The Upcoming Civil War Between the Center and the Extremes in US Politics

DEMOCRATS: UNITE AROUND THE YOUNGER GENERATION OF PROGRESSIVES IF YOU WANT TO CLEANSE THE COUNTRY OF TRUMP'S FILTH

Why is it OK for Republicans to turn extremist, racist, violent MAGA Right wingers (rare are the moderate Republicans these days who stand up to Christian Nationalist and criminal felon Donald Trump), but not OK for Democrats to turn Progressive?

American voters now understand that, in order for the middle-center politics to return to normal, the Democrats have to fight Trump's rightwing monopoly over the GOP by moving the Democrat party further to the left. What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.

The bottom line: The American voters have had enough of the corruption, the racism and the chaotic management of the country. Now is not the time for compromise and for cowardice on the part of the Democrat traditionalists who are on AIPAC's payroll and are republicans in disguise (like Manchin, Sinema, Fetterman...)

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James Carville is a Traitor Democrat. He's got nowhere to go but to FOX News to showcase his archaic vacuous semi-MAGA opinions

James Carville is metamorphosing into a MAGA shill by attacking successful Democrats who tell him to him to leave the party and join Trump's MAGA if he's not happy.

The future Senator for Michigan, El-Sayed, commented, "Why does anybody still listen to James Carville? He said one smart thing once, which he seems to have forgotten."

A clearly senile Carville expressed his despair, "I don't know what I can do. I can't take it, please mama help me. Such vicious people. Wow."

El-Sayed, a progressive backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary Tuesday and will face Republican Mike Rogers in November.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said, "if Carville doesn't want to share a party with progressives, "he can start his own party."

Carville has repeatedly itched on FOX News about the influence of progressives in the Democratic Party and previously said he would not remain in the party if far-left figures like Piker became a larger force.

Despite his hysteria about progressives in the party, Carville said he thinks El-Sayed will win the Michigan Senate seat.

"[El-Sayed's] got some slack. He'd probably use every bit of it, but I still think he's going to win," Carville added.

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‘Voters are fed up’: Michigan primary forces Democratic party to accept leftwing shift
David Smith
Sun, August 9, 2026


Abdul El-Sayed, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. Illustration: Guardian Design / Getty Images

Standing before The Spirit of Detroit, a landmark bronze statue in the city's downtown, in the early hours of a Wednesday morning, Abdul El-Sayed channelled boxing great Muhammad Ali. "We shook up the world," he declared.

The 41-year-old former public health official had just delivered a knockout blow to the Democratic establishment, defeating the US congresswoman Haley Stevens to claim the party's nomination for the Senate in swing state Michigan.

El-Sayed had campaigned on a boldly progressive agenda of universal healthcare, halting military aid to Israel and sweeping campaign finance reform. The moderate Stevens had received $60m from outside groups, including $30m from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and its affiliates.

It was the latest and possibly biggest tremor in a political earthquake consuming the Democratic party. Its leftwing insurgency was no longer confined to deep blue coastal cities; it had breached the walls of a critical midwestern swing state. Now it is forcing a reckoning about the party's leadership and its ideological direction ahead of the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

Matt Duss, executive vice-president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to the leftwing senator Bernie Sanders, said: "It's dissatisfaction with the status quo. It's dissatisfaction with the establishment. This is an anti-system moment.

"We see this not just in our country but in democracies around the world. Voters are fed up with an elite establishment that is simply not delivering for them, that doesn't feel their pain, that doesn't seem to know or care about their struggles, and that's part of why Abdul succeeded."

The past decade of US politics has been dominated by the rightwing populism of Donald Trump. But leftwing populism has been running – and flourishing – on a parallel track since Sanders' outsider campaign for president in 2016 was ultimately beaten back by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment.

Duss added: "The 2016 Sanders campaign was sort of the Big Bang for the rebirth of the progressive left in the United States. We've got a lot of others who joined Bernie. We've got a lot of great leaders on the progressive left now and are glad to have Abdul El-Sayed run."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a bartender who was an organiser for Sanders's 2016 campaign, pulled off a stunning upset two years later against an incumbent in New York's 14th district, becoming, at 29, the youngest woman ever to serve in the House of Representatives. She was joined by a small but vocal group of progressives known as "the Squad".

Sanders ran again in 2020 and, though he lost to establishment figure Joe Biden, his team had significant input into the surprisingly progressive agenda of the Biden presidency. But the events of 2024 – Biden's abortive run for a second term, Kamala Harris's coronation and Donald Trump's return to power – exposed a chasm between the party leadership and the grassroots.

***

Last November, Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist laser focused on affordability, beat establishment favourite Andrew Cuomo to become the first Muslim mayor of New York. He then helped three insurgent candidates win Democratic primary elections in New York. The "Mamdani effect" swept through Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington state, Wisconsin and Washington DC.

The driving factors include frustration with Trump, the cost of living, corporate money in politics and the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Reuters/ Ipsos polling showed Israel's favorability among Democrats plummeting from 59% in 2018 to just 22% in May 2026. The influx of Aipac money into political campaigns has become toxic for younger voters.

In Michigan, which has the highest percentage of Arab Americans relative to population, El-Sayed accused Israel of committing genocide and built his campaign around a demand to end unconditional US military aid to the country. This positioned him directly against Stevens, who defended the US-Israel relationship and benefited from massive Aipac spending.

El-Sayed's ultimate victory – coupled with wins for progressives Will Lawrence and Donavan McKinney in House races in Michigan – marked a watershed moment, a high-stakes proof of concept challenging the myth that leftwing populists cannot win elections outside Democratic strongholds.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, perceives a general break within the party flowing from various sources including the "staleness" of its current leaders, Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House – both ardent supports of Israel. "Gaza and Israel has become a lightning rod for all the other issues," he added. "There's a sense that the Democrats have been patsies in the face of Donald Trump. When Democrats say they want to fight back, they mean it.

"Donald Trump has radicalised the Democratic party," he said. "This revolt within the party would not have happened without Donald Trump. He is provoking a kind of earthquake, raising lots of unsettling questions within the Democratic party - its direction, its leadership, its policy priorities, its beholdenness to big donors."

Trump has rattled the old orthodoxies that prevailed in US politics for decades. If the right can conceive a radical programme in documents such as Project 2025, why can the left not be similarly ambitious? There is little appetite to return to the pre-Trump era, a broken system that led to his rise in the first place, but rather to reimagine wealth redistribution, stronger unions, democratic reform and a just foreign policy.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group born out of Sanders' 2016 run, said: "You're seeing a maturation of the progressive movement. You're seeing the infrastructure that's been built over a decade come into play. There's a resonance of the message in reaction to the failed populism of the right but you're also seeing increased sophistication in the organisation of the left."

The rise of groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has occurred in tandem with a crisis of confidence and identity within the centrist wing of the Democratic party. At a moment when Trump paints the landscape in big and bold primary colours, the moderates are widely seen as timid incrementalists who lack ideas or superstars to compete with El-Sayed, Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez.

