Florida Federal Judge Lambasts Mediocrity of Trump's NYT Suit

Judge tosses out Trump’s $15B lawsuit against the New York Times as he rips his lawyers
Andrew Feinberg
Fri, September 19, 2025


Judge tosses out Trump’s $15B lawsuit against the New York Times as he rips his lawyers

A federal judge in Florida has thrown out President Donald Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times in a scathing order slamming the litigation as “decidedly improper and impermissible” under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and ordered his attorneys to obey a page limit if they want to re-file the case.

U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday, who was named to the federal bench by former President George H.W. Bush, struck the president’s legal complaint from the court’s docket in an order lambasting both Trump and his legal team for having brought it in the first place.

“In this action, a prominent American citizen (perhaps the most prominent American citizen) alleges defamation by a prominent American newspaper publisher (perhaps the most prominent American newspaper publisher) and by several other corporate and natural persons,” he said.

Merryday noted that Trump’s 85-page complaint had alleged “only two simple counts of defamation” while taking a full eighty pages to get to the first count.

The judge’s order also took aim at the poor quality of the writing used in the complaint as he groused about how Trump’s lawyers forced readers to “labor through allegations” replete with unnecessary verbiage such as “a new journalistic low for the hopelessly compromised and tarnished ‘Gray Lady’” and other examples of what he called the “many, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations” exhibited in the president’s stricken complaint.

A federal judge in Florida has thrown out President Donald Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times in a scathing order slamming the litigation as “decidedly improper and impermissible” (Getty Images)

He further criticized Trump’s lawyers for not apparently understanding that a legal complaint is neither a “public forum for vituperation and invective” nor a “megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.”

At the same time, the judge took pains to note that his order was not rendering any judgment on the truth of Trump’s allegations against the Times and several of its’ writers as well as Penguin Random House, the publishers of a critical book about him.

Instead, he stressed that a legal complaint is “an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim.”

While he left open the possibility for Trump’s lawyers to re-file their lawsuit, he ordered them to keep their second attempt to under 40 pages and said it must be filed within the next four weeks.

Trump filed the lawsuit on Monday against the Times, its reporters and their publisher, arguing that the defendants “maliciously published” both articles and a book, Lucky Loser, about him “knowing that these publications were filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications.”

In the now-stricken filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that the publications damaged both his business and personal reputation, inflicting major economic harm on his brand value and significantly affecting his future financial prospects.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the president’s private attorneys said Trump would “continue to hold the Fake News accountable through this powerhouse lawsuit against the New York Times, its reporters, and Penguin Random House, in accordance with the judge’s direction on logistics.”

The Art of the Dumb Deal: India to Boycott all American Products

 Thanks to Donald Dumb's tariffs, American companies will lose India's 1.5 billion people market.

Just to be fair, though, India's Modi is as much of an arse as Trump is. 

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Modi urges Indians to get rid of foreign products amid strained US ties
Reuters
Sun, September 21, 2025

FILE PHOTO: India's Prime Minister Modi delivers a speech at the India-Japan Economic Forum in Tokyo

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a public address on Sunday asked citizens to stop using foreign-made products and instead use local ones, pushing for a self-reliant campaign when trade ties with the United States have soured.

After U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on imported Indian goods, Modi has been urging use of "Swadeshi", or made-in-India goods. His supporters have started campaigns to boycott American brands including McDonald's, Pepsi and Apple, which are hugely popular in India.

"A lot of products we use daily are foreign made, we just don't know ... we will have to get rid of them," Modi said in an address to the nation ahead of Monday's implementation of widespread consumer tax cuts.

"We should buy products that are made in India," he added, without naming any country.

India's population of 1.4 billion is a major market for American consumer goods, often purchased from U.S. online retailer Amazon.com. Over the years, the reach of U.S. brands has expanded deep into smaller towns.

Modi also asked shopkeepers to focus on retailing made-in-India products, arguing that this will boost the country's economic growth.

In recent weeks, many companies have increased the promotion of local goods.

India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is expected to visit Washington soon for trade talks, a trip that would take place amid efforts to ease strained bilateral ties.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

The Kind of Impulses that Charlie Kirk Cultivated in the MAGA World

Sweet-talking racism and hatred does not change them into something good. There is a difference between form and substance. Hiding nefarious substance under nice form is not to be commended. 

Charlie Kirk may have had every right to be a sweet talker, a polite normalizer of otherwise hateful ideas, which is allowed under the First Amendment. But those who listen to his smooth charming words do get the message beneath the veneer. Kirk may not have brandished a gun, but he inspired many to do so.

Trump keeps demonizing the Democrat half of the country with vitriolic virulent language, which goes into the deranged brains of some nuts in his MAGA herd of morons. He claims "freedom of speech" while doing everything he can to cancel and shut down those who criticize him. 

For example, Donald Hump lashed out against Joe Biden last night at a black-tie dinner, calling him “stupid” and “mean.” After rambling about his achievements, Slump said that “Biden was always a mean guy, but never a smart guy. We go back 30 years, 40 years, he’s a stupid guy . . . He was always a mean son of a b---h. How’s it working? Not working too well for him now. When you start feeling sorry for him, remember he was a bad guy.”  Trump has repeatedly referred to Biden as “stupid” and a “low-IQ individual" and had indulged in conspiracy theories suggesting Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by a robot clone.

This is the kind of language that demonizes at least half of the country and incites violence. Here is an example of a MAGA nutcase who decided to be a "martyr" for Charlie Kirk. The garbage of the bible says that gays must be stoned to death, which in our modern gun-toting American culture translates into a mass shooting at a gay bar.
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Man Claiming to Be Charlie Kirk's 'Martyr' Allegedly Threatened to Shoot Up Gay Bar in Slain Activist's Name

Treven Michael Gokey was arrested in Arizona on a terroristic threat charge
Samira Asma-Sadeque
Sat, September 20, 2025


Phoenix Police Department; OLIVIER TOURON/AFP via Getty

A week after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a man allegedly threatened to shoot up a gay bar to "send a message" to the far-left

Kirk was killed at a college campus in Utah while on a tour for Turning Point USA

Treven Michael Gokey allegedly told police he wanted to be a "martyr" for Kirk

An Arizona man is under arrest on terrorism charges after allegedly telling police he threatened to shoot up a gay bar because he was angry over last week's slaying of Charlie Kirk.

Treven Michael Gokey, 49, was arrested on Wednesday, Sept. 17, by Phoenix police responding to a welfare check after he allegedly made threats over a crisis hotline that he would shoot up a gay bar, AZ Family, FOX 10 and 13 News reported, citing court documents.

Gokey alleged told police he had targeted Cruisin’ 7th, a popular LGBTQ bar near his home, because he was "triggered by political events," per court documents cited by AZ Family.

He allegedly said he "was a martyr for Charlie Kirk," claiming Kirk himself was a martyr, per court documents cited by all three outlets.

Police further accuse him of making statements such as “radical left violence breeds a far-right response" and that he wanted to "send a message" specifically to the far left, the outlets reported.

He also allegedly made transphobic and homophobic comments to police, some seeming to allude to harming the transgender community, 13 News reported, citing court documents.

Phoenix Police Department - Treven Michael Gokey

Kirk was shot on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah, on Sept. 10, while on a Turning Point USA rally tour.

Tyler Robinson was arrested on Sept. 12 in connection with the shooting and has been charged with aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury and obstruction of justice. He faces the death penalty if convicted of the top count.

Gokey has been charged with making a terrorist threat, per authorities, the outlets reported.

He is also facing an additional charge of using a computer to threaten, AZ Family and 13 News reported, citing court documents. He is being held on $250,000 bond.

It wasn't immediately clear if he has entered pleas or retained attorneys to speak on his behalf.

Read the original article on People

As President in 2029, Gavin Newsom Should Revoke Fox News's License

The Democrats' retribution against Trump and MAGA should mirror Trump's savage violations of everything American. They should weaponize every arm of the US government to go after conservatives and republicans. They should ignore the constitution and the decisions of the Judiciary. 

The imbecile Trump has set so many bad precedents that will come back to haunt the Republicans for decades to come. Unless, that is, they stop kissing Trump's ass and licking his boots and regain some sense of decency and normality. They have time to do a U-turn, and the imbecile Ted Cruz from Texas and the ugly butch from Georgia are already signaling their terror at what will happen to them in the 2026 and 2028 elections.

