members fired off somewhere between 190 and 290—52 to 80 percent—of them. Rebuilding those stockpiles should take 53 months.

The military used between 1,060 and 1,430—between 45 and 61 percent—of its 2,330 Patriot air-defense missiles, which will take 42 months to replace.

In other, slightly less extreme cases, the military fired more than 1,000 of its 3,100 Tomahawk cruise missiles, more than 1,000 of its 4,400 armor-piercing Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, between 130 and 250 of its 410 SM-3 air-defense missiles, and between 190 and 370 of its 1,160 SM-6s. The Tomahawks will take 47 months to replace, the SM-6s will take 53 months, and the SM-3s will take 64 months.

The study notes that the situation is not quite as dire as the numbers make it seem. Some of these weapons can be replaced by far cheaper, slightly less capable systems that the U.S. possesses in large quantity. However, for a few of the weapons—the Patriots, THAADs, and SM missiles, which are adept at shooting down short-to-medium-range ballistic missiles—there are no good substitutes.

It’s breathtaking to examine these numbers. The U.S. military budgets since 2020 have added up to more than $5 trillion. Yet its arsenal is facing such drastic shortfalls in some of its most critical weapons! How could this be?

A few lessons can be learned from this grim tale.

First, we should have been buying—and now need to buy—many more of these basic munitions.

Second, the Pentagon needs to find companies that, in lightning-fast contracts, can build weapons of this sort—artillery rockets, medium-range missiles, and air-defense weapons—for much, much lower prices. (It’s crazy to fire multimillion-dollar air-defense missiles at drones costing a few thousand dollars.)

Deconstructing Trump's Roy Cohn Tactics: Every Accusation is a Confession!

It's very easy to deconstruct Trump. Just invoke the lessons that Trump's mentor Roy Cohn taught him and you'll understand exactly why Trump says and does things.

In this case, Trump is the criminal. Trump is the traitor. Trump is the seditious anarchist. Trump is the pedophile (not some Democrat cabal). Trump is the liar. Trump is the leader of a lunatic radical right-wing conspiracy. Trump is the one who doesn't give a rat's ass about morals or the Christian religion. Trump (and he said it many time) knows he caters to a stupid imbecile MAGA base to whom he can lie at will and they will believe him. 

Just reverse everything he says and does and turn it back to him, and you'll understand the insidious hypocrite creep that this man is. Next time you read one of his stupidly nasty posts, simply accept that whatever he says about his enemies, he is projecting his one crimes onto them. That's the gist of Roy Cohn's mentorship of this criminal ass-o-e.

This reminds me of George Costanza in one of the Seinfeld episodes in which he decides to do everything opposite to what he actually believes or normally does. And it worked for George, just as it seems to be working for the delirious marsupial lemur in the Wout House because so many Americans are just as dumb and ugly as he is to believe him.

By the way, whatever happened to the Epstein Files?  

================================================


Trump resurrects calls to arrest Barack Obama, accuses him and others of ‘treason’ in late-night posts
Gerren Keith Gaynor
Fri, April 24, 2026


(Photo: Getty Images)

“This isn’t just false; it’s reckless,” former DOJ official Anthony Coley tells theGrio after President Trump’s Truth Social posting spree.

President Donald Trump has resurrected his public rebuke of former President Barack Obama, accusing his predecessor of “treason” and calling for his arrest.

In a series of late-night Truth Social posts, the ever mercurial president renewed scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s criminal investigation of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia’s election interference.

President Trump reposted a Newsmax segment of former Trump campaign advisory board member Jason Meister calling out America’s first Black president as a “criminal.”

“I hate to say this, but President Barack Obama…there’s now incontrovertible evidence that he was the spearhead of a seditious conspiracy to subvert the will of the American people and overthrow the United States government back in 2016,” said Meister. “We must hold every single one of these criminals accountable.”