Geevarghese commented: "Because some of their funding depends on corporate donors, moderates have to pull punches. They are not able to articulate the causes of people's problems. You've got progressives who are able to call out the corporate class and the corruption of our politics and how that affects people's standard of living."

***

Even as they recognise the ground shifting beneath their feet, progressives warn that centrists are not likely to surrender the power they enjoy courtesy of Wall Street and Silicon Valley without a fight.

Norman Solomon, director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said: "One might say that hell has no fury like corporate Democrats scorned. I'm thrilled by the results in Michigan but at the same time I'm a bit apprehensive about the blowback from the powerful forces that have been accustomed to literally running the national Democratic party for many decades, arguably since the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was so successful at the beginning of the 1990s."

The DLC was founded by Al From, who in 1989 handpicked Bill Clinton to steer the Democratic party toward the centre ground, creating the "Third Way" movement that was pivotal to his 1992 victory and later emulated by Tony Blair in Britain.

From reflected this week: "We've been focusing on beating Republicans and the democratic socialists have been focused on beating us. We've got to fight back. We've got to make it harder for them."

When Clinton first campaigned for president, 43% of Americans thought of themselves as moderate, compared to 36% conservative and 17% liberal. That picture has changed radically in the intervening years of polarisation.

"Our formula is the right formula," From insisted. "Obviously we're in a different world and you have to communicate it different and you'll need ideas that further the same underlying values, as we did, but they've got to be modern ideas, maybe different ideas because circumstances have changed. Our platform was for the 1990s, not for the 2030s, but the principles are the same.

"The democratic socialists want a different system. They don't want to further democratic values. You look at their platform: they want to get rid of the Senate, the presidency, the supreme court; they want ownership of business; they want to get rid of police; they don't want to fund the military."

"That isn't the historic Democratic party. It's not the party of Roosevelt that saved capitalism and saved democracy in the world in World War II. It's a different ideology, it's a different party. "

The true test of viability for El-Sayed – a Rhodes scholar, doctor and son of Egyptian immigrants – will come in November when he faces Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman, in a race that could determine the balance of power in the Senate. After an unusually rancorous campaign, El-Sayed was quick to urge "the things that unite us are so much bigger than the things that divide us," and Stevens was equally quick to back him.

Indeed, progressives and moderates across the country are likely to maintain an uneasy co-existence for the midterms as each plays to their demographical and geographical strengths in common cause against Republicans. Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, have been seeking to revive a cold war-style panic by branding democratic socialists as "radical Marxists" and "godless communists".

Donna Brazile, a political strategist and former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: "The question is, can two different wings of the same party function, unify and function as a governing majority if the Democrats win the majority? I contend that the answer is yes. We'll agree on very important matters like the economy, improving the lives of the American people, making things more affordable again and not focusing on vanity projects, so the extent that we're all running on the same message of affordability, the answer is yes."

But then comes 2028 and a time for choosing. The centrist group Third Way is planning a new $15m effort to discredit democratic socialism between now and the next presidential election, the New York Times reported. Some Democrats argue that progressives have won only a handful of races – albeit high-profile ones – among hundreds taking place across the country and the extent of the insurgency is exaggerated. Others believe the Michigan result means the leftwing lane just got wider.

Geevarghese commented: "All of the electoral energy and enthusiasm is on the left and, at the end of the day, for a candidate to be viable in the 2028 presidential, they're going to have to articulate a full-throated economic populism. That's what's needed to make it through the primary and ultimately that's what's going to be needed to be the antidote to Donald Trump."

Speculation is already swirling around who might carry the progressive banner into the next presidential primary. Mamdani, born outside the US, is not eligible to run, and said he does not want to. Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who campaigned for El-Sayed, is frequently mentioned but the most intense focus is on Ocasio-Cortez, who is 36.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: "If I were AOC's advisers, I would look her in the eye and say, 'Do you want to be president? If you want it to be president, the time is now. You will never have a better chance to own a lane that wants a leader.'

"One of the things we've seen across the world in the last decade is young female leaders captivating the left. Why not a 39-year-old AOC?"

Jewish Julian Epstein Betrays Michigan Democrats Because Victorious El-Sayed is Muslim

Jewish Democrat is an Islamophobe. He backs a MAGA candidate in Michigan because victorious El-Sayed is a Muslim.

Can't expect anything better from a Jewish Zionist than to betray his own party because he hates Muslims and supports genocidal Israel. American Zionists are facing a seismic challenge to their tight hold on the country after the American people have witnessed first hand the genocide and ethnic cleansing that Zionist Israel is perpetrating in Palestine.

Support for Israel by the American public, long brainwashed and prohibited from the slightest criticism of the Zionist colony in Palestine, has tanked over the past two years. The American people now have a more balanced view on the Palestine question and are demanding a change in the US blind support to the genocidal apartheid state of Israel. Which explains the victories that have been scored by all the pro-Palestine candidates in the primaries across the country.



Democratic attorney Julian Epstein - no relation to Trump's pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein - is now betraying his own party by supporting a MAGA Republican Senate candidate, Mike Rogers, and stabbing victorious Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed in the back, citing concerns about - what else? - ending the blind support that the US has given for decades to the genocidal criminal Zionist colony in Palestine.

Because the Democrats are taking a more balanced and fair position on the Palestine question, Julian Epstein says "The Democrats have gone off the deep end," because "they want to destroy our Constitution", which is how Zionist propaganda brainwashes the American public. Throwing their customary accusations that any Muslim is a terrorist and any critic of Israel is an antisemite, the Zionists who have held America on a leash for decades are in utter panic and despair at losing the privileged position of steering US foreign policy.

Such is the Zionist despair that Epstein and others are lauding and praising their real enemy, Trump's MAGA candidates. Zionist Americans with dual Israeli-US citizenship and well-paid by the Zionist lobby AIPAC will betray their own principles, their own Democrat voter base, and their own country in defense of the criminal state of Israel.  

On Tuesday, El-Sayed won the Democratic primary against Michigan Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens, who represents the status quo Democrat establishment that is just another version of the Republicans. These "middle-of-the-road" Democrats want to go back to business as usual with a Republican party that no longer does business as usual because Trump has hijacked the Republican party and has turned it into a money-grabbing oligarchy of billionaire criminals who don't give a hoot about the average American citizen. 

In his own words, Epstein repeated the same propaganda talking points of AIPAC:  

"El-Sayed parrots Sen. Bernie Sanders' delusion that attaches no importance to generating wealth — and only cares about redistributing it," Epstein wrote. "He expresses sympathy for Mideastern terrorist movements that masquerade as liberation efforts, giving cover to terror attacks on Jewish synagogues in the US ('hurt people hurt people') and going to absurd lengths to avoid offending supporters of Iran's slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He doesn't believe the planet's only Jewish state has a right to exist."

It is up to the American voter to understand that Zionist propaganda no longer has a monopoly over public opinion in the US. The time has come to turn a page on the past decades of blind support for a criminal colonial genocidal state whose foreign settlers arrive to Palestine ready to kill thousands of innocent indigenous women and children, demolish their ancestral villages, and make a mockery of democracy by claiming to want the lunacy of a "Democracy for Jews only".