White US-Born Texas Doctor Caught Sexually Abusing Patients

 KETK Tyler

Former Tyler doctor gets 8-year sentence for sexually assaulting patients
Hannah Walker
Fri, September 19, 2025

TYLER, Texas (KETK)– A Tyler doctor who was arrested in 2024 for allegedly sexually assaulting his patients was sentenced to 8 years in prison on Friday.

56-year-old Kenneth Donald Haygood, of Tyler, was originally indicted on seven counts of sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault and practicing medicine without a license, but only two counts of sexual assault were not dismissed in court. KETK News has created a timeline of the two-year-long investigation into Haygood’s crimes.

Oct. 24, 2023: Haygood was temporarily suspended by the disciplinary panel of the Texas Medical Board after violating a June 2023 Final Order, which restricted him from seeing female patients. The order stated that he needed to complete multiple continuing medical education courses and pass exams, in addition to paying a $5,000 administrative penalty.

Photo outside of Ken Haygood’s former practice

According to the Texas Medical Board, Haygood did not get consent before doing a physical exam of a female patient, and inappropriately discussed the encounter with the patient’s family via text message “in an attempt to intimidate them as witnesses.”

November 2023: An official investigation was opened by authorities into suspicions of sexual assaults by Haygood. According to investigators, victims revealed that Haygood had allegedly sexually assaulted them while claiming he was checking their thyroid, giving a therapeutic massage and performing examinations.

February 2024: Haygood was first arrested for three counts of sexual assault and one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Mugshot of Kenneth Haygood, courtesy of Smith County Jail Records

May 2024: Haygood was indicted on six charges of sexual assault and one charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child.
June 2024: He was then indicted for practicing medicine without a license.

Aug. 14, 2025: Haygood was indicted on another count of sexual assault. 
Sept. 19, 2025: Haygood was sentenced to eight years in prison on Friday after he pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault.

Marriott Hotels: A Pillar of the United Scams of America

“Travel in the U.S. is dead”: Marriott guest shares shock over $500 in “resort fees”—including $200 pool chairs
Lindsey Weedston
Sun, September 21, 2025


@funkshe/TikTok

A woman on her honeymoon in Hawaii said her hotel charged $200 for a poolside chair among other "resort fees" that left her with a huge bill. She stayed at a Marriott Bonvoy hotel in Honolulu, and the evidence of "corporate greed" at every turn led her to warn other travelers to take their post-wedding trips elsewhere.

Some fear that this nickle-and-diming by U.S. companies is going to hurt tourism.
$200 to sit by the pool

Travel TikToker @funkshe has recently been on her multi-national honeymoon, ending in the Waikīkī neighborhood of Honolulu. She was having a swell time until she got the bill at the end of her stay and noticed over $500 in "resort fees" for things she didn't ask for or enjoy.

"Dude, travel in the U.S. is dead, and it's all because of corporate greed," she said.

"There's a daily resort fee of $52 plus tax per room per day. The following amenities are included: Fresh flower or coconut lei greeting upon arrival for two guests per stay—which we didn't ask for because the flower was itching my neck."

Other "perks" included freshly baked banana bread muffins (which she called "sh*tty), refillable water bottles with the hotel logo on them, internet access (which they already got as Marriott Bonvoy members), and something called "daily cultural activities."

"Guess what's not included?" the TikToker challenged. "The actual beach chairs."

According to the traveler, the lounge chairs up next to the pool or on the beach cost $200 to reserve. Imagine paying $200 to sit in a chair. And that's on top of mandatory resort fees, which are on top of the cost of the expensive room.

She did clarify that they have free chairs you can sit in near the pool, but they charge for the best spots.

"Go to any other country for your honeymoon, for your vacation," she concluded. "Save your hard-earned cash and do that because in the U.S. you're never going to feel welcome as a guest."
"Third World country with a Gucci belt"

The TikToker's followers expressed horror and outrage at this latest fee among a nation of fees. Folks are already going broke thanks to Ticketmaster, but the extent of the consumer squeezing is starting to sound like a heavy-handed joke. It's making us look bad.

@funkshe/TikTok

"That’s why they say America is a Third World country with a Gucci belt," said @imyeokai.

Meanwhile, @seandekodaphillip theorized that "tourism is down and they're taking it out on anyone that can afford to go."


While @funkshe gained 1.5 million views with her TikTok video, it did even better on X, netting 7.3 million from a @WallStreetApes repost. There, Americans started advising each other to ditch America.

"Go to Vietnam," @thangdcao recommended. "Free beach, free chairs, 5-star hotels will serve you like a king."

@RicanLink_/X

"I keep telling people, when you leave the US you realize how much better you can live," wrote @RicanLink_.

Christian Love Turns into "Hatred and Acrimony": Dolan Wants to Canonize Kirk

Charlie Kirk was an evangelical protestant. By definition, he hates Catholics who are otherwise known among Protestants as "Papists", just as much as he hates Jews, Blacks, Asians, and anyone who is not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

So would you be surprised if Timothy Dolan, the former Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee and defender of pedophile priests, comes to defend the memory of Kirk? You should be surprised because Catholics and Protestants are ideological enemies.

But they lately have been finding common ground: They both are against abortion. While the Catholic Church has always asserted a male-dominated architecture of its hierarchy and rejected women's ascent into the prisesthood, marriage of priests and the inclusion of homosexuals, and continued assertion of patriarchy, the Protestants have generally liberated themselves from such antiquated and barbaric beliefs: They allowed priests to marry long long time ago, and recently they've been ordaining women, they've welcomed homosexuals, etc.

But the American Protestant world is such a dinosaur in that it rejects progress and evolution, and worse yet, it has allied itself politically with Trump, MAGA and white nationalist supremacist movements. MAGA leaders have frequently demanded that women stay at home and have more babies, while evangelical churches have backed Trump's racist and white nationalist policies. Instead of assisting the poor and the disenfranchised, as Jesus demands, the evangelicals have turned their religion into an arm of US imperialism and expansionism, launching major missionary work throughout the third world aiming at converting millions of people from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism, and thus bring these people under an American economic,  political and military umbrella. Brazil is a noteworthy example, where the surge in evangelical conversions has enabled Jair Bolsonaro - a Trump copycat - to access power and try to subvert Brazilian democracy.

Now former Archbishop Dolan of Milwaukee, like many Catholic leaders of his rank in the US and around the world, have spent much of the last half a century protecting thousands of pedophile priests who rape children behind the altar. Scandals have erupted in liberal countries: US, Canada, Australia, France etc... whereas in more restrictive societies pedophile Catholic priests have been protected by very conservative or autocratic political systems. An example is East Timor where people whose children were raped refused to disrobe the clergy who raped their children, which testifies to the abhorrent stanglehold that religion has on people in the Third World.

So I am not surprised that Timothy Dolan is now comparing Charlie Kirk, the racist mysogynistic white Christian nationalist Trumpian shill, who was assassinated last week in Utah, to a modern-day St. Paul. If anything, this is pure blasphemy that Pope Leo is urged to denounce. In a previous post, I facetioulsy sugested the possibility that, if Kirk was a Catholic, the Catholic Church should be eager to canonize him. In fact, this has happened so many times in the history of the Church where it canonized criminals who were perceived as heroes by the faithful. 

There is no need to discuss the obvious Crusades during which monks became soldiers (the Templars and the Hospitalers) and killed thousands of people in the name of their religion and God.

But examples abound. Saint Elias was canonized because he killed hundreds of pagan Phoenicians who refused to convert to Christianity. All his portraits show him brandishing a sword and massacring innocent people. Saint Michael, who is a pre-Christian biblical figure and thus is not exclusive to the Christian religion, is according to an AI query a significant figure in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, recognized as a warrior of God and a protector against evil. He is often depicted as leading a heavenly army against Satan and is considered a guardian of the Church and the faithful. Warrior, leading armies, fighting Satan (i.e. non-Christians)...