Trump shared another post of a 2020 Fox News segment reporting about declassified notes from former Obama Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan, who reportedly briefed President Obama in 2016 on then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s intent to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

The post was a re-share from an account called “The SCIF,” which captioned, “Hillary Clinton funded, approved, and created Steele Dossier, Barack Obama called the shots, and Brennan’s CIA did the dirty work. The evidence is clear, TREASON was committed, and now they must pay or they will do it again.”

Another post was a re-share of an X post that read, “I hope they arrest you before your grand opening of your war bunker in southside Chicago,” referring to President Obama’s June 19 opening of the Obama Presidential Center.

The 2016 Trump-Russia investigation, like Trump’s conspiracy that his 2020 election loss was “rigged” against him, has been a political obsession for the president.

In July 2025, Trump reignited calls for the arrest of Obama and former Obama officials, including former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 election. The push came after Trump’s loyalist, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, released declassified documents revealing communications within the Obama administration. Memos showed that Obama requested an assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the foreign adversary’s connections to the Trump campaign.

(Photo: Getty Images)

A U.S. president being briefed about national and foreign intelligence or requesting more information is not a crime, and despite DNI Gabbard claiming she made a criminal referral to the DOJ, no indictments have been made against President Obama or any former Obama official.

It is well-documented that several former Trump campaign staff engaged in communications with Russian officials, including Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Additionally, intelligence reports revealed that Russia engaged in a sophisticated interference campaign that included extracting voter registration data in at least two states, and online interference campaigns—including a troll farm targeting Black voters. Analysis of Russia’s interference campaign concluded that it was an effective voter suppression tool.

A DOJ special counsel investigation of the 2016 Russia interference campaign, led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, concluded that there was not enough evidence to charge any Trump official for conspiring with Russia. However, Mueller made clear his report did not absolve Trump of possible obstruction. His 448-page report outlines 10 potential instances of obstruction of justice committed by Trump, including the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, who was leading an investigation of Russia and the Trump campaign.

Trump has long griped about the Russia investigation and the political damage that came with it, calling it a “witch hunt” orchestrated by Democrats who simply did not want to see him elected president.

“This isn’t just false; it’s reckless. Repeating debunked conspiracy theories about a former president doesn’t make them true, and it drags the country deeper into division,” political analyst and former Biden DOJ official Anthony Coley tells theGrio. “The country would be much better served by a president focused on lowering costs and solving real problems.”

Following last year’s DNI report that sought to implicate him in criminal activity, a spokesperson for President Obama issued a rare statement, calling the claims “outrageous.”

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” the statement said. “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

Thanks to RFK Jr and other MAGA "Health" Goons, Measles is Spreading in US

The smartass anti-vaccine morons that Donald Dumb has planted at the CDC and other national health institutions are the direct cause of vaccine skpeticism among the MAGA morons that populate the southern and western United States. These lovers of Donald Dumb stopped vaccinating their children, and now Measles is spreading fast across the south and southwest. It has also been reported in New Jersey for the first time [https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/n-j-reports-first-measles-212049874.html]

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Newer testing methods suggest significant silent spread of measles in the US, threatening elimination
Brenda Goodman, CNN
Fri, April 24, 2026


Measles cases in the US have topped 1,700 in just the first four months of this year. - Sean Rayford/Getty Images/File

Measles crept into Utah and Arizona in June, with reports trickling into local health departments of patients coming to doctors and saying their children had just recovered from full-body rashes, and parents telling pediatricians that their whole family had just recovered from measles.

But because patients would decline testing, there were no official cases in the outbreak until August 8, when the Mojave County, Arizona, Department of Public health received a report about a 10-year-old boy who lived in a tightly knit community that spans the border of northern Arizona and southern Utah.

That outbreak has grown to more than 600 reported cases and is now the most active in the US. The Arizona-Utah cases will almost certainly be important to determining whether the US has lost its measles elimination status, meaning it’s stopped the routine transmission of the virus within its borders for over a year. The meeting to make that determination is now set for November.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tasked one of its disease detectives with using molecular evidence – clues buried deep in the genomes of the measles viruses that infected patients – to learn more about when the outbreak really started and how large it actually is.