America spends money and treasure in defense of an indefensible human rights colonial rapist, Israel. It has to end. 

DICK-Traitor Trump To Run for an Unconstitutional Third Term in 2028

The coward 5-times draft dodger during the Vietnam War and who mocked dead veterans as "suckers and losers" is now defiling the military uniform with AI-generated images as he prepares to cheat in the 2026 and 2028 elections, juts like he tried to cheat in 2021.

And his racist GOP sycophants and herd of MAGA peasants applaud him because they are desperate to keep America WHITE, just as it was during the 19th century, excepting of course the Black African slaves, the Chinese railroad builders, and the native American Indians, all of whom didn't count as "Americans".

Trump is a parasite. He attaches himself to famous Americans, or he adds his name to whatever important building or institution in the silly and idiotic belief that this makes him "great". The imbecile has it all upside down: You must earn greatness. You can't simply stand next to a great American to become great yourself. But the simple-minded moron just doesn't understand.

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‘Trump 2028’: President poses as decorated general and threatens to run again in bizarre series of AI posts
Josh Marcus
Fri, August 7, 2026 


‘Trump 2028’: President poses as decorated general and threatens to run again in bizarre series of AI posts

President Donald Trump went on a late-night posting spree on Truth Social on Thursday, sharing a Trump 2028 poster as well as images of himself inserted, apparently with the help of AI, alongside famous figures of American history.

One post featured Trump in military regalia alongside Generals George Patton and Douglas MacArthur, who served in World War II.

Others put the president alongside his famous White House predecessors.

In one image, Presidents Trump, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington all appeared to sign a map of the United States.

Another Truth Social post had Trump standing and laughing alongside President John F. Kennedy at Camp David.

Perhaps most strikingly, the president used his post barrage to again float running for a constitutionally barred third term.

The Republican has often mused aloud or joked about a third term, including donning a Trump 2028 hat at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, though he has also said he's aware he can't run.

In the Oval Office on Thursday, President Trump again blurred the lines.

"We'll have a big percentage of the chip business by the time I leave office, which could be a long time," Trump said. "Who knows? But it could also be fairly quick. They say two-and-a-half years. We're gonna find out."

In the same conversation with reporters, the president spoke about his thoughts on Vice President JD Vance's potential 2028 campaign, describing the present as "too early" to make an endorsement.

In private, the president has reportedly told Republican donors he prefers Vance in 2028.

The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.

The president's allies have also offered mixed statements about a Trump 2028 run.

"It's been a great run, but I think the president knows, and he and I've talked about the constraints of the Constitution," House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last year.

Podcaster and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has said there's a "plan" that would allow Trump to seek office again.

"He's going to get a third term. Trump is going to be president in '28 and people ought to just get accommodated with that," Bannon told The Economist in a video interview.

In October, the president admitted he can't run for a third term, calling it "sad."

Critics have accused the president of leaning into authoritarian tendencies through a variety of actions, including cracking down on the press, the use of masked immigration agents and the display of large banners of his face put over Washington government banners.

"Uncle Tom" Tim Scott Deserves the "Outstanding Trump Bootlicker" Award

Tim Scott Boasts About Trump's Unparalleled Ethics And We Can't Keep A Straight Face
Kelby Vera
Fri, August 7, 2026 

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) described President Donald Trump as a paragon of ethics while advocating for a cryptocurrency industry-backed bill he's rearing to get passed before Congress starts its summer recess.

Explaining why the Senate needs to go all in on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act during a Thursday morning appearance on Fox Business, Scott said skeptics should be swayed by the fact Trump agreed to abide by the same ethics standards written into the bill as other elected officials.

Celebrating the president's pledge as something momentous, the senator said Trump had "done something no other president in the history of our country said yes to, which is complying to the ethics strategy and standard for all elected officials. We've never had a president ever say yes to that."

Ethics standards in the Clarity Act ban officials from issuing, sponsoring and promoting digital assets, as well as requiring certain financial disclosures.

While supporters of the Clarity Act claim it will "establish clear rules of the road" for cryptocurrency, which currently exists with little to no regulation in the U.S., opponents are calling the bill a flimsy excuse for concrete laws that protect both consumers and the financial system.

Scott, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, didn't address how the ethics protections would impact Trump's crypto fortune.

The president has raked in $1.43 billion off his digital asset holdings since taking office in 2025, raising serious concerns about his close relationship with the industry, potential corruption and conflicts of interest.

Last October, Trump ignited a flurry of controversy after issuing a pardon for Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

How are Quiboloy, Duterte, Bolsonaro, Trump, etc Alike?.... Evangelical Criminal Pedophiles

Like many sex abusing, adulterating, pedophilic Evangelical preachers, church leaders, reverends, televangelists etc. who were caught with their pants down or with their hands down the pants of children, and, who make millions off the backs of their ignorant followers, there are politicians who are either themselves Evangelicals or are supported by Evangelicals (i.e. Zionist Christians).

Seditious US president Trump's deep friendship with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein with whom he himself admitted sharing "wonderful secrets". Jair Bolsonaro, the seditious former president who, although no direct accusations of him being a pedophile or sex abuser, faced intense controversy in October 2022 for remarks implying underage Venezuelan girls (aged 14–15) he visited were sex workers, a behavior suggestive of pedophilia.

And now, the self-declared Son of God no less, one Apollo Quiboloy, an Evangelical preacher and church leader in the Philipplines, has been caught fornicating with children. His ties to the US include associating with Evangelical Americans (also known as Christian Zionists) and having a significant following among the American herd of moronic Trump-adulating Evangelicals.

"Son of God" Apollo Quiboloy takes his oath as he attends a hearing at the Philippine Senate on Oct. 23, 2024, in Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File) (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

This influential adviser to former populist and criminal Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, is facing trial on charges including child sex trafficking and fraud.

One wonders why the US government wants Quiboloy extradited to the US. Did Quiboloy commit his crimes on US soil or against Americans? Or is the US justice system so extraterritorial that it turns a bind eye on its own pedophile-friendly president Trump but seeks to prosecute foreigners with no ties whatsoever with the US? Having imbecile followers among the MAGA herd in the US does not necessarily imply a crime against Americans or the US.

Criminal suspects like Quiboloy in the Philippines must finish their trials and serve their sentences if convicted prior to any extradition. 

Quiboloy, 76, leads the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, which was founded in 1985 in southern Davao city and claims to have a wide following in the Philippines and abroad, including in the U.S.

In his heyday, Quiboloy was one of the most influential religious leaders in the Philippines and regarded as a political kingmaker. He served as spiritual adviser to the equally controversial Duterte, who took office in June 2016.

Duterte was arrested in Manila last year under a warrant from the International Criminal Court and has since been detained in the Netherlands, where he will face trial for alleged crimes against humanity. The charges stem from the killings of large numbers of mostly poor drug suspects under his anti-drugs crackdowns, which alarmed Western governments and rights groups.

Quiboloy claims to be "the appointed son of God" and has made outrageous claims that sparked questions about his character but endeared him to his followers. He once claimed to have stopped a major earthquake from hitting the southern Philippines.

