Crooked Media - Back with MAGAvengeance

This sinister rhetoric is a dark omen for a second Trump term, when there will be fewer constraints.

• Trump began his first term surrounded by establishment figures like former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who refused to implement some of Trump's most outrageous orders. Sessions recused himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, in a decision that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel — a move Trump famously hated. 

• But Trump’s next administration will likely be crammed with lickspittles and lackeys, Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer said on Friday’s episode. “Flash forward to 2025 and all of those safeguards are gone,” Pfeiffer said. “Every person Trump hires will be an extreme loyalist willing to go to the hill to implement whatever Trump’s desires are.” 

It's gonna be a long five months till the election!

Being in Congress must be a pretty sweet gig. Lately, lawmakers have literally been able to bill taxpayers for food and lodging expenses without even having to show receipts, under a new program designed to rely on the honor system. The honor system… In Congress! Surprise, surprise: more than 300 House members billed a total of at least $5.8 million to the program in 2023, according to a recent report in the Washington Post. The whole thing is a “ridiculous loophole,” Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the good-government group Public Citizen, told the paper.  

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who flip-flopped to endorse Trump and then won his endorsement in return, may have overcharged the House by more than $8,900 for bills from her $1.6 million townhouse in Capitol Hill, according to a new analysis by Punchbowl News. The news agency’s review of bills from her home show the Congresswoman may have charged the government for that much more than she was actually eligible for. 

Mace’s staff told Punchbowl that the Congresswoman wasn’t available to discuss the discrepancy. “We follow all the rules of reimbursements and last year we were reimbursed less than what was allowed,” her communications director told the agency in a statement. “Our office also returned over $300,000 in taxpayer dollars from our office budget last year.”

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asked the court to liquidate his assets to help meet the $1.5 billion he owes the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. The move could mean the end of Jones’s ownership of Infowars, but also means the families are less likely to get paid the money he owes them from their defamation lawsuit. We wish him every unhappiness!!

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed 2019 trips paid for by his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow in the justices’ financial disclosures released Friday. This was Thomas’ first time disclosing the visits to Bali and to a private California club after Democratic lawmakers last year asked for an ethics review of the justice’s reporting practices. The required reports also showed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson received four free tickets from Beyoncé to the superstar’s Renaissance Tour last year.  

Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows pleaded not guilty Friday along with Trump 2020 Elections Day operations director Michael Roman to nine felony charges for their role in allegedly trying to overturn Trump’s loss in Arizona. Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Shellie Smith set an October 31 trial date.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) announced Virginia will no longer follow California’s standard for emissions, after lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 requiring every new car sold in the state to be fully electric by 2035. The bill was passed when Democrats had full control of the legislature and governor’s office, and GOP lawmakers have been trying to repeal it for the last two years. Youngkin’s decision to ignore the law on the books is likely to draw legal challenges, according to Axios. Glenn Youngkin: a guy who never fails to repeal productive legislation just for the sake of being an asshole.

The U.S. temporary aid pier was reattached to the Gaza shore beach in the Gaza strip Friday morning after sustaining damage from heavy seas last week in just the latest setback in the pier’s rollout to get humanitarian aid to Palestinians. The Pentagon said the rough seas caused nearly $22 million worth of damage.

The Biden administration announced new vehicle mileage fuel standards on Friday, requiring American automakers to increase fuel economy so that passenger cars would average 65 miles per gallon by 2031, up from the 48.7-mile standard used today. The Transportation Department aims to couple these new rules with the mandated increase in electric and hybrid vehicles and the Environmental Protection Agency’s strict new limits on tailpipe pollution to combat global warming. Glenn Youngkin is somewhere frothing at the mouth. 

The American Cancer Society is starting an ambitious long-term study on how cancer impacts Black women. Researchers are looking to enroll 100,000 Black women without cancer to study behaviors, environmental exposures, and life experiences for 30 years with hopes to zero in on factors dividing cancer prevalence and death among the population that has long been overlooked.