The number of reported measles cases in the US jumped last year to 2,267, the highest total in more than three decades. Transmission has not slowed, with cases topping 1,700 in just the first four months of this year as the virus spreads through communities that have turned away from vaccination.

Tracing the origins of an outbreak

Almost as soon as the Utah outbreak was confirmed, health officials suspected that the true number of patients was bigger than they knew.

Most disease outbreaks are undercounted because doctors may miss diagnoses of unfamiliar diseases and patients may not seek medical care for religious or cultural reasons. Both factors seemed to be at play in this outbreak.

Measles has not circulated widely in the US in 30 years, so many doctors have never seen a case. Additionally, the community where measles is spreading has been the home of a sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a group that had a charismatic leader named Warren Jeffs who sowed distrust in vaccines.

The measles vaccine is highly effective. Two doses prevent disease roughly 97% of the time. Because the virus is so contagious, lingering in air for up to two hours after a person leaves the room, high vaccination coverage in an area, more than 95%, is needed to stop it from spreading. But misinformation campaigns and a lack of trust in public health officials have caused population-level protection against the virus to plummet.

Public health departments working to combat the outbreak wondered whether it might be possible to estimate when it really started, as well as its true size, by looking at how the genome of the virus had changed over time, according to Dr. Annie Wang, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer who was assigned to Arizona’s Pima County Health Department during the outbreak.

EIS officers are a group of highly trained public health specialists who are often assigned to state and local public health departments to help with outbreak investigations. Wang presented their investigation into the outbreak Tuesday during the CDC’s annual EIS conference.

This technique for tracing the origins of an outbreak relies on knowing how quickly viruses develop mutations, or changes, in their genetic material as they pass from person to person. The measles virus is relatively stable and changes very little during transmission. But even this relatively steady virus does develop small changes as it circulates; they just take extra effort to find.

Instead of studying the small part of the measles genome that’s usually used to identify what strain it is, Wang explained, she and her colleagues needed to sequence the entire genome of the virus, or its complete set of blueprints. They did this for viruses sampled from 165 patients.

They were able to use that information to determine, essentially, the birthdate of the virus that gave rise to the Arizona and Utah outbreak, Wang said.

Those early infections probably started at least six weeks – and maybe as many as 14 months – before the 10-year-old boy was diagnosed, she said, though she added that they couldn’t pinpoint the geographic location of the earliest case because they used only viruses sampled in the Utah and Arizona outbreak. There were also sizable measles outbreaks in West Texas and South Carolina last year, as well as in Mexico and Canada.

If the location of that first infection is in the US, however, the research could lend significant weight to the idea that measles has been continually transmitting in the country for longer than a year, the threshold for determining elimination.

Wang and her team also estimated that the Arizona/Utah outbreak has been at least 6.5 times larger than the number of known cases.

More evidence for silent spread

There are other clues that much of the spread of measles in the US is going unreported, too.

A separate EIS investigation of measles in wastewater from Oregon found that the virus was detected 100 times between October and February, in 23 of 24 monitored counties. Oregon had six reported cases of measles during that time, but all of these were outside the areas that were being monitored for the virus.

“The number and spread of detection suggests measles is more widespread than the six reported cases that we have,” Dr. Jeffrey Tamucci, an EIS officer assigned to the Oregon Public Health Authority, said in a conference presentation.

“It begs the question, why are there missing clinical cases? Is it a sick person that does not seek care? A patient being diagnosed with other illnesses? Providers not testing those with clinically compatible symptoms? Or something else?” Tamucci said. “We don’t know for sure. We’re still trying to figure that out.”

Elimination status at risk

The CDC is at work on a nationwide analysis, similar to the one done in Arizona and Utah, looking at genomic data, said Dr. Noel Brewer, a distinguished professor of public health at the University of North Carolina.

“The data from states is useful but has important limitations that include not characterizing the connection to outbreaks in other states,” Brewer said, adding that he was aware of the data from Arizona and Utah. Another state is also doing a genomic analysis, he said.