In 2024, Quiboloy went into hiding after a Philippine court ordered his arrest along with several others for alleged child and sexual abuse and human trafficking, police said. The Philippine Senate separately ordered Quiboloy's arrest at the time for refusing to appear in public hearings about his alleged crimes.

Quiboloy and four others facing accusations surrendered in September 2024 after about 2,000 police raided a 30-hectare (75-acre) compound of his religious group, which included a cathedral, stadium, hangar and taxiway leading to Davao's international airport. He has been jailed since then.

U.S. federal prosecutors in 2021 separately announced an indictment of Quiboloy for allegedly having sex with women and underage girls who faced threats of abuse and "eternal damnation" unless they catered to the self-proclaimed "son of God."

Quiboloy was among nine people named in a superseding indictment returned by a U.S. federal grand jury and unsealed in November 2021. It contained a raft of charges including conspiracy, sex trafficking of children, sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, marriage fraud, money laundering, cash smuggling and visa fraud, none of which took place in the US or against Americans.

I thought that MAGA and Trump do not want to be the world's policeman. So what gives? Should the US involve itself in every crime far and wide around the globe? What gives it any right to do so?

Rampant anti-Catholic Attacks in Brooklyn, Long Island and Across the Nation

Antisemitism, move over. Islamophobia too. The trend in the racist phony democracy of the US is anti-Catholicism now.

Whether it is MAGA evangelical protestants (who hate Catholics and the Pope on account of his feud with the demented moron Trump), or Zionist Jews who also do not like the Catholic Church's position on the Zionist rape of Palestine, or, the least likely culprits the Muslims, there has been a spate of attacks against Catholic churches and institutions across the US.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) is investigating the destruction of a Virgin Mary statue outside St. Rita Roman Catholic Church in Long Island City as a possible hate crime after a man climbed over a fence and repeatedly smashed it down using a hammer.

In surveillance video released by the Diocese of Brooklyn, the masked man violently hits the statue outside the church in what Catholic officials say is the latest in a string of attacks targeting the parish.

In a press release, church officials said it is the fourth reported vandalism incident targeting the parish since 2024, and the New York City Police Department is investigating the latest vandalism as a possible hate crime.

According to the Diocese of Brooklyn, the incident happened at around 1:42 a.m. Aug. 1.

The video shows the man, who is wearing a dark T-shirt and shorts, climb over the fence into a courtyard where a statue of the Blessed Mother stood.

The suspect removes a hammer from his pocket and repeatedly strikes the statue before knocking it off its pedestal. He then climbs back over the fence and walks away.

The Diocese said in a statement the attack was the fourth vandalism incident at St. Rita Roman Catholic Church since 2024.

Past acts of vandalism at the parish include the destruction of a 60-year-old stained-glass window and graffiti that defaced a statue of St. Francis of Assisi and the sidewalk.

There was also damage done to a statue of St. Jude inside the church.

The Diocese of Brooklyn told Fox News Digital no arrests had been made.

"This week, the NYPD also issued a crime stats update and hate crimes are up by 9.4% over the same 7-month period (Jan-July) of last year," John Quaglione, deputy press secretary for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn said.

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A woman was arrested after allegedly decapitating a statue of Jesus outside a Long Island Catholic church, police said.

Deyonna Subert, 41, who police described as "undomiciled," was charged with second-degree criminal mischief in connection with damage to a Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at St. Mary’s Church in East Islip, according to Suffolk County Police.

According to AI, the last name Subert is of German-Jewish origin.

Police said the statue at the church, located at 118 East Main St., was damaged on May 15 at approximately 11:15 p.m.

"After an investigation by Hate Crimes Unit detectives, Deyonna Subert was arrested outside of 221 West Main Street in Bay Shore at 6:39 a.m.," Suffolk County Police said in a press release Wednesday.

The severed head of a Sacred Heart of Jesus statue is shown outside St. Mary’s Church in East Islip, N.Y., after the statue was vandalized. (News 12 Long Island)

Churchgoers discovered the statue’s head missing Sunday morning as parishioners gathered for services and First Communion celebrations, according to News12 Long Island video from the scene.

"Across the way into the auditorium, we had first communions and this is where the kids come and they take their picture," St. Mary’s pastor Father Anthony Iaconis told News12.

Father Anthony Iaconis holds the severed head of a Sacred Heart of Jesus statue outside St. Mary’s Church in East Islip, N.Y., after the statue was vandalized. (News 12 Long Island)

Iaconis said he later found the statue’s head in nearby bushes.

"I think everyone would be upset by it," longtime parishioner Regina Vavricka told the outlet.

"Whether you belong to this parish or not, or whether you’re Catholic or Jewish, it doesn’t really matter."

The church’s pastor said donations had already begun coming in to help repair the statue, which was expected to be fixed within days.

"Yeah, it’s a terrible thing," Iaconis said. "I just ask people to pray for the person who did this. It’s not right, but we can still pray for them."

Detectives from the department’s Hate Crimes Unit investigated the incident.

"A criminal charge is an accusation," Suffolk County Police said in the release. "A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty."
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A faculty member is opening up after his California Catholic school was ransacked over the weekend, calling the break-in "more than material" for the religious community.

The Justice Department has announced an investigation into the vandalism at Holy Innocents Catholic School in Long Beach, California. Tony Tripp, the school’s director of advancement, described the damage as extensive and said the vandals ransacked nearly every room.

"They pretty much went through the whole place — didn’t matter where it was throughout there — and ransacked whatever they could," Tripp said Thursday.

Vandalized furniture and religious objects, including a statue of the Virgin Mary, inside Holy Innocents Catholic School in Long Beach, Calif. (KTTV)

Video shows classrooms torn apart, broken furniture and a large Virgin Mary statue destroyed. The parish’s tabernacle, a sacred object to Catholics, was also damaged.

The damage from the break-in is estimated at $100,000. But Tripp said the value of many of the objects goes beyond material loss and that the damage was sacrilegious.

"This is a center of our faith, especially the tabernacle; that's the biggest thing for us," Tripp said, adding that the vandals were trying to break the religious object open.

Tripp said the school is calling on those responsible to turn themselves in. He speculated that multiple people may be involved and that the motive could be robbery or anti-religious.

Church members are calling on those responsible for the vandalism to turn themselves in and make reparations. (KTTV)

"Not sure what the motivation was, but I do know that we want them to obviously make reparation and change what they've done," said Tripp.

He noted that, despite the pain over the damage, the Catholic community has shown the school support, adding, "We’ve never expected anything like this."

"It's given us tremendous hope, you know, that people still have faith and believe in God and are willing to stand up for their faith."

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon posted about the situation on X, writing that the agency will be opening up an investigation into the "awful crime."
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According to a report from the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops, there have been at least 366 attacks on Catholic Churches in the United States across 43 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020. This is by far higher than attacks against Muslim or Jewish places of worship.

These attacks include "arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism," according to the USCCB. 

Valentine, the director of the Catholic Accountability Project at CatholicVote, which is also tracking attacks on Catholic churches, said that they have documented 484 attacks since May 2020.