In Lebanon, the Maronite Catholics too have a propensity to blend politics with religion, and thus elevate warlords and idealize them. One example is Bashir Gemayel, a former warlord who defended the Lebanese Christian minority during the Arab-Palestinian War against Lebanon between 1975 and 1982. He inherited his father Pierre's Phalange Party modeled along Francisco Franco's "Falange Española Tradicionalista" (Spanish Traditional Phalanx) in Spain. There is no doubt that without Bashir's excessive use of violence, Lebanon's Christians would have been dominated, and perhaps annihilated, by their Muslim-Arab enemies. But nowadays, nearly fifty years after he was assassinated (1982) by a terrorist of the Syrian Socialist National Party (SSNP; itself a fascist party founded the same year as the Nazi Party in Germany - see: 

https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/06/dying-nazis-of-near-east.html),

the Maronites continue to worship Bashir and all indications suggest they may make a Saint out of him in the future. With time, the human brain deletes the negative and sublimates the positive, thus bleaching these warlords into saints.

I therefore am not surprised that former Archbishop Dolan of Milwaukee makes a Saint-Paul comparison with Charlie Kirk because they were both "warriors" for the religion. Kirk did not wield a sword, but his words - just like Trump's - were laced with violent ideas about people who did not look like them or who did not agree with them.

At the very least, both Dolan and Kirk share one thing in common: The protection of pedophiles. 


Saint Elias slaughtering pagans

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Cardinal Timothy Dolan, former Milwaukee archbishop, calls slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk a 'modern-day St. Paul'


New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, former archbishop of Milwaukee, compared slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk to a "modern-day St. Paul" in a Sept. 19 appearance on Fox & Friends.

"He was a missionary, he's an evangelist, he's a hero," Dolan said. "He's one I think that knew what Jesus meant when he said the truth will set you free."

During his roughly 12-minute appearance on the show, Dolan also said Kirk's death could inspire renewed faith in young people.

The former Milwaukee archbishop, known for his conservative views, said he learned who Kirk was after his death on Sept. 10, later writing an op-ed for The New York Post on Sept. 17 condemning "hatred and acrimony."

While some praised Dolan's remarks, the comments largely drew outrage from users on social media, with some calling on Pope Leo XIV to reconsider Dolan's position.

Others who posted on X were also critical of Dolan's leadership in the church, including his handling of sexually abusive clergy members.

A 2013 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report found Dolan sought Vatican approval in 2009 to move nearly $57 million in cemetery funds into a trust to help protect the Archdiocese of Milwaukee "from any legal claim or liability."

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Same thing with the Radical Right mouthpiece Fox News parroting the idea of a "miracle" in the killing of Charlie Kirk. The assassin's bullet did not go through Charlie's neck. It stayed there. Had it exited, it would have struck other people. Even as he was dying, the saintly Kirk was protecting people. I repeat, the Catholic Church should canonize Kirk. God seems to always be at work when it concerns Radical Right extremists:

Turning Point USA spokesman, Andrew Kolvet on Saturday said Charlie Kirk's surgeon called it an "absolute miracle" that the bullet that killed him didn’t exit his body because dozens of people were standing behind him when he was shot.

"I want to address some of the discussion about the lack of an exit wound with Charlie. I’m usually not interested in delving into most of this kind of online chatter, and I apologize this is somewhat graphic, but in this case, the fact that there wasn’t an exit wound is probably another miracle, and I want people to know," Kolvet, the executive producer of "The Charlie Kirk Show," wrote in a lengthy post on X.

Kolvet said he had just spoken with Kirk’s surgeon, who told him the bullet "'absolutely should have gone through, which is very very normal for a high powered, high velocity round. I’ve seen wounds from this caliber many times and they always just go through everything. This would have taken a moose or two down, an elk, etc.’"

He said when he told the doctor that dozens of staff, students and guests had been standing behind the Tpusa founder when he was shot, the surgeon replied, "It was an absolute miracle that someone else didn’t get killed."

The doctor added that Kirk’s "bone was so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel. It should have just gone through and through. It likely would have killed those standing behind him too." The coroner found the bullet just behind Kirk’s skin, Kolvet said.

"Even in death, Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him," Kolvet added. "Remarkable. Miraculous."

Kirk was shot and killed on Sept. 10 while speaking to students at Utah Valley University in Orem.

His alleged assassin, 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson, is charged with murder and remains locked up in a Utah jail.

How History Judges US Decades from Now Depends on We Behave Now and Vote Tomorrow

Major US corporations are bending the knee to the Dick-Traitor Trump. I hope the American people will remember the shameful conduct of companies caring more for their bottom line than for the welfare of the country. Freedom of Speech ought to turn into Freedom of Screech at the rape of American democracy by MAGA. 
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If We Are Descending Into Fascism, This Little-Noticed Moment Will Prove Pivotal
Fred Kaplan
Thu, September 18, 2025



If and when historians write the tale of how our country devolved into a boastfully lawless state, unashamedly insensitive to matters of human life, they might note the remarks of Vice President J.D. Vance at a factory in Michigan on Sept. 17, 2025, as a key moment in the decline.

Vance was there to tout President Donald Trump’s widely unpopular budget bill, but he took a moment to tout the U.S. military’s recent bull’s-eye bombing of three boats in the Caribbean allegedly carrying narcotics to our shores. Vance claimed that all drug trafficking in those waters had since stopped, chortling, “I would stop, too—hell, I wouldn’t go fishin’ right now in that part of the world.”

Some in the audience chuckled. Were others appalled? They should have been. Much of the rest of the world, no doubt, slacked its collective jaw, and many American servicemen and servicewomen must have been ashamed.

The vice president of the United States was celebrating an act of murder in international waters for which there was no legal authority, historical precedent, or clear and present danger that might have justified taking a shot. Even John Yoo, who defended the legality of torture during George W. Bush’s presidency, has said the bombing of the boats was illegal, even if they were manned by drug smugglers, a claim that hasn’t been proved. When Vance was asked about the operation’s legality, he replied, “I don’t give a shit.”

Vance was also, in effect, portraying the American military personnel who sank the boats as trigger-happy, prone to mistake a fishing boat for a drug vessel and feeling guiltless about doing so.

Finally, he was wrong in saying that drug trafficking off our shores had since ceased, so terrified were these criminals by the prospect of drawing similar fire. In fact, just this past Monday, two days before Vance’s speech and a few days after the first sinking, the U.S. Coast Guard seized the largest haul of narcotics in Coast Guard history—76,140 pounds’ worth, having a value of $473 million and the potential to cause 23 million lethal doses—in 19 interdictions in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

The Coast Guard crews did this not by killing anyone but rather by stopping the boats (in some cases, shooting at the engines), then boarding them, and arresting the smugglers. That is how they have been interdicting drug traffic for decades. In 2022, the most recent year for which there is complete data, they seized 150 metric tons (about 165 U.S. tons) of illegal narcotics that way.

Vance’s comments were merely piling on to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s celebration of the first boat’s bombing, during which all 11 people onboard were killed. “We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean, and when other people try to do that, they’re going to meet the same fate,” the top civilian overseer of the U.S. armed forces and its nearly $1 trillion budget exclaimed of the unprecedented extrajudicial killings.

In similarly high spirits, Hegseth was all but bouncing with glee earlier this month, when Trump announced the name change of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense!” he said, standing next to the president. “Maximum lethality—not tepid legality! Violent effect, not politically correct!”

Have we ever had a secretary of defense so adept at looking and talking like the thuggish buffoon in an Armando Iannucci satire?

In real life, these spectacles aren’t so funny. Vance is the successor to the throne if Trump is unable to fulfill his duties. Hegseth is the main point of contact between the commander in chief in the White House and the combatant commanders at military bases around the world.

Hegseth’s touting of “maximum lethality” and trouncing of “tepid legality” is not merely an indulgence in cliché. The former Fox News anchor first came to Trump’s attention when he criticized the prosecution of three U.S. officers for hideous war crimes that they’d committed in Afghanistan. To Hegseth, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a major in the Army National Guard, the very term “war crimes” is an oxymoron. War is all about killing (“maximum lethality”); concerns about who a soldier might kill in the process is demoralizing woke (“tepid legality”).

For a glimpse of what professional active-duty senior U.S. officers, those with longtime combat experience, think of this attitude, look at the pained expression of Gen. Dan Caine, the widely respected chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while Hegseth goes on his rant.

We are led at the moment by a mélange of cynics, greenhorns, and opportunists (Vance once likened Trump to Hitler before he was invited to join the ticket), play-acting the roles of world leaders, not fully grasping their responsibilities or what it takes to perform them and claiming new and extraordinary powers—in a wide range of domestic and foreign policies—that have never been asserted before.

