A crowd of people gathered at the Great American State Fair on Thursday stopped to gaze up at the sky as several fighter jets streaked over the National Mall. Blake Boggs crouched down to his young son’s stroller and pointed up. “You don’t get to see the Thunderbirds anywhere,” he told The Hill. Despite the…
Two federal courts struck down separate Trump administration voter citizenship verification efforts within the same week this June, and the wins for plaintiffs came with an asterisk neither side has fully reckoned with. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, sitting on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, vacated the administration’s overhaul of the SAVE database, […]
One of President Donald Trump’s favorite shows, “Fox & Friends,” is pulling up stakes after just days of promoting his Great American State Fair, a 16-day event to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.According to The Daily Beast, the conservative morning TV show “is back in the studio” after two days, which “it spent talking up over live shots of empty grass.”One of President Donald Trump’s favorite shows, “Fox & Friends,” is pulling up stakes after just days of promoting his Great American State Fair, a 16-day event to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.According to The Daily Beast, the conservative morning TV show “is back in the studio” after two days, which “it spent talking up over live shots of empty grass.”Wednesday morning, the “Fox & Friends” studio was packed with “an audience of first responders, veterans, and their families” as the hosts returned to the indoor set, The Daily Beast noted.“We’ve been away for 48 hours. They’ve been waiting for us to return. We appreciate it,” co-host Brian Kilmeade declared.Trump had claimed that 45,000 people turned out for his kickoff speech, but Fox News’ cameras “blew apart the president’s boasts.”As did photographs from Reuters, The Daily Beast reported, with them “showing nowhere near the numbers the president had touted.”“The network’s live shots from the Mall repeatedly framed wide stretches of empty grass behind its anchors, The Daily Beast added. “On other mornings, the walkways and booths behind the set sat all but empty. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, turned up on the show Monday to gush about the fair with a bare lawn.”On Tuesday, USA Today opinion columnist Rex Huppke wrote, “I love President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair. I love its emptiness. It’s expensive food. Its ability to confound Trump-friendly media outlets that keep pretending it’s going great.”“I love seeing Fox News broadcasting from the fair, its hosts claiming the place is filled with excited patriots while the scenes behind them show a vast expanse of untrod-upon grass with an occasional few humans milling along the fringes.”Huppke said it was “like watching your high school bully host a party that no one attends. It’s a daily humiliation for a wildly unpopular president who coopted what should be a unifying national celebration and turned it into repellent schlock.”
If the final week of the U.S. Supreme Court proved anything, it's just how thin-skinned one conservative justice is.That's according to legal analyst Dina Sayegh Doll and podcast host Michael Popok, who spoke on the "Legal AF" podcast network's "Unprecedented" segment about the last week of cases coming from the Supreme Court.There was what the experts call a "remarkable breach of Supreme Court decorum" this week between Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Sonia Sotomayor as the two read decisions from the bench. Justice Sotomayor wrote "a powerful dissent," which was joined by Justices Katanji Brown Jackson and Elana Kagan and she planned to read it. Popok doesn't think she told Alito she intended to read it, but one analyst thinks she flagged that she would read her dissent, though Alito may not have known what was in it."Alito was done reading his summary of his decision," said Popok. "And next up was Sotomayor and she read big portions of her descent and really, I mean, accused the court of being heartless, comparing it to that famous ship that was turned away by numerous countries ... filled with Jews that were trying to avoid being killed in the Holocaust. [The ship] got returned to Eastern Europe and many of them died in the Holocaust." With dramatic emphasis, Popok clutched imaginary pearls around his neck, "Alito got all, according to court observers who were in the room because we don't have the audio, 'Well! If I had known that she was going to read so much of her dissent, I would have added more.'""It's just like a total d—— bag. There's no other way," he said as Doll chimed in to agree. "One-hundred percent," she said."You won! You won. You took away human dignity and now you're going after Sotomayor because she's chastising you," Popok added of Alito. "You're so thin-skinned."The Supreme Court later issued a statement saying it was a "misunderstanding." Popok laughed, saying he thinks they're trying to "cover up" because "they've got an institutional crisis on their hands."Doll related it to those Americans who may not be sitting on the highest bench in the land, asking, "I mean, how many people out there have a coworker like Alito? Okay, let's just put that out there, right? Who just thinks that they're not good enough, like that somehow they can just gaslight them or minimize them."She said that she assumed it was an indication that Allito would announce his retirement over the summer, "because I think he sees himself as this necessary person probably to combat Sotomayor right now. I mean — it just — the ego in him!"NPR accidentally made a report public that Alito was retiring, but retracted it after less than an hour.Doll thinks that Alito believes "this is his moment" and that he's "waited years to be able to get enough other justices to basically dismantle all of our rights. But I don't think he's — based on how he interacted, he seems to me somebody who is so ego-driven that he couldn't have her, like you said, who already lost have a moment to say her dissent. Somebody like that thinks that they need to be in charge, that nobody else can carry the mantle."Both think that Alito and far-right conservative Clarence Thomas are leaving because they all witnessed what happened with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the flip that the court took because she didn't step out while there was a Democratic president. Doll doesn't think it'll happen this summer, however, because "they're having way too good of a time taking away our rights." Alito, Doll continued, also likely thinks that "he's there to help put Sotomayor in her place. Roberts will not do it, right? Which is probably true. Roberts probably would not have talked down to Sotomayor in that way. He's very polite in the way he takes away our rights."
The New Jersey congressman who missed more than 140 votes has finally revealed the mystery "medical issue" that kept him from his congressional duties.Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (N.J.) last voted in Congress on March 5 and then went missing for three months without a full explanation of his absence.'There is no timeline for recovery, only the work of getting better one day at a time.'On Tuesday, Kean said in a speech on the floor of Congress that he had been diagnosed with depression and told to stay in the hospital for treatment. "Several months ago, due to health concerns, I entered the hospital for some testing. I did not believe that this would result in a long-term stay," he said. "I was given the diagnosis of depression."Kean said his doctors recommended that he stay in the hospital to treat his depression."They explained to me that this would be the fastest way to recovery, and to be honest, I was hesitant. I didn’t think that I had time for it. ... Like many people, I believed that I could simply push through," Kean continued. "But I agreed to follow my doctor’s recommendations again, not believing that it would result in a long-term stay."Kean was pressed for details about his absence from Congress in April and said only that he had been dealing with a "personal medical issue."He said Tuesday that he had hoped to seek release earlier but his treatment dragged on."As the over 48 million of my fellow Americans being treated for this illness have come to discover, there is no timeline for healing. There is no timeline for recovery," he added, "only the work of getting better one day at a time."Kean won the primary for his re-election campaign during the time he was gone. RELATED: GOP congressman sort of reappears after going AWOL for months, missing over 100 votes Kean reiterated his message on social media."I’m a private person by nature, so sharing my story wasn’t easy. But if speaking openly about what I’ve been through helps even one person know they’re not alone, then it was worth it," he wrote."I’m deeply grateful for the prayers, kindness, and support I’ve received," Kean concluded.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