[updated] Progressives are Democrat Party's Future. Not the Stale Establishment Losers of 2024

Why is it OK for the Right-Wing Fascists and Racists, a.k.a. MAGA, to take control of the Republican Party whose establishment toed the line behind a criminal felon like Trump, and it is not OK for the Progressives to take over the Democrat Party?

DUMP THE ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS WHO ARE REPUBLICANS IN DISGUISE

The challenge for the Democrats is to ensure that the Progressives remain focused on the issues that matter most to individual Americans. This is not an ideological battle. This is not capitalism versus socialism. This is about making this country work for its everyday Americans, hard working ordinary Americans who deserve gratitude for generating the wealth of this country that a few billionaires criminals like Trump have monopolized.

This election is about moving forward into the 21st century, embracing the inevitable change that is going on as we speak, and not fall into nostalgia for long gone defunct periods (1950s or even 19th century) that no one, not even the senile demented moron Trump, can resurrect.

Vote for Trump's minions this november is you want racism enshrined in the laws. 

Vote for MAGA this november if you think women should not work, should stay at home and make babies, and should be thrown out of the army. 

Vote for Trump's asskissers if you believe in the trickle-down economy whereby by making a few individuals super-rich you'd be helping millions of struggling Americans. Just look around you: The few billionaires are getting richer and richer while the vast majority of us are struggling to pay for gas and groceries. 

Don't miss the appended piece below about the imbecile Texan Ted Cruz who is trying to fool and scare Texans with typical right-wing fascist lies about what the Democrats are about, when in fact he and his MAGA-republican clones are the bigoted Christians, the real criminals, the real Jew-hating antisemites, and the highway robbers of America.

Check Ted Cruz's own history of adultery and decide for yourself if he represents a "good Christian White man". Just like the other Texan adulterer Ken Paxton.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cruz-denies-tabloids-adultery-allegations-blames-garbage-on-trump/2016/03/25/38c997d0-f2b1-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html

https://rollcall.com/2016/04/01/five-reasons-why-the-ted-cruz-sex-scandal-story-wont-go-away/

https://divorce.law/guides/news/ken-paxton-divorce-records-unsealed-adultery-allegations/
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Michael Moore Tells CNN He’s Begging for Progressives to Overthrow Democratic Establishment ‘Hacks’
Sean James
Wed, August 5, 2026 



Michael Moore is calling for progressive candidates to overthrow the Democratic Party establishment, citing a clash between the status quo and the changes needed for the party to succeed.

Michael Moore told CNN he is so disgusted by the same old flavor of Democratic politicians he is willing to get on his knees and beg — if his body would allow him to — for progressive candidates to come in and topple the party establishment.

The director was in a near frenzy on Tuesday night when he joined anchor Laura Coates to discuss the state of the Democratic Party and the primary in his home state of Michigan. Coates said there is an ongoing "battle" inside the party over what type of candidates will lead it moving forward, which she said is represented by the Senate primary race between Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and frontrunner Abdul El-Sayed (D).

"There is a clash between what people think is possible and what they think requires the continuation of some aspect of the status quo," Coates said, before asking, "Does there require a change in the establishment and in the way things are done to effectuate the changes you want to see?"

"If I could get on my knees and beg it would be for exactly what you said, because we are not going to win the other way," Moore said. "We lost that way in '24. It's not going to happen if we allow this to happen. We are in charge of this and we need to get busy right now."

He then said El-Sayed's anti-Israel views are a key selling point for him and many other Dem voters. Moore said the party needs to be more like El-Sayed, and less like Stevens.

"It's not about electability — let me tell ya, I've known Dr. El-Sayed for many years, I worked on his campaign for governor in 2018. Boy, we would be so lucky if he were our senator, representing us, and standing up for the people who are dying, dying every day over there," Moore said.

Moore added, "I will not support hacks — hacks in the Democratic Party who have led us to this Waterloo."

A moment earlier, the man behind Fahrenheit 9/11 railed against Kamala Harris and ex-President Joe Biden, accusing them of betraying young voters and liberals in 2024 in order to support Israel and what he framed as the country's murder spree in Gaza.

"All the young people in the '24 election are like 'I Don't want to die. I'm not gonna die. And we've got a Democratic president in that year who could not think of anything but to give an apartheid regime all the money they asked for to kill all the children they wanted to kill," Moore ranted. "And what did we do as Americans? 'Sure, take the money. Good for you, Joe.'"

He lamented the Dems being too pro-Israel lost the youth vote in 2024, as well the "Muslim and the Arab vote." Moore said the Dems can't make the same mistake again in 2028, or else there will be a "third Trump term."

El-Sayed had a 49.7% to 46.3% edge on Stevens with about 71% of votes counted by 12:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday morning.

Moore finished his interview by saying no matter what happens in his state's Democratic primary, the party establishment is going to be overthrown sooner than later.

"This will not stand. This will not continue," he said. "The youth of America are going to rise up."

The post Michael Moore Tells CNN He's Begging for Progressives to Overthrow Democratic Establishment 'Hacks' first appeared on Mediaite.

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Ted Cruz Revives Classic 'Crazy' GOP Talking Point In Unhinged Fox News Rant
Anthony Orrico
Wed, August 5, 2026


Ted Cruz Revives Classic 'Crazy' GOP Talking Point In Unhinged Fox News Rant


Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) channeled his inner Joseph McCarthy during a Fox News appearance on Tuesday, when he claimed many Democratic candidates want to cancel Christmas and Thanksgiving.

"They're crazy enough, yes, they want to cancel Thanksgiving, they want to cancel Christmas. Look, these communists hate America. They hate capitalism. (Abdul) El-Sayed is also an Islamist, as is (Zohran) Mamdani," Cruz told host Jesse Watters. "You see the green-red convergence, where the communists and the Islamists, they want sharia law, they hate Jews, they hate Christians, they hate capitalism, they hate America."

Despite the senator's comments, Mamdani and El-Sayed have made no suggestion of canceling any holidays and are not communists. El-Sayed, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, and Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, are both progressives.

Cruz was likely referring to past comments made by Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, who had suggested canceling Thanksgiving due to the holiday's ties to European colonialism and the genocide of Native Americans. Hong, for her part, has addressed these comments and seemingly tried to dismiss them.

"Thanksgiving is also a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve," Hong told CNN's Kaitlan Collins on Monday.

Faced with a possible blue wave in the midterm elections, Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have been painting people on the left as communists.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an authoritarianism expert and professor of history at New York University, explained in a series of social media posts how this move was straight out of the fascist playbook.

"...New party line is to associate Communists with every crime, every offense. Create a sense of Communist threat to justify a rightwing crackdown. Old playbook used with coups and Fascist takeovers," Ben-Ghiat said in one post.

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

The Great American Moron, Donald Trump, on Wednesday raged at Michael Moore in an insult-filled social media rant attacking the filmmaker for his support of progressive candidates.

Moore earlier this week said on CNN that progressive Democrats need to take control of the party from establishment figures, saying "it's time we started winning."