The world’s leaders—friends, foes, and those in between—keep a straight face at all this. The United States is still a powerful nation, and Trump is the one who controls its mighty levers. As the preeminent military strategist Lawrence Freedman recently described the situation, “Unserious president; serious country.” So, allies still depend on us for their security; adversaries try to butter up Trump and make him think they’re his friend, so he doesn’t get too upset when they do unsettling things. (When 19 Russian drones passed over Poland’s territory last week, prompting the Poles to call an emergency meeting under Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, only the eighth time the article has been invoked in NATO’s 76-year history, Trump publicly said the overflights “could have been a mistake.”)

Still, many at home and abroad watch Trump and his team—listen to their words, analyze their actions—and, depending on whether they’re foe or friend, uncork the Champagne or pour themselves a stiff drink. How this plays out, what historians write a few decades from now, will depend on what the rest of us do in the coming months—how we vote and whether we succumb to pressures or resist them in the meantime.

Hollywood Dystopia in DC: Demented Big Brother Trump is Watching You

Trump Worship Settling in. And look who's hanging his portrait: Using ICE's criteria to ferret out illegal migrants, I'd say half of the workers in the picture below hanging the demented Dick-Traitor Trump's portait are illegals because they "look" like illegals.

We got rid of King George III, but he's coming back as Dumbass Donald Trumpty-Dumpty .

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Massive banners with Trump’s face are adorning some federal buildings in DC. Democrats are crying foul
Camila DeChalus, CNN
Sat, September 20, 2025


Workers hang a large photo of President Donald Trump from the top of the Department of Labor headquarters in Washington, DC, on August 27. - Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images

Democrats on Capitol Hill are raising alarm over large banners with President Donald Trump’s face that can be seen on three federal buildings, claiming they carry authoritarian undertones in the wake of a report from California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.

“When I saw the banners hanging from federal office buildings last week, it reminded me of [the] Communist Party in China and banners hanging from federal offices—just totally inappropriate and a step towards authoritarianism,” Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson from Georgia told CNN. “It’s another indication of the march that we’re on towards authoritarianism in this country.”

The report, released by Schiff earlier this week that alleges the administration is using federal funds for propaganda, found the Trump administration has spent at least $50,000 in taxpayer funds to create the banners, with the Department of Agriculture spending $16,400, Health and Human Services $33,726, and the Department of Labor around $6,000.

Schiff’s office, reached by CNN, said it did not have additional comment beyond the report. The California Democrat is known to have a particularly frosty relationship with the Trump White House.

But Republican lawmakers argued that similar promotional efforts took place under the previous Democratic administration – pointing to taxpayer-funded signage crediting then-President Joe Biden for federal projects, such as those related to his infrastructure law – and questioned why their colleagues didn’t raise concern then.

“Did they raise concerns when they were putting banners and stuff up when they were in the White House? I don’t recall that,” said Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk. “ Why the double standard?”

The controversy underscores deepening tensions in Washington over the extent of Trump’s use of executive power. The banners in question have large portraits of the sitting president with the caption “American Workers First.”

The White House strongly pushed back on Schiff’s report, calling the senator a “serial liar.”

“You should ask Pencil Neck why he’s trying to draw comparisons between President Trump and fascist leaders when this is the exact same rhetoric that radicalizes the left’s supporters to commit acts of violence against conservatives,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to CNN.

The Department of Labor confirmed it spent roughly $6,000 on the banners and noted that they were created in conjunction with Labor Day and the department’s America250 celebrations.

The departments of agriculture and health and human services did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

“The banners were originally displayed for Labor Day. After tremendous positive response, we’re reinforcing the material at no charge to taxpayers, so our big, beautiful banners can securely stay up in celebration of America’s 250th birthday,” Labor Department spokesperson Courtney Parella said in a statement.

Still, some Democratic lawmakers argued that no president, despite their party, should use taxpayer money for such displays moving forward.

“There shouldn’t be any money used for the president, really, any president, to go put their big picture up on the side of a building for any kind of political aggrandizement,” Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas said. “Some of that stuff, it looks like we’re living in North Korea, the way they’re using money to put his big picture up. So yes, there should be more oversight, and it shouldn’t just apply to him. It should apply to future presidents.”

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the government affairs manager at Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan ethics group, echoed the sentiment.

“I would hope that Congress would be a bit more kind of proactive and robust in terms of keeping tabs on what the executive branch and … what they’re doing with money and what they’re spending money on,” Hedtler-Gaudette told CNN.

Last year, Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, raised similar concerns about the use of taxpayer money for political messaging under the Biden administration. In a June 2024 letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget, she criticized the administration for encouraging federal agencies to post signage crediting “President Joe Biden” for publicly funded projects.

“For years I’ve been attempting to show Americans how Washington spends their hard-earned tax dollars by requiring a price tag displaying the cost be placed on public documents related to every government-funded project. This allows Americans to see the return on their tax dollars and judge the value of every expenditure for themselves,” Ernst wrote in the letter at the time.

Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota pointed to pictures of the president and vice president often being displayed in federal buildings.

“Presumably, during the Biden administration, a picture of Joe Biden hung literally in every single federal building in America. Was that political? Did Mr. Schiff opine on that?” Johnson asked. “No, yeah, I haven’t seen the banner.”

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AOC on Charlie Kirk's Mediocre "White Victim" Lies

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Friday opposed a resolution honoring the life and legacy of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old unelected, Radical Right antisemitic Christian Nationalist racist extremist, who was assassinated Sept. 10 during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University. 

She read a series of damning Charlie Kirk quotes on the House floor Friday afternoon after the passage of a resolution to mark Oct. 14, 2025 as “Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day.” The resolution states Americans should use the day to remember the slain MAGA influencer—who was fatally shot on Sept. 10 while speaking during an event at Utah Valley University—as someone devoted to “strengthening public discourse, defending constitutional principles, and fostering active citizenship.” However, Ocasio-Cortez argued this was a “whitewashing” of Kirk and his agenda.

In her speech on the House floor, Ocasio-Cortez asserted that the resolution was introduced on a "purely partisan basis, instead of uniting Congress." After condemning Kirk's murder, she noted the resolution "brings great pain to the millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow and the legacy of bigotry today" and tore into the late 31-year-old's ideology.

"We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was, a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a mistake, who, after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, claimed that ‘some amazing patriot' should bail out his brutal assailant and accused Jews of controlling ‘not just the colleges – it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it,'" Ocasio-Cortez said.

"His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans — far from the ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority in this resolution."

The resolution ignored the fact that Kirk was an unelected, Radical Right antisemitic Christian Nationalist racist extremist. Instead, it described Kirk as a "devoted Christian," "dedicated husband" and a "loving father" of two, and commending his personification of the First Amendment which is now under assault by Kirk’s mentor Donald Trump.

In the resolution, the House of Representatives condemned Kirk's assassination and all forms of political violence; commended law enforcement for catching Kirk's alleged killer; extended condolences to Kirk's family; honored Kirk's life, leadership and legacy; and called upon all Americans — regardless of race, party affiliation or creed — to "reject political violence, recommit to respectful debate, uphold American values, and respect one another as fellow Americans."


AOC rightfully dissented, saying that Charlie Kirk's "rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans."

Here is a breakdown of public comments Kirk made regarding the topics Ms. Ocasio-Cortez mentioned in her dissent.

In a February 2024 podcast, Kirk acknowledged his ideas about the Civil Rights Act and its role in American society were "provocative”. Explaining why his ideas were provocative, Kirk said, "At the time … there were legislative priorities that needed to be done by the federal government to stop bitter segregation. The American people thought they were getting minor legislative adjustments to say that segregation based on race is evil and wrong. In reality, what they got was the birthing of a permanent deep state of bureaucrats that were looking for racism where it didn't exist, eventually with affirmative action, quotas and hiring practices expanded beyond race into LGBTQ-type issues.”

In other words, Kirk’s fine-tuned interpretation of the Civil Rights Act leads one to reject the Act and return to unfettered segregation and racism. He then, as all Radical Right White Nationalist extremists do, blamed the Civil rights Act for empowering the federal government to “not just to say that discrimination is wrong, but to actively go against any sort of disparate outcome and try to even the score under the guise of equity." Like all Radical Right extremists, Kirk’s blaming of the federal government is an automatic impulse. Without saying what the alternative to the Civil rights Act is, Kirk instead prefers that the states that were implementing racist policies (Jim Crow, equal but separate, etc.) be the ones to enact “minor legislative adjustments” to combat racism and discrimination. In other words, Kirk was trying to hide his rejection of the Civil Rights Act behind the stupid dichotomy between State and Federal governments.

