[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Better bring the portable hair dye stick, he's gonna be sweatin' in Hotlanta...

fangblackbone wrote:

That is a rapid acceleration of the Trump response timeline:
I didn't do it
I did it but it wasn't bad
I did it but it wasn't that bad.
I did it and it was bad, but I am allowed to.
The other guys did it.
The other guys did it worse
Why are you not going after the other guy who did it much worse.

And all in one speech...

This is an adaptation of what's known as The Narcissist's Prayer. Which of course is fitting for Trump since he's a textbook narcissist.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gV3T4kL.jpeg)

Rat Boy wrote:

Trump's now claiming the FBI confiscated his three passports (one of them expired [again, his claim]) during the search last week. I guess somebody thinks he's a flight risk.

DOJ says the FBI doesn't have his passports, so he's just the "Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV" guy who's now forgotten where he put his passport.

OG_slinger wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

Trump's now claiming the FBI confiscated his three passports (one of them expired [again, his claim]) during the search last week. I guess somebody thinks he's a flight risk.

DOJ says the FBI doesn't have his passports, so he's just the "Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV" guy who's now forgotten where he put his passport.

But I am sure they now have a lot of questions for why he has three of them.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gV3T4kL.jpeg)

Christ. Off-topic, but this is my father.

Paleocon wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

Trump's now claiming the FBI confiscated his three passports (one of them expired [again, his claim]) during the search last week. I guess somebody thinks he's a flight risk.

DOJ says the FBI doesn't have his passports, so he's just the "Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV" guy who's now forgotten where he put his passport.

But I am sure they now have a lot of questions for why he has three of them.

Normal blue one
Black diplomatic one
Red government employee one

Paleocon wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

Trump's now claiming the FBI confiscated his three passports (one of them expired [again, his claim]) during the search last week. I guess somebody thinks he's a flight risk.

DOJ says the FBI doesn't have his passports, so he's just the "Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV" guy who's now forgotten where he put his passport.

But I am sure they now have a lot of questions for why he has three of them.

There is actually nothing suspicious about it at all.

Normal passport.
Expired passport.
Diplomatic/government one he has as he was president.

mudbunny wrote:

There is actually nothing suspicious about it at all.

Normal passport.
Expired passport.
Diplomatic/government one he has as he was president.

Probably...except the last of these might be government property? or subject to the Presidential Records Act?

No matter, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they confiscated his passports.

Trump seems to have mastered the Gish Gallop.

All passports are government property.

Liz Cheney Is Going Down In An Anti-Trump Blaze Of Glory

All signs point to a staggering loss for Cheney in the GOP primary for Wyoming’s lone House seat on Tuesday. A poll from the University of Wyoming released Thursday shows Cheney trailing her Trump-backed opponent, Harriet Hageman, by a gaping 30-percentage-point margin. Another poll predicted a similar blowout for Hageman, leaving little doubt that Cheney is on the path to defeat.

“She knew what the risks were when she came out and opposed the president,” Mike Madrid, a Republican co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, told HuffPost. “Whether she thought for a short period of time that she could win a primary back home? I don’t know. But it’s no secret — and it hasn’t been for a long time — that that’s not going to happen.”

2020 Interactive Presidential Precinct Map.

Just released, very easy to navigate, possibly useful if you are planning a move across the country.

So in very red states, you are safe on the Reservations... Good to know.

Biden administration cancels another $3.9 billion in student loan debt for former for-profit college students

CNN wrote:

The Department of Education said Tuesday that it will cancel $3.9 billion in student loan debt for 208,000 students who attended the now-defunct for-profit ITT Technical Institute -- bringing the total amount of loan discharges approved under President Joe Biden to nearly $32 billion.

Some former ITT Tech students were already eligible for debt cancellation, but now the department will automatically cancel all remaining federal student loan debt that borrowers took on to attend the school from January 1, 2005, through its closure in September 2016.

...

Biden is expected to announce by the end of August whether he will more broadly cancel student loan debt for the 43 million federal student loan borrowers.

Key Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have been calling on Biden to cancel $50,000 per borrower. But Biden has consistently pushed back on canceling that much and has suggested he would support wiping away $10,000 per borrower, in line with a pledge he made on the campaign trail in 2020.

Until now, Biden has taken a more targeted approach to student debt relief. His administration has authorized the cancellation of nearly $32 billion so far -- more than any other administration -- largely for borrowers who were defrauded by their for-profit colleges and for permanently disabled borrowers.
He has also temporarily expanded the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that forgives the debt of government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of payments, and made changes to the income-driven repayment plans, bringing millions of borrowers closer to forgiveness.

Biden has also extended the pandemic-related pause on federal student loan payments several times. Borrower balances have effectively been frozen for more than two years, with no payments required on most federal student loans since March 2020 -- when the coronavirus pandemic sent many Americans into lockdown. During this time, interest stopped accumulating and collections on defaulted debt have been on hold.