Trump fired back on Truth Social: "No Michael, just get used to more losing! You've been a Loser all your life, and nothing's going to change."

The president also attacked Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democratic candidate for Senate in Moore's home state of Michigan.

"Abdul, your new Communist Comrade, will not be able to save you. He knows you are a failed LOWLIFE, and he wants to pick up where you have left," Trump wrote.

Neither Moore nor Abdul are "communists," but Trump has been using the word ― and getting others in his party to use it ― to describe most Democratic figures. The president has been using it more frequently as polls show Democrats are well-positioned to win the House in this autumn's midterm elections, and may even have a shot at taking control over the Senate.

With his approval rating continuing to sink amid an unpopular war in Iran and an affordability crisis, the president tried to insist that everything is just fine.

As of early August 2026, Donald Trump's favorable ratings have reached record lows for his second term: A Quinnipiac University poll released in late July recorded his lowest rating at 32%, while CNN and AP-NORC found approval at 34% and 33% respectively.

"Best Economic Numbers, EVER, Best Trade Numbers, Best Export Numbers, Biggest Investment in our Country, and on, and on," he wrote, then turned again to Moore: "This is the Golden Age of America, and a small group of misfits, like you, Abdul, and others, won't be able to destroy it, and change the course of History in so doing."

Trump signed off with "See you on the Political Battlefield."

The president's full message is below:

Example of MAGA-Republican "Family Values": Max Miller Promotes Daughter's Genitals

Just like Trump and Hegseth, republican-GOP-MAGA criminals claim to uphold the so-called "Judeo-Christian Family Values", but then turn out to be bigots who perpetrate all sorts of crimes (sexual and otherwise) against families and decency, then blame decent hard-working immigrants for their own crimes.

When will the American people learn?

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Abuse Accusations Against Republican Congressman Somehow Get Worse
Malcolm Ferguson
Tue, August 4, 2026 

Republican Representative (Ohio) Max Miller has been accused of sharing pictures of his daughter’s genitals, adding to the disturbing allegations of abuse against him.

Republican Representative Max Miller—accused of holding a gun to his wife's head, scalding her with boiling water, and breaking his two-year-old daughter's collarbone—has now been accused of sharing pictures of that same daughter's genitals. This would be considered Child Sex Abuse Material, adding yet another disturbing allegation to Miller's plate.

It seems that Miller inadvertently shared the picture on Sunday while using Dropbox to upload police reports, recorded conversations, medical records, and a 20-minute indignant video denying his ex-wife Emily Moreno's abuse allegations.

"The first time Miller shared the folder, it contained private images of Miller and Ms. Moreno's daughter and left her name unredacted. At least one of those images could be considered Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) because the daughter's genitals appear to be visible," Moreno's lawyers wrote in a letter to Miller's legal team on Monday.

"We write to demand an explanation about how this occurred," the letter continued. "Whose idea was it to share this intimate image of the child? Why did your firm share it? Did you or your firm vet the images before sharing them? Did anyone? Who? Who removed the images from the second folder and why? Was it because someone realized that it was ill-advised (and in the case of the potential CSAM image, illegal) to share these images with the world?"

This news is the latest domino to fall for Miller. On Sunday, Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, Miller's ex-father-in-law, finally came out against Miller, saying he needed "serious psychological help," and calling on him to step down from Congress and abandon his current reelection campaign.

"He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter," Moreno wrote on X. "If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them."

Then on Monday, Miller received a restraining order from his ex-girlfriend, former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. And that same day, President Trump—who was initially supportive of Miller—reportedly called him directly to tell him that "things aren't looking good" for his campaign.

Miller continues to deny virtually every accusation his ex-wife has made, even as the Dropbox release that allegedly included his daughter's genitals also shows him describing throwing boiling water on Emily as a "playful incident" and her alleging that she found needles next to his bed, which he did not deny.

Miller, who worked for the presidential campaigns of both Marco Rubio and Trump in 2016, remains in office and continues to run for reelection, as the vast majority of his Republican colleagues have displayed extreme cowardice by either ignoring the situation entirely or supporting him. Miller has made it abundantly clear that he has no plans to step down. As of now, he will face off against Democrat Brian Poindexter in the general election for his House seat. The GOP has until Wednesday to replace him on the ballot.

Donald Trump did reach out Max Miller to warn him that his candidacy is in jeopardy. In a phone call, Trump told Miller that "things aren't looking good" for the November midterms.

Yet, the president defended Miller while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office earlier Monday. "It's a very sad thing. I know Max. He's a good person. I mean, I've always thought he was a very good person, and I'm gonna let the families figure that out," Trump told the press.

The president alluded to knowing the family very well. Before running for office, Miller was a Trump White House aide. Miller married Emily Moreno, his now ex-wife, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in 2022, and received the president's official endorsement for Congress that same year.

Moreno has accused Miller of assaulting her, throwing a pot of boiling water on her, holding a gun to her head, and breaking their two-year-old daughter's collarbone. Last week, Moreno filed for a new restraining order against her ex-husband, alleging that he'd physically grabbed one of her attorneys and used a profane slur.

In a statement Sunday, Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, Emily's father, said that Miller should "not serve in the House of Representatives ... As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter," Moreno wrote on X.

Miller was dealt another blow Monday night when his ex-girlfriend, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, filed a temporary restraining order against him.

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MEANWHILE, Pete Hegseth's wife is managing the Pentagon and the Iran War alongside her husband. Talk of neoptism and cronyism. Hegseth himself is a drunkard alcoholic, a womanizing adulterer, twice divorced because of his dissolute lifestyle, who claims to have been "personally" saved by Jesus.

Jennifer Hegseth’s Pentagon portfolio expands in new and unusual ways
Steve Benen
Tue, August 4, 2026


Jennifer Rauchet, the wife of Pete Hegseth, sits behind him during his Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 14, 2025.

A few months ago, when I put together a tally of the number of Fox News veterans who have joined Donald Trump's team during the president's second term, I counted 25 people — enough to field a full football team, offense and defense, with a few additional folks on the bench. But at the time, I only included Fox employees who had appeared on air.

If we include Fox News veterans who worked as producers at the network, the list grows to include folks like Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's third wife, whose portfolio at the Pentagon appears to be growing. The Hill reported:

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday to form a new commission focused on improving the lives of military spouses and families and addressing the challenges they encounter.

The new commission, called the President's Military Spouse Commission, will be chaired by Jennifer Rauchet, the wife of the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

There's certainly nothing wrong with keeping a president informed about the interests and needs of military families, and if all goes well, the commission may very well serve a worthwhile purpose.

But what's surprising is the scope of Jennifer Hegseth's role within the administration generally and the Defense Department specifically.

Just two months into Pete Hegseth's tenure, for example, The Wall Street Journal reported that the defense secretary brought his wife "to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed." The article added that a secretary "can invite anyone to meetings with visiting counterparts, but attendee lists are usually carefully limited to those who need to be there and attendees are typically expected to possess security clearances given the delicate nature of the discussions."

A month later, we learned that Pete Hegseth used his personal phone to send highly specific details about an imminent U.S. military strike to a 13-person Signal group chat, which also included his wife.