In discussing Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, Kirk said he "100% bought into" the need for equality, but added he believed the Civil Rights Act was expanded further than necessary. His mediocre and pedestrian thinking entailed the false notion that a majority of Americans wanted segregation and that "they didn't want to see new segregation put forward in eventually anti-White hiring practices, affirmative action or the entire federal bureaucracy having racial hiring quotas.”

And there you have it. After 300 years of White Americans enslaving Blacks, any effort at redressing the harm done to an entire people, Kirk and his racist ilk turn it around: Helping freed Black slaves means being anti-White. When the executioner plays the victim, like Kirk’s dear Zionist friends do in Palestine, there is no room for compromise.

In an Oct. 31, 2022, episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show," titled "A Naked Smear of MAGA," Kirk discussed the Oct. 28, 2022, attack against Nancy Pelosi's husband, saying directly, "I'm not qualifying it, I think it's awful."

David DePape was sentenced to life in prison in 2024 after attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer in House Speaker Nancy Polsi’s home, causing two head wounds and injuries to his right arm and hand. DePape admitted to devising a plot to hold then-Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hostage and "break her kneecaps" if she did not admit to allegedly telling "lies" about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. This was clearly a MAGA assassination attempt inspired by Donald Trump’s evasiveness when confronted with his budding friendship with Vladimir Putin whose help he needed to win the election.

But Charlie Kirk, in his scintillating MAGA mind, reduced the entire episode to a problem with bail policies. Forget Trump’s treason of relying on the Russian dictator’s assistance to help him win the election. None of that matters to Kirk. Under cashless bail policies, a suspect who is arrested for a crime is released before a trial without having to pay bail or bond. The fees were put in place to ensure suspects do not flee and incentivize them to make scheduled court appearances.

"I’m not qualifying [the attack], I think it’s awful," Kirk said. "It’s not right. But why is it that, in Chicago, you’re able to commit murder and be out the next day? Why is it that you’re able to trespass, second-degree murder, arson, threaten a public official, [and receive] cashless bail? This happens all over San Francisco, but if you go after the Pelosis … you’re [not] let out immediately. Got it." This is so stupid an argument aiming at deflecting from the fact that a rightwing Radical Right MAGA lowlife of Kirk’s own tribe attacked the Democrat Speaker of the House.

The summary of all this argument is a White criminal like DePape was discriminated against because he was not receiving equal treatment as a hypothetical Black criminal (which for some reason Kirk decided was in Chicago). Imagine the paucity of this argument in relation to the extremism of the attack against the Pelosis. Kirk was defending the White criminal DePape using some convoluted silly argument. I am not surprised that the luminaries of MAGA find Kirk to be smart.

On Kirk’s antisemitism: In an Oct. 26, 2024, episode of the "The Charlie Kirk Show" podcast, Kirk claimed Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical, open-border neoliberal quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits.

"This is a beast created by secular Jews," Kirk said. "Now it’s coming for Jews, and they’re like, ‘What on Earth happened?’ It’s not just the colleges. It’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it." Kirk is trying to send the message that "secular Jews" are bad in contrast to his Zionist racist ultra-religious alter egos.

Kirk, a longtime supporter of colonial genocidal Israel, later argued in a Nov. 16, 2023, episode of "The Charlie Kirk Show," titled "Elon Musk Smashes the Digital Narratives," that some Jewish organizations and donors, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), helped fund "anti-White" or "cultural Marxist" ideas aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement or Diversity and Equity Inclusion (DEI).

The MAGA Einstein Kirk noted he does not believe all Jewish people are anti-White, specifying that he did "not like generalizations." "I don't like generalizations," Kirk said in the episode. "Not every Jewish person believes that. But it is true the Anti-Defamation League was part and parcel with Black Lives Matter. It is true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-White causes have been Jewish Americans. They went all in on woke, and it wasn't just ADL. It was some of the top Jewish organizations in the country that have done that. In fact, we have seen this with the recent retreat of Jewish donations that are no longer going to be administered to colleges."

Conclusion: Incite the MAGA morons, who don’t even understand what Cultural Marxism is, against Jewish people and comfort them in their innate hatred of Jews.

So, Kirk’s talent appears to be a mediocre charlatan way of turning every attempt at redressing past injustices into an anti-White posture. The eternal White victim, who enslaved millions of Africans and killed many more millions of native Indians, is such a successful tactic to rile up the largely ignorant and illiterate MAGA base.

Like the Dotcom and Biotech Crash in 2000, AI Hubris is About to Burst

It’s not just Sam Altman warning about an AI bubble. Now Mark Zuckerberg says a ‘collapse’ is ‘definitely a possibility’
Lily Mae Lazarus
Fri, September 19, 2025


Mark Zuckerberg and Meta recently promised $600 billion in future AI spending. (DAVID PAUL MORRIS—Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Deutsche Bank called it “the summer AI turned ugly.” For weeks, with every new bit of evidence that corporations were failing at AI adoption, fears of an AI bubble have intensified, fueled by the realization of just how topheavy the S&P 500 has grown, along with warnings from top industry leaders. An August study from MIT found that 95% of AI pilot programs fail to deliver a return on investment, despite over $40 billion being poured into the space. Just prior to MIT’s report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rang AI bubble alarm bells, expressing concern over the overvaluation of some AI startups and the intensity of investor enthusiasm. These trends have even caught the attention of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who noted that the U.S. was witnessing “unusually large amounts of economic activity” in building out AI capabilities.

Mark Zuckerberg has some similar thoughts.

The Meta CEO acknowledged that the rapid development of and surging investments in AI stands to form a bubble, potentially outpacing practical productivity and returns and risking a market crash. But Zuckerberg insists that the risk of over-investment is preferable to the alternative: being late to what he sees as an era-defining technological transformation.

“There are compelling arguments for why AI could be an outlier,” Zuckerberg hedged in an appearance on the Access podcast. “And if the models keep on growing in capability year-over-year and demand keeps growing, then maybe there is no collapse.”

Then Zuckerberg joined the Altman camp, saying that all capital expenditure bubbles like the buildout of AI infrastructure, seen largely in the form of data centers, tend to end in similar ways. “But I do think there’s definitely a possibility, at least empirically, based on past large infrastructure buildouts and how they led to bubbles, that something like that would happen here,” Zuckerberg said.
Bubble echoes

Zuckerberg pointed to past bubbles, namely railroads and the dot-com bubble, as key examples of infrastructure buildouts leading to a stock-market collapse. In these instances, he claimed that bubbles occurred due to businesses taking on too much debt, macroeconomic factors, or product demand waning, leading to companies going under and leaving behind valuable assets.

The Meta CEO’s comments echoed Altman’s, who has similarly cautioned that the AI boom is showing many signs of a bubble.

“When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” Altman told The Verge, adding that AI is that kernel: transformative and real, but often surrounded by irrational exuberance. Altman has also warned that “the frenzy of cash chasing anything labeled ‘AI’” can lead to inflated valuations and risk for many.

The consequences of these bubbles are costly. During the dot-com bubble, investors poured money into tech startups with unrealistic expectations, driven by hype and a frenzy for new internet-based companies. When the results fell short, the stocks involved in the dot-com bubble lost more than $5 trillion in total market cap.

An AI bubble stands to have similarly significant economic impacts. In 2025 alone, the largest U.S. tech companies, including Meta, have spent more than $155 billion on AI development. And, according to Statista, the current AI market value is approximately $244.2 billion.

But, for Zuckerberg, losing out on AI’s potential is a far greater risk than losing money in an AI bubble. The company recently committed at least $600 billion to U.S. data centers and infrastructure through 2028 to support its AI ambitions. According to Meta’s chief financial officer, this money will go towards all of the tech giant’s US data center buildouts and domestic business operations, including new hires. Meta also launched its superintelligence lab, recruiting talent aggressively with multi-million-dollar job offers, to develop AI that outperforms human intelligence.