Brewer chairs the committee that will certify the CDC’s report and give its opinion on measles elimination status to the Pan American Health Organization, or PAHO, which will make the ultimate determination this fall. The committee was convened by the nonprofit Task Force for Global Health and funded by the CDC.

Brewer expects the CDC’s report by the end of June and expects that the data will be convincing and definitive.

“Whether or not forensic epidemiology unearths a smoking gun linking the cases, measles is now widely present across the US and showing no signs of ending anytime soon,” he said.

In early April, CDC scientists published the first large batch of data from advanced genetic sequencing of roughly 1,000 measles viruses that were circulating in the US last year. The agency will use that information to try to determine whether the measles outbreaks in Texas, Arizona and Utah, as well as the outbreaks in South Carolina, Florida and Washington, are linked or the result of separate introductions from outside the US.

“Looking at the larger dataset from the US, Canada, and elsewhere, it’s pretty clear that what is happening in Utah and Arizona is closely connected to prior outbreaks in the US with clear links to e.g., Texas, New Mexico, and other places,” said Dr. Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute who is not involved in the effort to analyze the sequences but is closely following it.

“The larger outbreak in South Carolina, Washington and other places sit on a separate clade, but is also clearly caused by endemic transmission within the US (and Canada) and not from ‘immigration’ or other people traveling into the country as we have heard from HHS officials,” Andersen said in an email.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com

Trump Wants to Take Over the Falkland-Malvinas Islands

The Falkland Islands are off the coast of Argentina, which refers to them as the Malvinas Islands. They were stolen from Argentina by the crooks of the colonial British Empire, whose descendants refuse to hand them back to Argentina. Margaret Thatcher, the former extremist right-wing prime minister of England went to war with Argentina to recover the Falkland Islands when Argentina seized them back in the early 1980s.

But now that Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, like all other democracies, refused to help the insane old geezer Donald Dumb in his Zionist-prodded war on Iran, the US is threatening to seize the Falkland Islands from Britain as punishment. When you have a mindless idiot at the helm in the superpower of our time, no one should be surprised if Keir Starmer pulls a Margaret-Thatcher war against the US to recover the islands, if the US decides to take them over. And that is a problem between the "special" allies that the the US and the UK keep bragging about.
===================================================


Sovereignty of Falklands rests with the UK, Britain tells the US
Reuters
Fri, April 24, 2026 


The coast of the West Falkland, of the Falkland Islands, is seen from an airplane May 20, 2018. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer walks outside 10 Downing Street after pressure intensified over his handling of the appointment of Peter Mandelson, who failed a security vetting process, as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., on the day of Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons, in London, Britain, April 22, 2026. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo


LONDON, April 24 (Reuters) - The sovereignty of the Falkland Islands rests with Britain, a spokesperson for Prime Minister ‌Keir Starmer said on Friday after an internal Pentagon ‌email suggested reviewing the U.S. position on the Falklands as punishment for Britain's ​stance on the Iran war.

"We could not be clearer about the UK's position on the Falkland Islands. It is long standing, it is unchanged," the spokesperson told reporters.

"Sovereignty rests with the UK ‌and the islands' right ⁠to self-determination is paramount. It's been our consistent position and will remain the case," the spokesperson ⁠said, adding that Britain had expressed that position "clearly and consistently to successive U.S. administrations".

The Pentagon email outlined options for the United States ​to punish ​NATO allies it believes failed ​to support U.S. operations ‌in the war with Iran, including considering reassessing U.S. diplomatic support for longstanding European "imperial possessions," such as the Falkland Islands near Argentina.

Britain and Argentina fought a brief war in 1982 over the islands after Argentina made a failed bid to take them. ‌Some 650 Argentine and 255 British ​service personnel died before Argentina surrendered.

Asked ​if Starmer thought this ​was an attempt by the U.S. to put ‌pressure on him to join the ​Iran war, ​his spokesperson said: "He has spoken about that and he has also spoken about how that pressure does not affect ​him, and he will ‌always act in the national interest, and that will ​always remain the case."

