"It's a Jackie Robinson moment." That declaration by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries struck a curious chord because Jeffries was calling for Black athletes to boycott SEC conference teams to protest not the existence but the elimination of racial discrimination.
State Attorney General Ken Paxton’s win in the Texas Senate primary exhilarated President Trump and the MAGA base on Tuesday night. But the victory also electrified Democrats, who say the seat is not just competitive but winnable with their candidate state Rep. James Talarico. Democrats for years have talked about winning a big statewide race in…
There is nothing that Donald Trump and his corrupt cronies would love more than to rewrite history and make January 6, 2021, into nothing more than an overhyped little protest rather than the violent insurrection that everyone knows it was.So it’s vitally important that we continue to scream and stomp our collective feet about the $1.776 taxpayer-funded slush fund created by the sleazebag acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, for his boss in the Oval Office. It’s designed as a payoff for the crazed thugs who stormed the Capitol that fateful day, because it apparently wasn’t quite enough for the “president” to have pardoned them.Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges and former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn have sued to block the creation of the fund, calling it, “The most brazen act of presidential corruption this century.”That’s actually underselling it.The reason why this is so fraudulent and unthinkable speaks to the horror that went down that infamous day. And while the story has been told numerous times, regular reminders of its terror and scope are essential to be sure it doesn’t fade from memory.Start with the fact that Hodges and Dunn defended the Capitol and the lawmakers inside it (including Republicans who have struggled to minimize its scale) that day. Hodges was the man in the infamous photograph of the violent mob crushing a cop between metal doors.Let’s remember that the carnage began shortly after noon, when rioters tried to break into the building to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president. Hours of hand-to-hand combat ensued as police struggled in vain to hold the insurrectionists back from killing elected officials and their staff.On the west front of the Capitol, rioters broke down barriers and assaulted officers, spraying them with chemicals and hitting them with pipes, tools, and stolen bike racks. After finally busting through the police line and breaching the Capitol, they smashed windows, stalked the halls, chanted for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence and defiled the offices.The advancing mob punched officers, speared them with flagpoles, attacked them with tasers and stolen riot shields, and worked to drag them into the crowd with the intent of seriously injuring or killing them. They engaged in an almost medieval style of combat, screaming and smashing and clawing and attempting to crush officers with their sheer weight and volume.Hodges alleges in his lawsuit that he was “hit from above with a heavy object, kicked in the chest and driven to the ground. A rioter then grabbed Hodges by the face and tried to gouge out his eyes, unsuccessfully. As Hodges and his fellow officers fought to stop the rioters from flooding into the building, he was sandwiched between the metal doors by the enraged attackers.It took more than three hours following the Capitol breach for Trump and his Department of Defense to (reluctantly) approve and dispatch the D.C. National Guard. It is all without precedent in American history.Some 140 officers were injured in the January 6 attack, ranging from concussions and chemical burns to broken bones, traumatic brain injuries, crushed spinal discs, and other serious trauma. These rioters were not fooling around. They were intent on revenge and felt their role in American history was to take out anyone who got in their way.Several officers who responded so heroically that day later died by suicide, including Howard Liebengood and Jeffrey Smith. It is unfathomable that any sentient human being could see what happened and come to any conclusion other than the group of marauders were trespassing criminals hellbent on retribution.Yet somehow, according to the Department of “Justice,” it was ultimately the Biden Administration that was “weaponized” against these criminals. They were wronged by being prosecuted after committing an act of armed rebellion. And now it’s up to you and me to foot the bill.It should be noted that Hodges and Dunn feel justified in suing to stop the fund because they’ve had to live with constant death threats and harassment from the brainwashed MAGA hordes.Their suit notes that any payoff to these rioters “will both compensate and empower the very people making those threats. Militias like the Proud Boys will use money from the Fund to arm and equip themselves…Most chillingly, it will signal to past and potential future perpetrators of violence against Dunn and Hodges that they need not fear prosecution; to the contrary, they should expect to be rewarded.”The timing of this is naturally hardly coincidental.
Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is claming state election laws amount to voter suppression, vowing to out-organize GOP rival Ken Paxton in 2026.
Stephen Miller claimed this week that the federal budget could be balanced simply by cutting payments to ineligible recipients — and experts, economists, and legal analysts wasted no time calling it out as fantasy."Based on what I've heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them," Miller said.The response was swift and brutal.New York Times columnist David French called it "wildly false" and warned it "breeds a dangerous level of ignorance and wishful thinking in the American public."Immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick was more blunt: "Stephen Miller thinks Americans are idiots. That's the only explanation for this kind of contemptuous lie."The numbers don't come close to supporting Miller's claim. Trump's own Office of Management and Budget calculated that all potentially erroneous individual payments totaled $186 billion in 2025 — about 10 percent of the current budget deficit, according to budget analyst Jessica Riedl. The deficit itself runs nearly $2 trillion."'Based on what I've heard' means 'according to my baseless fantasies,'" wrote financial journalist James Surowiecki. "The claim that there's $1.8 trillion in fraudulent payments is the same kind of delusion that explains why DOGE was such a failure."Reason magazine's Billy Binion put it simply: "We will never balance the budget if powerful people keep peddling wild falsehoods like this."Our deficit is roughly $2 trillion. The largest share of spending goes to entitlements for American citizens. It really isn't hard to understand. We will never balance the budget if powerful people keep peddling wild falsehoods like this. https://t.co/DeGgvuXzvZ— Billy Binion (@billybinion) May 26, 2026
"He's tiny! It's blue!" one excited scientist was recorded exclaiming.
Outgoing Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie said Sunday his efforts to force the release of Department of Justice files related to registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were […]
Donald Trump may have handed Democrats one of their most potent weapons in the fight for Senate control — and he did it back in January, almost without anyone noticing.According to a New York Times report on Republican fears ahead of the midterms, Trump's January attack on Sen. Susan Collins of Maine could be deployed by Democrats this fall to suppress Republican turnout in one of the most consequential Senate races in the country.After Collins voted with Democrats to curtail Trump's war powers following his military action against Venezuela, Trump declared on Truth Social that she "should never be elected to office again." The Times notes that Democrats could now use that quote directly against Collins — not to persuade Republican voters to vote Democratic, but simply to demoralize them enough to stay home.Collins holds one of the seats Democrats must flip if they hope to take back the Senate majority. The race is already considered a toss-up.The revelation underscores a broader pattern the Times identifies in its reporting: Trump has repeatedly taken actions that damage his own party's electoral prospects, from endorsing scandal-plagued Ken Paxton in Texas to creating a $1.8 billion fund to compensate January 6th rioters. But the Collins case is unique because the damage was self-inflicted months ago and has been quietly sitting there ever since, waiting to be used.