“If we end up misspending a couple hundred billion dollars, that’s going to be very unfortunate obviously. But I would say the risk is higher on the other side,” Zuckerberg said. “If you build too slowly, and superintelligence is possible in three years but you built it out were assuming it would be there in five years, then you’re out of position on what I think is going to be the most important technology that enables the most new products and innovation and value creation in history.”

While he sees the consequences of not being aggressive enough in AI investing outweighing overinvesting, Zuckerberg acknowledged that Meta’s survival isn’t dependent upon AI’s success.

For companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, he said “there’s obviously this open question of to what extent are they going to keep on raising money, and that’s dependent both to some degree on their performance and how AI does, but also all of these macroeconomic factors that are out of their control.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Trump Attacks Fox News's Pollster: He 'Stinks'.

Like a predictable 9-year old, Donald Jump doesn't like statisticians and pollsters because they work with numbers, and numbers don't lie. But when numbers are against him, tthe Liar-in-Chief uses one of the very few words that make up his entire vocabulary, "You're fired". 

On Thursday, Donald Hump told Fox News they should fire their pollster, saying he “stinks.”

The poll results conducted by the "stinking" Fox News pollster showed that his administration is perceived as subpar in growing the U.S. economy. The host Martha Macullum asked Donald Stump when will Americans reap the benefits of his supposedly booming economy. “When do you think people are going to feel that?” she asked. “Because we do see polling that doesn’t poll well on the economy. Recent Fox polling said 52 percent say the economy is worse under this administration, you’ve got unemployment at the highest rate in four years. Groceries made a big jump in the last term. ... You’re looking forward with these plans that you just talked about. When will people feel that?”

“Well, when the factories start opening. I mean, right now we’re building them,” said Donald Lump, before erupting into a tantrum about Fox News, the only media that still talks to this idiot. 

“Fox polling, I have to tell you, I’ve told you before, the worst polling I’ve ever had, it’s always—I mean, during the election, they had me winning by a little bit, not by a massive amount,” he said. “And Fox polling, I’ve told Rupert Murdoch, go get yourself a new pollster, because he stinks—and this is for years now.”

Macullum did not push back on Trump’s claim that he has already secured $17 trillion in investments for the country this term. That amount is 68 times more than the $250 billion that Trump claimed former President Joe Biden brought into the economy during his four years in office.

“That’s a big number, huge number,” she said of Trump’s claim. Trump eventually said that the economy’s turnaround—thanks to his policies, like sweeping tariffs—will “kick in probably in a year or so,” as if his MAGA herd of morons is likely to wait a long time before souring on him. The latest jobs report showed 12,000 jobs being lost in August, meaning the industry has lost 38,000 jobs in 2025. Other sectors with high tariff exposure equally suffered.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August that the annual inflation rate, at 2.9 percent, is the highest it has been since Trump took office. Claims of joblessness are also at their highest level since late 2021, according to USA Today.

Americans are still feeling it at the grocery store, too, a year after Donald Mump promised he'd make sure grocery prices will immediately fall after his election. Just like he promised to end the Ukraine War in 24 hours. 

Adulterer Texan AG Paxton May Have 'Kept' his Mistress on Taxpayers Money

Yes, he's a fornicating Christian Nationalist adulterer and Securities Fraudster. Yes, he is a Trumpian to the marrow. And all of it is fine because Ken Paxton is a "real man" from Texas, despite his sleepy eye with which, it is rumored, he can shoot an illegal migrant from 300 yards. All male Texans are "real men" with boots, hats, guns, and swagger. Just like in the 1700s. Things haven't changed much since.

Evolution missed the humanoid Texas primates, known by their genus name Pan, from turning into Homo erectus, let alone Homo sapiens. Perhaps they objected and refused to evolve because they don't like the "homo" part of the scientific name which, in their ignorance, they think refers to homosexuals. After all, they don't believe in science. They prefer a parchment of garbage drivel from the Bronze Age called the Torah-Bible-Old Testament, written by smelly old men in their goat-skin tents under the hallucinating influence of the brutal Arabian desert sun.

Paxton's paramour with whom he cheated on his wife Angela is a 57-year old Christian influencer and mother of seven by the name of Tracy Duhon. Her marriage too collapsed after the news of her adultery with Paxton broke out. What a "Christian" and bad "Influencer"!

But the buck stops where these fornicating Christian Nationalist adulterers and fraudsters use other people's money to commit adultery. Money is God Number One in America, and God himself is number Two. 
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Republican Demands MAGA Star’s Records Over Secret Affair Travel
Leigh Kimmins
Fri, September 19, 2025


kenpaxton.com/ [Iznogood: Both Trump and Paxton are MAGA adulterers and con men]

Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s campaign is demanding documents from the state’s Trump-backed attorney general that will prove if he used taxpayer money to fund travel to see his reported mistress.

Politico’s Playbook said Cornyn’s campaign has asked for records of the travel and activities of Tracy Duhon and his U.S. Senate race rival, Ken Paxton.

Duhon is the woman allegedly at the center of an affair scandal with Paxton that has seen both their marriages collapse, the British Daily Mail reported.

Cornyn has escalated the already bitter GOP primary between the two men. / Getty Images

Cornyn’s team is demanding “Paxton’s travel and activities with Tracy Duhon, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s alleged paramour, since March 2024.”

That escalates an already bitter GOP primary between the two men wanting to be U.S senator for Texas.

“These records are not only subject to public information law, but relevant to public interest as made clear in a Sept. 12, 2025, Daily Mail article showing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been traveling “across the country and even overseas” to meet a woman named Tracy Duhon with whom he was having an affair,” the filing states.

The campaign alleged the trips were “essential to keeping the entanglement secret” from Paxton’s wife, which would make them personal in nature. “If Paxton has used official resources to pay for any of these trips, or if the getaways conflicted with responsibilities to the state of Texas, Texans deserve to know,” it continued.

A spokesperson for Paxton declined to comment to Playbook. The Daily Beast has also sought comment.

The Daily Mail reported that Duhon, 57, a Christian influencer and mother of seven, remains based at her millionaire ex-husband Troy’s estate on Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans. She and Troy Duhon finalized their divorce just last month.

Abigail, Tracy Duhon (center) [Iznogood: and cuckold husband] Troy Duhon at a film premiere in 2016. / Frederick Breedon / Getty Images

The Mail said Paxton and Duhon met at the Kentucky Derby in 2024, and that their relationship ultimately also ended his 38-year marriage to Texas Sen. Angela Paxton.

Multiple sources told the outlet the attorney general’s wife learned of the affair earlier this year. She filed for divorce on July 10, announcing on X, “Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds… in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”

Cornyn, a longtime Senate mainstay, is now fighting off Paxton’s Trump-backed challenge. His campaign has launched a site called KenStoppers.com, which it describes as a real tip line for alleged misconduct.

Paxton and his now ex-wife Angela pictured together in 2021. / Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Paxton has been weighed down by years of scandal, but so far, he has managed to shake off everything thrown at him. In 2015, he was indicted for securities fraud and made a $300,000 settlement deal to avoid a criminal trial.

In 2023, he was impeached by the Republican-controlled state House over accusations of corruption and abuse of power connected to his affair, though the state Senate acquitted him.

The FBI has also investigated whether Paxton used his position to secure favors, including home renovations and a job for a woman with whom he was allegedly having an affair.

Add in a $3.3 million whistleblower settlement and his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and Cornyn’s camp is betting voters won’t ignore his travails.

Cornyn, therefore, has framed the race as a referendum on integrity. “This is a test of character, and whether character still matters,” he said earlier this month. The senator must defeat Paxton in the March GOP primary to secure a fifth term.

Message to Young Americans: Love Your Immigrants if You Want to Retire Decently

With declining birth rates, a predicted insolvency of the Social Security Fund, increased automation and robotization (AI), there won't be enough working Americans to generate money for future retirees. Now Trump can entice women to have more children with a pathetic $500. He can disrupt the current social security system with idiotic penny-pinching measures. He is encouraging AI to thrown millions of workers out on the street.... But the most dangerous policy he is implementing is harassing and threatening the immigrant community in order to keep America "white". 

You might argue that he is only after illegal migrants, but the entire legal immigrant community is perceiving this move as against them. Obama and Biden were deporting illegals at the same rate than the Trump is doing today, but without the cruelty and the insults, and therefore without scaring off all the immigrants. But Trump's asinine macho posture on immigration is disabling future job growth and killing social security for future retirees. 

