Views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. It turns out that voters didn’t care so much about the Nazi tattoo after all. They threw […]
Washington Examiner White House reporter Naomi Lim said a lack of vetting on Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, could hurt Democrats’ hopes of controlling the Senate. Lim’s comments follow political consultant Daniel Moraff and fiancée Leanne Fan’s account of how they identified and recruited Platner to run for Maine’s Senate seat. […]
The UFC has given a sneak peek inside “the claw,” the imposing stage set up ahead of a historic fight this weekend on the White House South Lawn. Stepping out of the White House press corridors, one is greeted with a massive, larger-than-life red, white, and blue “UFC FREEDOM 250” medallion fitting of a $60 […]
Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) was an outspoken defender of AI data centers — until he realized it was political poison with voters.According to Axios' Andrew Solender, Bresnahan, who represents a competitive district in northeastern Pennsylvania, has introduced a bill called the Local Control Protect Act, which seeks "to restrict companies' ability to sue municipalities for rejecting applications to build data centers," as well as require developers to get community permission to build them.Such legislation would make building data centers almost impossible, given overwhelming public opposition that shows 7 out of 10 Americans oppose data centers near them. Common complaints include concerns about the impact of their electricity and water consumption on local communities, as well as general distrust of the AI technology they are powering.However, this new legislation comes just a year after Bresnahan was urging companies to build data centers in his own congressional district — at the exact same time he bought up to $15,000 in stock in a company that provides electric cables for data centers.Bresnahan has grown controversial as one of the most prolific stock traders in Congress, and he has frequently been accused of trading off his own legislative decisions.In one other instance, he dumped shares in a Medicaid provider before voting to pass President Donald Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" which cuts around $1 trillion in Medicaid funding over the next decade.
This fall's midterm election is a referendum on President Donald Trump, according to a veteran journalist, and he's not making things easy for Republicans trying to hold onto their congressional majorities.Polling has made clear that affordability remains the top voter concern, and Punchbowl News co-founder John Bresnahan told "CNN News Central" that Republicans on Capitol Hill, whom he's covered for decades, were aghast when Trump declared "I love inflation" during an Oval Office event."Oh yeah, Trump is the issue of the election," Bresnahan said. "I mean, he is the biggest issue. His conduct, the war, his handling the economy, his conduct in office. I've got to tell you, I was on the Hill yesterday when he made those comments and they went through the Capitol pretty quickly, and it was just, you know, every Republican just winced. They're upset."Trump was re-elected to a second term on a promise to fix the economy on Day One, but a year and a half later, voters have soured on his handling of the affordability crisis."The messaging they're hearing out of the White House is not about inflation," the well-connected reporter said. "It's not about the economy. It's not about Americans' financial status, their overdue credit card payments. They're struggling to pay for school, and every day that Trump is out talking about Iran, he's talking talking about other issues, he's talking about the 2020 elections is a disaster for Hill Republicans. They're just – it's a big problem for them.""Speaker Mike Johnson can talk, you know, say Trump's labors are focused on inflation, but the American public doesn't think so, Congress doesn't think so – even the Republicans in Congress, I'll tell you that," Bresnhan added. "So this is a big problem for them." - YouTube youtu.be
Trump's U.S. ambassador to Turkey is accused of helping Jeffrey Epstein find a personal assistant who became both a recruiter and a victim in his sex trafficking network, Raw Story has learned.Sarah Kellen told members of the House Oversight Committee last month that she was working as a host at the W Hotel in Honolulu in 2001 when she was recruited to work for Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. A woman working as an intern at the hotel’s front desk befriended her and told her about the opportunity.Kellen told the committee that Epstein had helped get the woman, whose name is redacted from an interview transcript, an internship at the W “because he was friends with Tom Barrack," who owned the hotel.Kellen said she didn’t realize at the time that Epstein and Maxwell were her prospective employers.“She never told me his name,” Kellen told members of the committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), during her May 21 interview. “She just told me there was a wealthy couple in New York that was looking for a new traveling assistant and if I would be interested. She had taken some risqué photos of me earlier, and I learned that she had sent them to Jeffrey, and then she started telling me about the job opportunity.”Barrack, a key diplomatic player for the Trump administration in the Middle East as ambassador to Turkey and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq, has not commented publicly about his well-documented, decades-long relationship with Epstein. His role in potentially connecting Kellen with Epstein has not been previously reported.The start of Kellen’s employment with Epstein and Maxwell overlaps with a period when the couple was friendly with the future president and first lady. Donald Trump told New York magazine in October 2002 that he had known Epstein for 15 years and that he was “a lot of fun to be with,” adding, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”The friendship between Epstein and Trump, along with Barrack, is detailed in the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, which describes the three as “a 1980s and ’90s set of nightlife Musketeers.”A billionaire real estate investor, Barrack reportedly introduced Trump to Paul Manafort, his first campaign chairman during the 2016 campaign. Manafort was later convicted of crimes related to his political consulting work for a pro-Russia party in Ukraine.A prolific fundraisier for the Trump campaign, Barrack spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and following Trump’s election, chaired the 2017 inauguration committee.Before that, Barrack reportedly leveraged his business connections in the Middle East to smooth over distrust among Gulf Arab leaders following Trump’s call early in the campaign for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering” the United States. The effort appeared to pay dividends when Trump made the first international trip of his first term, a visit to a summit in Saudi Arabia. The close relationship between Trump and the Gulf states has continued into the second administration, with the government of Qatar giving a plane to the president. Tom Barrack described Donald Trump as "one of my closest friends for forty years" during his speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention.Courtesy C-SpanIn 2022, Barrack was acquitted of charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates during the 2016 campaign. Now, as a U.S. diplomat stationed in Ankara, he praises the partnership between the two countries as being "of critical importance to the Middle East," and recently claimed credit for processing visas for the Iranian team so they could travel to the United States to compete in the World Cup.Epstein, who would be indicted for sex trafficking in July 2019, appeared to view himself as the odd-man-out during Trump’s ascent to power, while Barrack quietly assisted.Summarizing Wolff’s Fire and Fury in a January 2018 email, Landon Thomas Jr. — author of the 2002 New York profile — reported to Epstein: “There are a few paragraphs on you, TB, DJT partying around NYC in 90s etc. — and then MW says you are airbrushed out of DJT history while Barrack sticks around.”“I know,” Epstein replied.Raw Story was unable to reach Barrack for comment through the State Department or the U.S. Embassy in Ankara.In 2012, Epstein credited Barrack with connecting him to Kellen in an email to another employee to arrange for a visit by Barrack and Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, then the ruling emir of Qatar who was interested in buying Epstein’s New York townhouse.Epstein had planned to be in Paris at the time of the visit. In an email, he instructed an unidentified employee to be ready to receive the guests “well dressed” and in “heels.”“It’s Tom Barrack coming, so you can tell him I thank him every day for Sarah,” Epstein added.
Democrats will support someone — anyone — who will help them defeat Republicans.
Since he came down the escalator 11 years ago, Donald Trump’s personal conduct made him uniquely unfit for office and Americans had a moral obligation to oppose him, so said Democrats. Character mattered in politics, they told us. But on Tuesday, nearly 150,000 Mainers sent a different message. Democrats handed Graham Platner a landslide primary […]