A week later, The Washington Post reported:

Jennifer Hegseth on multiple occasions has informed her husband's staff of media interviews he planned to do, underscoring a belief among some officials that she wields outsize influence over certain Pentagon operations. Typically, such responsibilities fall to dedicated media-engagement professionals employed by the Defense Department, not the secretary's wife.

She met with potential political appointees as the Trump administration scrutinized people for positions at the Pentagon, two people familiar with the issue said. The role effectively had her conducting job interviews, they said.

What's more, she also serves as a senior adviser to the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-oriented think tank created five years ago.

If there's ever been a defense secretary's spouse with a portfolio like this one, I'm not aware of it.

[Updated] Even his Own MAGA Appointees Can't Ignore Trump's Failures and Criminal Endeavors

It's never his fault.

The man-child running the United States hired one of his corrupt mafiosi friends to line the bottom of the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial with a blue color lining, without going through the legal bidding process.

His mafioso friend did the job with cheap substandard material which began cracking and peeling within barely a week of its installation. The substandard material also turned out to be food for an invasive type of algae, and the Reflecting Pool became like more like a disgusting murky pond.

The dumbass criminal in the White Outhouse wouldn't accept responsibility for hiring a sleazy shady business. So he had his private police arrest a couple of tourists who happen to be around the pool and witnessed the cracks, and demanded that the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, his own MAGA lowlife Jeanine Pirro, prosecute those tourists for "vandalism".

Obviously, however lowlife and sleazy is the Jeanine Pirro might be, she could not successfully blame the tourists for what Trump and his jackass friend did to the pool. She had no evidence whatsoever.

So she announces she is dropping the case against the tourists. Imagine, Pirro is a very devout MAGA imbecile who kisses the ground on which Trump walks. And now her Mafia MAGA boss is angry at her for dropping the case.

It really doesn't get any worse than this.

This is how this criminal felon is allowed to run the country, make money over the backs of the American people by cheating, wage wars and kill thousands of people.  

By the way, Pirro is of Lebanese descent, which explains in part her atavistic corruption and her tendency to follow dictators and strongmen.
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Trump doesn’t fire Pirro at White House meeting hours after saying she ‘choked’ over Reflecting Pool case
Alayna Treene, Kaitlan Collins, Kristen Holmes, CNN
Tue, August 4, 2026


US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on April 27. - Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg/Getty Images/File

President Donald Trump, who has said US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro "choked" over the Reflecting Pool vandalism case, did not fire his longtime ally during an afternoon White House meeting, nor did she offer her resignation, multiple sources told CNN.

Trump had been considering removing her after the Justice Department concluded that the problems with the pool stemmed from a flawed renovation rather than vandalism, two people familiar with his thinking told CNN earlier Monday. The president spent the weekend fuming about that decision, one of the sources said, noting he has been "furious" with Pirro — frustration he later voiced publicly in the Oval Office.

"I was disappointed in Jeanine Pirro. Really disappointed in Jeanine Pirro," he told reporters at unrelated event. "She folded like an umbrella."

Later that afternoon, Trump met at the White House with both Pirro and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a person familiar with the meeting told CNN. Others were also present at the meeting.

The Reflecting Pool case has put the two Trump appointees at odds in recent days. In a court filing last week, Pirro's office directly blamed other federal agencies, including the Interior Department, for not being forthcoming with information about the bungled renovation. Burgum, meanwhile, has stood by Trump's allegations of vandalism.

The Justice Department acknowledged in its Friday court filing that the president's $14 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool was "hasty and botched" and said it was dropping the criminal case against former Olympian David Hearn, who was accused of vandalizing the landmark.

Part of Trump's anger over the filing was that it "blindsided" him, a senior administration official said. "The president did not know beforehand that she was going to do that," they said.

CNN reached out to Pirro's office and the Justice Department for comment about Trump considering removing her. The White House directed CNN to the president's prior comments on the filing and did not comment on the substance of that reporting.

However, Trump made his displeasure with Pirro, a former Fox News host, known on Monday.

"Frankly, I think she choked, because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump and Pirro also spoke by phone on Saturday about the court filing. Their conversation "wasn't pretty," said one of the sources, who was read out on the call.

Pirro told Trump it was the career officials in her office that were responsible for the filing, another source said. A longtime prosecutor who oversees prosecutions in DC Superior Court signed the court filing asking to dismiss the case on Friday.

In addition to the Saturday call, Pirro has spoken with Trump multiple times about the situation.

Trump on Saturday publicly criticized the move, posting to Truth Social: "I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don't know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM."

Pirro argued in her filing that the Department of Interior "provided less than fulsome information at the outset of this case."

"Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment," it read.

Despite those accusations, the president has not been angry with Burgum, the sources said, and he continues to believe that vandals are responsible for the damage to the Reflecting Pool. Burgum dismissed Pirro's argument in a social media post on Saturday, saying, "The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool."

However, internal communications CNN received through FOIA requests between the National Park Service — which oversaw the project under the Department of Interior — and DC Water from March through last month make no mention of any vandalism as the department was planning to drain the pool.

Trump had said the pool would need to be drained to make repairs caused by the alleged vandalism — yet an email from NPS acknowledged as early as July 1 that the pool would need to be drained due to algae. The agency also weighed whether to dye the pool water; in the past, the water has been dyed black to help reflect better.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have dropped cases against three more individuals previously charged with destruction of property at the Reflecting Pool, according to DC court filings. The three faced fines up to $1,000 and a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

Hearn, who previously pleaded not guilty to the felony charge in DC's Superior Court, has legal options that could unearth more embarrassing details on how his case was handled. The judge hasn't officially dismissed Hearn's charges as of Monday afternoon, and his lawyers are expected to file a response to Pirro's request to dismiss the case this week.

"Nothing is off the table," said Michael R. Bromwich, an attorney representing Hearn.

Among his options: referring the prosecutors involved to a bar disciplinary authority; asking inspectors general to look at the conduct of the Justice Department and Interior Department; filing lawsuits; seeking more of the grand jury record documenting the prosecutors' presentation of the indictment; and asking the judge to dismiss the case so it cannot be brought again. Pirro's office has so far sought only to dismiss Hearn's charge without prejudice, meaning prosecutors wouldn't be barred from attempting to revive the case later.

This headline and story have been updated with additional reporting.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz, Sunlen Serfaty, Casey Tolan, Kevin Liptak and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.

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For more, see: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-disappointed-jeanine-pirro-dropping-reflecting-pool-vandalism-case/

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A British-American woman arrested and accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool this summer, only for the charges to be dropped, has said she felt "publicly humiliated" by her ordeal.

The Department of Justice abandoned its misdemeanor charges against Dr Sophie Dennison-Gibby, Justin Carreno and Cameron Thiers last week, as well as a felony charge against Olympic canoeist David Hearn.

The DOJ conceded in court filings that poor workmanship, not sabotage, was to blame for the loose scraps of liner seen bobbing in the water.

Speaking publicly for the first time to The Washington Post, Dennison-Gibby, a veterinarian originally from Portsmouth, England but a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2014, recounted the circumstances of her arrest on June 20.