But Trump won't be around for long. His insulting cruelty to the hard working immigrants who build this country, and the United States will again cycle back and beg smart and hardworking people from overseas to come and work and create jobs. Americans are getting older and are not making enough babies. They will need immigrants. America has always relied on immigrants. Without them, this country would be a desolate backward wilderness of inbred idiots.
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Trump’s social security chief says ‘everything’ is on the table and retirement is about to get a ‘different set of rules’
Eleanor Pringle
Updated Fri, September 19, 2025

Social Security faces insolvency by 2032, forcing policymakers to weigh politically fraught options like raising the retirement age, raising taxes, or adjusting benefit caps. Commissioner Frank Bisignano said “everything’s being considered,” as America’s retiree population surges. While the demographic shift threatens long-term economic sustainability, the wave of retirements is temporarily helping hold unemployment near 4.3% despite weak job growth.

Like many developed nations, the U.S. is wrangling with a complex question: How to pay for the care and support of an aging population. Many of the answers to that question won’t be popular, but governments are aware of the need to address the issue before crisis hits.

In America, that timeline is set to seven years. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Social Security’s retirement trust funds will be insolvent by the end of 2032.

As such Trump’s Social Security Administration Commissioner, Frank Bisignano, needs to work out the landscape for the next generation of retirees.

When asked if plans to redress the issue may include raising the retirement age, Bisignano told Fox Business yesterday: “I think everything’s being considered, will be considered.”

He added: “Remember, most people told you and I Social Security wasn’t going to be around, and it’s going to be around. And so the generations that are coming in will probably have a different set of rules than we had.”

The number of people wrangling with the new reality of retirement is staggering. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the Social Security area population (the relevant demographic for estimating payroll taxes and benefits as individuals reach retirement age) will increase from 342 million people in 2024 to 383 million people by 2054.

And this equilibrium of individuals supported by state benefits versus workers to pay into the system to support them is not a use which the CBO believes will be rebalanced anytime soon. In its estimation due to low fertility rates, all population growth from 2040 onwards will be as a result of immigration.

Bisignano added that raising the retirement age—currently set at 65—isn’t the only option on the table, saying there is “a whole host of items out there than can be hugely beneficial to get to the answer.”

Another consideration is the earnings cap at which benefits are phased out. While Bisignano said this figure—currently $175,000—will continue to go up, he added: “It’s another thing to put in the equation to think about.”

The Social Security chief added his team isn’t pushing the panic button yet, saying: “It’s really about solving it. Eight years is a long time away.”

The White House did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment on when, or if, the Social Security eligibility age might increase.

Retirement rates keeping employment steady

An unexpected upside to America’s aging population is that a shrinking workforce is, in the short-term, helping keep the nation’s unemployment rate in check.

Despite adding a meagre 22,000 jobs last month—and seeing significant downwards revision to labor market data—the U.S. has maintained an employment rate of around 4.3% over the past few months.

While the margins which could tip the rate up or down are minimal, one factor helping maintain the equilibrium is the increased amount of people who are retiring and as such, are not searching for roles.

As David Doyle, Macquarie’s head of economics, told Fortune a couple of weeks ago: “There’s been a surge in retirements this year. The first baby boomers that were born in 1946, they’re now turning 80, and you cascade down from that—I believe the last baby boomer year was 1964—so even the youngest baby boomers are into their sixties now.

“You now have this huge generation that is gonna be [a] drag on labor force growth.”

Of course, that drag is also helping keep unemployment rates down for the time being because the supply of labor does not outweigh even the most meagre of demand.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Anticipating Destruction in 2026 & 2028, Trump's GOP Enablers Are Walking Back

Listen to this moron from backward Texas, Ted Cruz, explaining his reason for breaking with Trump and his fellow MAGA monolith Republicans and condemning Trump's threats against US broadcasters. The entire republican establishment, save a few courageous men of principle, has protected and enabled Donald Trump's assault on democracy. Opportunists fear for their own little parliamentary seats, cowards fear that Trump will make their lives miserable, but most are stupid enough not to see how dangerous Trump is to the Republic.

Cruz's point is not in defense of the constitutional principle of protected free speech; his point is that the Democrats are going to take over Congress in 2026, then the presidency in 2028, as Trump's crushing defeat is highly anticipated, and Cruz fears retribution by the Democrats using the same barbaric and autocratic tactics against the GOP-MAGA when they assume power.

Cruz has been one of Trump's major enablers and defenders. He now sees that MAGA has reached its tipping point and is now on a downward spiral, and as expected from this idiotic barbarian Texan he is now beginning to walk back and away from the Trump Radical Right MAGA universe. He may be trying to position himself to the center as defender of real American values, but that is not what he is saying. He just fears his ass will be kicked by vengeful Democrats. What a disgusting opportunistic coward.

Do not be fooled by this lowlife trying to save his own skin for perhaps a pathetic aspiration to run again for the presidency. I judge politicians on their character, rather than on their promises. Promises may be made during a campaign with no guarantees of success. Most campaign promises are never fulfilled. But character tells you if the person will advance policies consistent with conscience, integrity, and principle. Cruz's character isn't encouraging at all.

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‘Dangerous as hell’: Ted Cruz compares FCC chair’s threats against ABC to mob tactics
Michael Williams, CNN
Sat, September 20, 2025 


Senator Ted Cruz speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, September 16. - Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday denounced Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s threats to pull ABC’s broadcast license as “unbelievably dangerous” and compared some of his rhetoric to “mafioso” tactics.

In an episode of his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” released on Friday, the Texas Republican said he was “thrilled” Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air by ABC over his comments about conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. But he said he strongly disagreed with the government policing speech, asserting it could come back to bite conservatives when Democrats retake power.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said. “But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said. We’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like,’ that will end up bad for conservatives.”

Though Carr’s comments have drawn widespread condemnation on the left, Cruz’s remarks represent one of the strongest denunciations of the threats against broadcasters by an elected conservative. Cruz also chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has broad authority over the FCC.

“Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again – wins the White House … they will silence us. They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous,” Cruz said.

Asked later by reporters on Capitol Hill if the Commerce Committee will hold hearings into the matter or investigate Carr if he continues in the same vein, Cruz left the door open to the possibility.

“There’s no doubt the Commerce Committee has oversight, authority and responsibility over the FCC, and when the Democrats had the majority, they did not engage in oversight … We will do our job and engage in oversight.”

President Donald Trump has also vaguely threatened to pull networks’ licenses if they air overwhelmingly negative coverage of him, though Cruz did not rebut the president’s remarks directly on the podcast.

Trump offered praise for Carr when pressed on the scathing remarks from the Texas Republican. “I think Brendan Carr is a great American patriot. So I disagree with Ted Cruz on that,” he said

The president also continued to lament what he described as “dishonesty” from network broadcasts that are critical of him.

Cruz played recent remarks Carr made on far-right podcaster Benny Johnson’s podcast, in which the FCC chairman threatened to take action against broadcasters who don’t “find ways to change conduct” the government considers disagreeable.

“I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” ABC pulled Kimmel’s show off the air indefinitely the day after Carr made those comments.

Responding to Carr’s comments, Cruz said: “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Look, look, I like Brendan Carr,” the senator said. “He’s a good guy. He’s the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him. But what he said there is dangerous as hell.”

“He says, ‘We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.’ And I got to say, that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”

Cruz later added: “I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.’”

“And it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel,” the senator said. “But when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.”

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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

Trump Says he Loves Netanyahu because "he is F - - - ing me"

Netanyahu, the wanted war criminal prime minister of Israel, along with Vladimir Putin, is THE obstacle to Trump's being awarded the Nobel Piss Prize. As we all know, trans-actional Trump, wants a deal. Doesn't matter what's in it, all he wants is the announcement of a deal. As an American businessman, he knows the first lesson students learn in business school: Lie, cheat, make up stuff.... in order to "look good".

"Perception is everything" is the American business religion's mantra. You could be rotten on the inside, but the marketing and the advertisements will polish your image sufficiently enough to make stupid people - the "consumers" - buy your junk. That is why billions of dollars are spent on American political campaigns: American citizens - oops, I meant "voters", are such ignorant fools that junky but expensive marketing and commercials can sway their consciences into voting for a cheating criminal adulterer ignorant wanabe dick-taitor.