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Andrew ​MacAskill; editing by William James)

Crumbling "Turning Point USA": A Harbinger of MAGA Mega-Debacle

[Turning Point USA's name has been replaced with the more appropriate "Turning Stomach USA"] 

Turning Stomach USA campus moron quits after Kerika Irk failed to show up. This organization of moronic MAGA juveniles is already on its way to extinction. Turning Stomach USA (TSUSA) was founded on the basis of imbecile Charlie Kirk's "discovery" that you can convince sane and decent people that racism is good and acceptable if only you express it with good manners and politeness, something the Nazis were very good at. 

As hypocrisy and bigotry are easily ferreted out of Trump's MAGA morons (they can't help themselves), it takes no time before such a vapid and stupidly American idea (e.g. you can be happy if only you smile and pretend to be happy... positive thinking bullshit) to disintegrate. Which is happening before our eyes. The MAGA morons of the backward state of Georgia (where inbreeding among the white trash settlers and slave owners has led to a general decline in mental acuity and a derangement in uttering speech known as spluttering: The tongue of the average Georgian speaker is so protruding out of the vocal orifice that every outgoing syllable is escorted with 1.27 Oz. of saliva. Canadian visitors to Georgia: beware.

The self-declared MAGA "president" of the University of Georgia’s Turning Stomach USA chapter is quitting. This tragedy is taking place after the hillbilly Vice President and Donald Dumb's hand puppet J.D. Vance, visited the Georgia chapter and was met with virtually no audience to applaud his platitudes. Well, he's a Catholic, a bad one to be sure, but the Evangelical numskulls of the MAGA cult have long hated Catholics - Papists as they call them - even though Vance chose to wage a public war with the POpe on matters of theology. You see, you can be a DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) hillbilly recruit at a liberal Yankee campus like Yale, as a dumb midwesterner and Catholic, you have no option in MAGA but kiss the ass of the Evangelical moron at the helm. Which explains why many of the tiny idiots of Turning Stomach USA did not show up to listen to Dunce Vance's speech. They may also be beginning to smell the decomposition gases emanating from the MAGA corpse and, as their brains are still developing, they may want to try other pastures.

To make things worse, the national president of Turning Stomach USA, Her Ecellency the Head Bimbo, the supreme Mullatah of the organization, Kerika Irk did not show up. There were rumors for a while that Kerika and JD were romancing the stone, as JD's forced love for, and marriage with, a dark-skinned Hindu immigrant (all three disqualifying criteria for the MAGA racists) did not sit well with the mentally-challenged xenophobes of MAGA and Turning Stomach USA, especially that she was pressured to convert to the Evangelical Cult but declined. In line with the traditional MAGA family values of corruption, adultery, fornication on the side, gun-loving alcoholism, cronyism and nepotism, the lady inherited her position from her late husband, affectionately known as Charlie. But given his own deficiencies in the realm of the intellectual, she could not have been better than him.

According to Caroline Mattox, the U. of Georgia chapter’s president, joining TPUSA had been “a dream” of hers, but that after its founder, Charlie Kirk, died last year, the right-wing organization’s mission had become dishonest. DISHONEST. Hear the truth from the mouths of babes. That is still a mild description of an organization molded on a convicted felon dumb jerk by the name of Donald Dumb. Mattox went on to say that that after Vance’s visit, it had become “abundantly clear” to her that “TPUSA’s mission and purpose have been lost along the way.” Good riddance. Thank you Caroline.

“It became evident to me that the organization’s current direction no longer aligns with the principles upon which it was founded... and I have significant concerns about its messaging and current trajectory... In light of this, I am resigning from my position as president of the Turning [Stomach] USA chapter at the University of Georgia. While I am grateful for the experiences, lessons, and people this chapter has brought me, I can no longer, in good conscience, continue to represent an organization that I believe has strayed so far from its original purpose and principles." Wow. 