She said she had been standing beside the famous landmark in Washington, D.C., when she noticed what she assumed was a piece of trash floating in the water and bent down to pick it out, explaining that she is fanatical about litter-picking. It turned out to be a remnant of the pool's peeling liner that had come free.

Dennison-Gibby said she was then approached by a U.S. marshal, who told her: "Well, I wish you hadn't done that. Now I'm going to arrest you."

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the subject of a $14.7 million makeover this summer, under orders from President Donald Trump, that has been hit by repeated setbacks (Reuters)

The officer handcuffed her arms behind her back and led her away, as other members of law enforcement surrounded them.

"That's when things got really scary," she told The Post, explaining that she had not known where she was being taken or for how long she might be detained.

The answer turned out to be a Park Police facility in Southwest Washington, where she was processed and fingerprinted before being released later that day.

Hearn has offered a similar account of his own arrest, telling the Post he had been passing by the pool on a bicycle when he saw an "already peeling piece" of what turned out to be the liner and reached into the water to retrieve it so that he could examine it.

The decision by Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to dismiss the indictments Friday was met with fury by President Donald Trump, who lambasted her in the Oval Office Monday by saying she had "choked" and "folded like an umbrella."

He has so far refrained from firing Pirro but has reportedly held several tense private meetings with her and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in recent days.

Asked about Trump's insistence that politically-motivated vandals are to blame for the setbacks to his makeover of the pool – which cost $14.7 million but saw it turn green with algae as soon as it was refilled – Dennison-Gibby said she had felt nauseous when she heard his comments.

"To be called out by the most powerful person in the world, the president of the United States, and called a sick, violent vandal when all I had done was pick up a piece of trash was awful," she told The Post.

"The whole experience has just been so heartbreaking. I chose this country. I've been naturalized here for 12 years. Nothing about this feels good."

Although she admitted she felt humiliated by her arrest, Dennison-Gibby said she was more concerned about the impact the episode could have on her 10-year-old daughter.

The pool has seen enhanced security brought in since Trump insisted that politically-motivated vandals were responsible for the problems that have beset it (AFP/Getty)

Relieved to see the charges against her dropped – which could have seen her fined $1,000 and sentenced to 180 days in jail, had she been convicted – Dennison-Gibby told the newspaper she remains unnerved by the experience.

Earlier this week, her attorney Jamison Koehler told NPR his client was also found to have trash in her possession when she was arrested, as well as the piece of liner.

"Of course, the government doesn't mention the fact that in addition to finding the pieces of the Reflecting Pool in her purse, they also found trash," he said. "Because the trash didn't fit with their narrative."

Koehler claimed that prosecutors "had no interest" in receiving witness statements or video when he attempted to pass them over.

"She's been fingerprinted, she's been photographed," he said. "She has a mug shot. She's in the FBI database… She's horrified and petrified."

Enraged Zionists Viciously Attack Arab Bus Driver in Jerusalem.

Ask the Zionists who reject an independent Palestinian State: What plans do you have for the 5 million Palestinians who live under your occupation?

Answer: Silence.

Why? Because the Zionists can't say publicly that they want to "eliminate" the Palestinian population by all the tools of ethnic cleansing, the same tools they used to create Israel in the 1940s: Terror, demolish homes and villages, killing and culling, downgrade living standards....

How else can you have a "Democracy for Jews only"?
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'When I came to, I tasted blood': Jerusalem bus driver attacked by teenagers, loses four teeth
Hodaya Ran AND EFRAT FORSHER AND Miriam Sela-Eitam
Updated Sun, August 2, 2026


Passengers walk in and out from a public bus at the entrance to Jerusalem, on August 1, 2022; illustrative. (photo credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)

An Arab Superbus driver in Jerusalem was beaten unconscious by a group of [Jewish] teenager [terrorists] while stopped at a red light, resulting in serious injuries.

Police opened an investigation into a Saturday incident where an Arab Superbus driver was beaten unconscious by a group of [Jewish] teenagers while stopping for a red light at the Ramot intersection in Jerusalem.

While the bus was stopped, several young people began banging on the sides of the bus. When the driver opened the window to see what was going on, he was struck repeatedly, causing him to lose consciousness, lose four teeth, and suffer facial injuries.

The driver remained unconscious for several minutes, and [when] he came to he heard the [Jewish] teenagers continuing to threaten and curse him.

He managed to drive away from the intersection and contacted the police before being evacuated to the hospital to receive medical treatment.

"I had only just started my shift," said M., the driver who was attacked. "I heard loud banging on the side of the vehicle. I had only just opened the window when I was hit with tremendous force.

M., the bus driver who was attacked by a group of teenagers, August 2, 2026. (credit: Koah LaOvdim, VIA WALLA)

"I may have been unconscious for about two minutes. When I came to, I could taste blood in my mouth. All around me there were curses, shouting, and faces filled with hatred. Why? I do not know. I had simply started my shift."

"I panicked and drove through the intersection, but I apparently was still not fully conscious, and I felt that I was losing control. Luckily, I managed to park the bus," he said. "I do not want to think about what could have happened had there been passengers on board."

Racist violence [by Jews] against Arabs must end, MK warns

MK Jafar Farah (Hadash), who also serves as director of the Mossawa Center for Arab Citizens' Rights, slammed the attack as being "part of a dangerous reality in which incitement, racism and violence flourish and are legitimized and sometimes even encouraged from on high."

"The criminals who attacked the driver felt they had a tailwind and believed that even if they were caught, there would be someone who would take care of them," Farah said. "A direct result of a coalition and government that incites hatred, instead of fighting it."

"The way to stop racist violence must go through the police who understand that their job is to maintain public safety, not to please a criminal minister, through a justice system that sees Arab lives as equal and, first and foremost, by replacing the racist and evil government, whose damage is seeping everywhere."

Farah called on the "Jewish public to join the important struggle against racist violence."

Crossing a red line against public transportation workers

Itay Cohen, head of the transportation division at Koach LaOvdim, an Israeli labor union organization, condemned the incident.

"Another line has been crossed in the violence against public transportation workers, and only the driver's quick thinking prevented a disaster," Cohen said. "What would have happened if, following this attempted lynching, he had struck a private vehicle?"

"We welcome the work of Jerusalem's mobile security unit, but it is unacceptable for only three mobile security guards to be responsible for addressing violence on buses."

"We call on the company's management to cooperate with us and immediately provide police with the footage of the attack. We are engaged in a labor dispute over this issue, and we will not compromise on the safety of drivers and inspectors."

Superbus also condemned the attack in its own statement on Sunday.

"Superbus views last night's attack in Jerusalem with the utmost seriousness and strongly condemns all acts of violence against public transportation workers," it said. "The company is fully cooperating with Israel Police and law enforcement authorities in order to apprehend the attackers and bring them to justice as quickly as possible.

"Company representatives have been supporting the driver with care and on an ongoing basis since the attack, and will continue to support him and his family until he makes a full recovery. Superbus will continue to do everything in its power to ensure the safety and well-being of its drivers and passengers."