Trump is upset with Netanyahu, not because of all the children he is killing or the lives he is destroying. Not even a desire for genuine peace moves Trump. NO, none of that matters. That is not the point. What matters is for Trump to be able to brag about making peace in the Near East and thus get the Nobel Piss Prize. You see, Trump is so jealous that a low-IQ African-American with a doctorate in Constitutional Law from Harvard University like Obama got the Peace Prize, while he, the orangutan with beautiful white skin, a pea brain, small hands and barely any education, hasn't yet been awarded the Piss Prize he so much desires.

Trump wants to go down in history as the Greatest Ever Man to walk the earth, the likes of which you've never ever seen before in all of recorded history. Grander than (or at least on a par with) Egyptian Akhenaten, Greek Alexander the Great, Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, Attila the Hun, Roman Caligula, Persian Cyrus and Darius and Xerxes, Phoenician Hanibaal, Roman Julius Cesar, Sargon the Great Akkadian, and all the way up to our time with his beloved Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. That is with whom Trump wants to be listed in the annals of history. An aspiration for eternity he shares with Vladimir Putin and Xi JinPing.

Rumors have it that he is planning to build an Egyptian Pharaoh's pyramid behind the White House, right by that ballroom. He already has drafted an executive order demanding he be buried there.

My advice to Trump: If you know, like many of us, that Netanyahu is exploiting your stupidity and is f- - - ing you, why don't you f---- him in return. You might get that Nobel Piss Prize afer all.

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‘He’s f---ing me’: Trump is reportedly pissed off by this world leader
Rachel Cohen
Thu, September 18, 2025



President Donald Trump is growing frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal exclusively reported late Wednesday that Trump had recently told several aides that the Israeli leader prefers using military force against Hamas — instead of the his preference of negotiating a ceasefire agreement. Tensions boiled over, according to the outlet, after Israel launched a missile attack on Hamas leadership in Qatar last week. While five members of the militant group were killed, all of the targeted top leaders survived, Hamas claimed.

“He’s f---ing me,” Trump said about Netanyahu, the Journal revealed, citing anonymous officials who heard the comment.

At the time, Trump was speaking with senior aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, about how to respond, according to the outlet. It comes as Netanyahu earlier this week did not rule out further attacks on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”

As Rubio met with Netanyahu on Monday, Trump urged the Israeli government to be “very careful” going forward.

“They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States,” Trump told reporters.

Trump’s exasperation, however, does not appear to be an isolated incident. The president has privately criticized Netanyahu in the past — including accusing him of disloyalty. After Netanyahu sent a video to former President Joe Biden, congratulating him on his 2020 presidential election win, Trump told Axios of the Israeli leader: “I haven’t spoken to him since... F--- him.”

Meanwhile, Trump has largely avoided public criticism of Netanyahu. While speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump emphasized that he wants the war to end and for Hamas to immediately release all remaining hostages.

“That’s what the people of Israel want,” Trump said during a press conference alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “They want them back. And we want the fighting to stop.”

Trump also said that the recognition of a Palestinian state is a rare disagreement between him and Starmer. The British government is set to vote on acknowledging a Palestinian state next week, shortly after Trump wraps up his visit to the United Kingdom.

He Was with Jesus. Yet, Jesus Didn't Save him

There are rumors in the MAGA universe that some people, like Frank Turek, saw Jesus receiving Charlie Kirk at the moment he was killed at Utah Valley University. 

Turek said he joined Kirk on the car ride to the university on the day of the assassination, discussing potential student questions. Turek also said that he warned Kirk about several nearby buildings and the safety risk involved.

Turek said that he heard a single shot during a question and saw Kirk falling backward. He and the security team jumped into the SUV that they used to travel to the event and sped to a hospital while performing CPR and praying.

"We drove four miles… all the way to the hospital with the car door open" because Charlie was a tall man. Turek said he kept yelling, "Come on, Charlie! Come on! Come on!" At one point, Turek tearfully said he realized Kirk was gone.

"Charlie wasn’t there. His eyes were fixed," he said. "He wasn't looking at me. He was looking past me right into eternity. He was with Jesus already. He was killed instantly and felt absolutely no pain."

"If that's any comfort at all, Charlie didn't suffer," he said. "He was gone. He was with Jesus. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. That's where he was."

If these Christian devotees were Catholic, Kirk would be beatified and sanctified as a saint by the Vatican: Saint Charlie, wouldn't that be nice? Perhaps Trump should write to the Vatican demanding the sanctification of Charlie Kirk, otherwise he'll impose sanctions on the Holy See. 

But with the history of American evangelicals, methodists, baptists, lutherans, calvinists, presbyterians and the five dozen other sects that the Reformation spawned as descendants of the Reformation, they can't make a saint out of Kirk. Now to be honest, their reformation did not change things much, human nature being what it is. But to their credit, they stopped the regalia, the gold, the robes, the icons and the statues and all of that garbage of the Vatican's Catholic Church, and turned what was a fun communal almost-pagan religion into a dark, sober, boring sort of individualistic religion, which perhaps explains the compensation with wealth, megachurches, the shows, the hallucinating dances and all the equally pagan bullshit of "worship". On the other hand, they preserved the bigotry, the abuses, the quest for money and power, the adulteries and all the folklore one finds in any religion. Without showmanship, any religion would quickly be deserted by the "faithful".

The question, though, is why didn't Jesus save Kirk like he saved the vice-Messiah Donald Jump?

Trump Ordered Keir Starmer to Boycott Muslim London Mayor Sadiq Khan

... and the submissive English monarchy and government complied.

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

The Telegraph

Trump: I banned Sadiq Khan from state visit events
Samuel Montgomery
Fri, September 19, 2025

Donald Trump has claimed he banned Sir Sadiq Khan from attending events put on for his second state visit to Britain.

The president said the London Mayor “wanted to be there”, but he personally demanded he be sidelined.

The snub is the latest broadside in the war of words between the two men that dates back to 2017, when the president criticised the mayor’s response to the London Bridge terror attack.

On the eve of Mr Trump’s return to the White House in January, Sir Sadiq warned of “resurgent fascism” and echoes of 1930s Germany.

The president responded in July, while staying at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland, by branding the Mayor a “nasty person” who was doing a “terrible job”.

Mr Trump has now told reporters on board Air Force One that he personally requested Sir Sadiq have no involvement with his visit to Britain.

“He wanted to be there, as I understand it. I didn’t want him,” the president said, adding: “I didn’t want him there. I asked that he not be there.

“I think the Mayor of London, Khan, is among the worst mayors in the world and we have some bad ones. I think he’s done a terrible job.”

Donald Trump arriving at Chequers on Thursday - Leon Neal/Getty

Mr Trump said crime in London had soared “through the roof” on the mayor’s watch and described him as a “disaster” when it comes to immigration policies.

He added: “I’ve not liked him for a long time. I have a certain pride in London, in the UK, my mother was born in Scotland, and when I see Mayor Khan do a bad job – the stabbings, the dirt and the filth – it’s not the same. I didn’t want him there.”

Before Mr Trump had touched down at Stansted Airport on Tuesday, Sir Sadiq had penned a fresh attack against the president.

He accused the Republican of fuelling “divisive, far-Right politics around the world”.

Sir Sadiq wrote in the Guardian: “Scapegoating minorities, illegally deporting US citizens, deploying the military to the streets of diverse cities. These actions aren’t just inconsistent with Western values – they’re straight out of the autocrat’s playbook.”

Donald Trump gestures next to the King before leaving Windsor Castle on Thursday - Evan Vucci/AP

Reporters on board the presidential plane on Thursday asked Mr Trump what his favourite part of his state visit had been.

The president responded: “Being with King Charles, he’s a wonderful guy.

“I knew him before but now I know him a lot better. The artwork. I saw more paintings than any human being ever saw and statues.

“They treated us great, they treated our country great, I view that as real respect for our country the way they did it. Last night was beautiful.”

Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, were treated to two days of highly choreographed pomp and pageantry which included a military ceremony, flypast and state banquet.

The only apparent mishap occurred during the journey from Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence, to Stansted Airport when Marine One, the president’s helicopter, made an unscheduled landing.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said a “minor hydraulic issue” had forced Marine One to land at a local airfield “out of an abundance of caution”.

The Trumps then carried on their journey in a backup helicopter.