Obviously, to explain the train wreck that TSUSA is going through, a good Donald Dumb tactic is to reject responsibility and dump it on your opponents. Turning Stomach USA is claimg that it was left-wing infiltrators who scuttled the event by reserving tickets, which somehow resulted in hardly anyone bothering to show up. Yup, it is always that scarecrow, the lunatic left, that can depended upon to take the blame for any gastroenteritis that gives MAGA the runs.


Erika and J.D. have maintained a close friendship since Charlie was killed in September. / Brad Vest / Getty Images

Other cancerous TSUSA growths at various universities and colleges are also self-eradicating as the immune system of the nation has built up enough antibodies, killer T-cells, macrophages and other democracy-restoration disease-fighting tools to begin dismantling the MAGA evil empire.

For example, the TSUSA chapter at the University of Arkansas (another backward southern state) also disbanded after Kerika visited it last month. She must be carrying a weakening mutant of the virus that is easy to dislodge. 

At the most recent stop on the tour to Baylor University in 'Wacko', Texas, all media were denied access to the event. TPUSA said the press restrictions were due to the venue they rented, but Baylor said it was clear about expectations with TPUSA from the beginning.

Meanwhile, Baylor University in 'Wacko', Texas, also imposed restrictions on public and media access to a Turning Stomach USA event there, which led to turning away 4,500 stupid ticket holders. The X account of The Baylor Lariat, the campus newspaper, reported that there would be no press access to the event, a decision it said had been taken “in the best interest of our students.” 

Trump's "new deal" wih Iran Might be Just Like Obama's

 

The Obama ghost still haunts the Great White Moron.

The only way for him to outdo Obama in a deal with Iran is to either nuke Iran (a madness the senile madman might well do) or invade the country (which will be the end of any legacy he thinks he might leave behind). He's stuck between two very bad outcomes for him. But as Bolton says below, "he wants out... I think it [deal with Iran] will be unsatisfactory but he will declare victory and hope he can get away with it", just he has pulled a Roy Cohn on everything in his political life: If you lie long enough, you will end up believing your own lies.

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Bolton: Trump ‘afraid’ of making bad Iran deal ‘because he’ll look like’ Obama

Ryan Mancini

Tue, April 21, 2026 

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton on Monday accused President Trump of being “afraid” of making a bad deal with Iran as the end of the two-week ceasefire approaches “because he’ll look like” former President Obama.

Bolton told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Trump is “really desperate to get out” of the conflict with Iran. The former Trump administration adviser said the president is worried about the conflict’s impact on energy prices, which have skyrocketed due to Iran cutting off the Strait of Hormuz to export vessels since the conflict began, and its political impact.

“But he‘s afraid of not making a deal because things will continue and he‘s afraid of making a bad deal because he‘ll look like Barack Obama,” Bolton said. “And that can lead to, uh, mood swings, shall we say?”

This is an apparent reference to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was negotiated under former President Obama. The deal required the Islamic Republic to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal during his first term in 2018.

Bolton expects that the Iranian government will “really feel they’ve got the upper hand” if Trump extends the ceasefire deadline, which the former Trump adviser called a “mistake.” He argued that the Trump administration should “punish” Iran militarily to avoid allowing it to close the Strait of Hormuz.

“Well, I think the dominant mood for Trump is he wants out and he will find a way out,” Bolton said. “I think it will be unsatisfactory but he will declare victory and hope he can get away with it. That’s what I fear.”

He previously said on Sunday that he expects another extension to the “two-week breather,” adding that it gave Iran time “to recover, regroup, get ready for the next phase of the war. We never should have let up on them.”

Vice President Vance, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to fly to Islamabad, Pakistan, to hold the second round of talks with Iranian negotiators before the deadline. Iran, however, stated that it has “no plans for the next round” of negotiations, citing the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

Both sides have made new threats to attack and fight back if threatened. Trump told the New York Post that the U.S. is “loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we use to do a complete decimation.”

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf on Monday accused Trump of violating the ceasefire with the blockade in the strait. He claimed that Trump “seeks to turn this negotiating table… into a table of surrender or to justify renewed warmongering.”

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” Qalibaf wrote on the social platform X.