'I was becoming effective, so they wanted to eliminate me'
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GOP congressman says his party is set to count cost of ‘Trump disappointment syndrome’ after primary defeatDonald Trump’s Republican party is on course for a damaging rejection at the ballot box in November, according to a maverick US congressman ousted by a challenger handpicked by the president.Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, became the latest of Trump’s targets to be defeated in the party’s primaries this week. He had repeatedly broken with the president over military action against Iran, government spending and the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Continue reading...
House Republicans brush aside fears over Trump backing primary challengers against GOP incumbents after Rep. Thomas Massie's Kentucky defeat.
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner declined to apologize for a deleted Reddit post saying a Purple Heart recipient "didn't deserve to live."
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) sounded the alarm this weekend over a purported sweetheart deal that gave President Donald Trump direct financial control over a public Florida airport, telling his X followers the story has not received the attention it deserves.In a post on social media, Levin laid out how a Florida county effectively handed Trump the trademark and licensing rights to a public airport, with the president now positioned to profit off branded merchandise tied to the facility."Not enough people are talking about this," Levin wrote. "A Florida airport was renamed after Donald Trump. He walked away with the trademark, the licensing rights, and a deal that lets him profit off every piece of merchandise sold there."The deal Levin referenced is the same agreement the Guardian's Richard Luscombe reported on earlier this month, detailing how Palm Beach International Airport was rebranded as the President Donald J. Trump International Airport in a narrow vote of the Palm Beach County Commission. The airport sits less than five miles from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.According to the Guardian, the licensing agreement was signed by Trump last weekend and approved by the commission on a 4-3 vote in which the deciding ballot was cast by Maria Sachs, a Democrat. The remaining six commissioners split along party lines.The agreement was struck with DTTM Operations LLC, the Delaware-based Trump Organization affiliate run by Donald Trump Jr. that handles licensing, marketing, and intellectual property for the family, according to the report.Trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who has no connection to the deal, told the Guardian that the structure was "unusual." Trump gets to pick the vendors who manufacture branded merchandise, can monetize the new airport name however he wants, and can license the trademark to any third party of his choosing. Although the agreement bars "direct financial compensation" from goods sold at the airport, the Trump Organization can cash in on the same merchandise sold anywhere else, including on Trump's own online store.Trump also retains final approval over how his name, image, and likeness are portrayed at the airport."The clause effectively limits the county's editorial discretion, ensuring that portrayals of Trump, as both an individual and a former president, align with his personal preferences," Gerben told the Guardian.Levin honed in on how the deal got done as much as on the deal itself.According to Levin, county staff warned commissioners that rejecting the renaming proposal could trigger retaliation from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with state transportation funding at risk. The Guardian's reporting confirms that account, noting that staff told the hearing that failure to comply with state law could jeopardize transportation funding and grant assurances from the state."DeSantis has already removed state attorneys and school board members who dared to cross him," Levin wrote. "That is the reality the Democratic commissioner who cast the deciding vote was living in when she made her choice: hand Donald Trump control of a public airport or watch Florida Republicans strip funding from the very people she was elected to represent."Sachs defended her vote in a statement to the Guardian, saying the commission was not voting on whether to change the airport's name but rather "approving a licensing agreement necessary to protect the county from trademark liability."Levin did not see the situation that way."That is absolutely insane," he wrote Saturday. "Florida Republicans handed Trump a money machine and called it a naming rights deal, and the people of Palm Beach County never got a say in any of it."
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A dissent by 77-year-old Supreme Court Clarence Thomas in an Alabama death penalty ruling this week found two conservative justices siding with the minority liberal wing, and three other conservatives wanting nothing to do with his recommendations.According to a report from Slate, Thomas’s dissent and urging to overturn precedent may have been too far afield for the tastes of Justices John Roberts, Sam Alito, and Neil Gorsuch.Thomas's extreme position in the Alabama death penalty case Hamm v. Smith has exposed deep fissures within the conservative majority, with three justices distancing themselves from his call to overturn 25 years of precedent protecting condemned individuals with cognitive disabilities.In his solo dissent, Thomas argued that nothing in constitutional history prevents executing people with intellectual disabilities and urged the court to overrule the landmark Atkins v. Virginia decision that banned such executions under the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment."Nothing in our history suggests there's anything unlawful about executing murderers now protected by Atkins," Thomas wrote, calling for the court to "restore the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause's fixed meaning."Thomas specifically argued it would be constitutional to execute people with the cognitive abilities of a young child — a position so extreme that even his conservative allies refused to endorse it.Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern reported that Thomas stood entirely alone in his position. "Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch didn't sign onto Thomas' dissent," they wrote.However, the three justices signaled they might be open to weakening intellectual disability protections if a state presents a "cleaner rule" for determining disability. "But this trio did suggest that if the court can't articulate a clean rule about who is intellectually disabled, it may need to overturn all protections against the execution of that whole class of capital defendants," Lithwick and Stern noted.The dissent's rejection by even conservative justices is somewhat encouraging. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett notably refused to sign onto the Roberts-Alito-Gorsuch position suggesting potential openness to eliminating protections entirely.However, Lithwick and Stern warned of future danger. "That is a bad omen, though it's encouraging that Kavanaugh and Barrett didn't sign onto it. The question now is: If a state can litigate this better and make a more coherent argument, will Kavanaugh and Barrett sign on then?" they asked.
NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell revealed that he received a text from Kyle Busch about tweaking eligibility for the Truck Series days before the driver's death.