The pause is set to expire on August 31, but Biden has yet to decide whether he will extend it again.

Americans' attitudes toward student debt relief are sharply divided along partisan and generational lines.

A majority of Democrats in a May CNN poll (56%) -- and an even wider majority of self-described liberals (69%) -- say the government is doing too little on student loan debt, while only a third of Republicans and self-described conservatives alike say the same.

Badferret wrote:

2020 Interactive Presidential Precinct Map.

Just released, very easy to navigate, possibly useful if you are planning a move across the country.

IMAGE(https://c.tenor.com/nrW7vewoyLcAAAAM/spaceballs-assholes.gif)

STOP VOTING ASSHOLES.

Veloxi wrote:

STOP VOTING ASSHOLES.

Unclear if that's stop voting FOR assholes or stop voting IF YOU'RE an asshole, but yes either way.

I was just running with Nimcosi's bit, but yeah either works.

Everyone around him is a crook #3,592,943

Longtime Trump Organization executive is negotiating guilty plea to fraud

NPR wrote:

Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, is in talks to plead guilty in a wide-ranging fraud case, two people familiar with the case tell NPR.

The move comes just days after New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan denied a motion to dismiss the case, and set a trial date for late October. Court records show a hearing for Weisselberg was just added to the court calendar for Thursday.

While discussions are still ongoing, one of the sources said, the deal could mean a relatively short jail sentence for Weisselberg in exchange for pleading guilty, without an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors.

In July 2021, Weisselberg, along with two Trump corporate entities, were charged with multiple felonies for an alleged 16-year scheme to avoid paying taxes by compensating Weisselberg with untaxed benefits like a luxury apartment, a Mercedes-Benz, and private school tuition for his grandchildren. The scheme, prosecutor Carey Dunne said at the time, "was orchestrated by the most senior executives, who were financially benefiting themselves and the company, by getting secret pay raises at the expense of state and federal taxpayers."

The case was widely seen as a prelude to a more serious case against Donald Trump, who was under criminal investigation for lying about his property values to defraud taxpayers and investors. But earlier this year, after the election of a new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, the grand jury investigation of Trump was suspended. Bragg said in April that the criminal investigation of Trump and the Trump organization "is continuing."

A separate civil investigation of Trump's company by New York State Attorney General Letitia James is still under way, and just last week her office took a deposition of Trump, in which he invoked the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times.

Even if Weisselberg's case is resolved Thursday, the district attorney's pending criminal case against the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corp. will remain. The judge also denied motions to dismiss those cases. If convicted, the corporate entities could face fines or back taxes, but no person would have to serve jail time.

I had no idea Joseph Heller's ghost was now a court reporter.

But somehow they're 'mature' enough to raise a child. Schroedinger's Maturity?

There was a major "human trafficking" bust recently. I'll let one tweet summarize it:

@BudrykZack wrote:

All of these turn out like this but they still get breathless media fanfare AND the guy from your high school who sold loose Adderalls out of the bathroom will still post on Facebook about how it should be the biggest story in the country

Here's Reason's rundown of the thing you've probably already seen misquoted or misrepresented on Facebook or TikTok.

An array of videos and press releases about the initiative are long on generalized talk about how horrible human trafficking crimes are and how good it is to help victims—things few people would dispute. But they offer very few details about what this year's Operation Cross Country actually entailed, or about the alleged perpetrators, the charges they face, or those they purportedly victimized.

This lack of concrete information suggests we may be dealing with highly propagandized spin on some—at best—run-of-the-mill work. If there's one thing law enforcement agents are not, it's modest. So if the FBI and its partners had actually arrested a bunch of sex traffickers or busted up some major human trafficking rings, they would surely tell us that in no uncertain terms.

But the FBI press release mentions only three federal cases, none involving sex trafficking or labor trafficking. The cases mentioned include one person failing to register as a sex offender and two "suspects who may have been involved with child sexual abuse material production or enticement violations."

That doesn't rule out further charges forthcoming, of course. But if past Operation Cross Country initiatives are any guide, you probably shouldn't hold your breath.

Reason did a deep dive into Operation Cross Country a few years back, showcasing how the program largely cracked down on sex workers and their customers, along with other people suspected of petty offenses (like drug possession or driving without a license). Though the FBI, Homeland Security, and other federal agencies team up with local and state police, very few people are charged with federal crimes and even fewer with sex trafficking. But by lumping all the arrests together, the FBI generates large numbers and then blasts these out in misleading statements, touting the hundreds of arrests made during its sex trafficking sting. This splashy framing then gets lots of sensationalist media attention, leaving many readers with the impression that hundreds of sex traffickers were thwarted instead of hundreds of adults just trying to engage in consensual sex with other adults.

Five f*cking months for pleading guilty to 15 crimes...

Allen Weisselberg, a Trump Org employee for decades, pleads guilty to felony charges

NPR wrote:

Allen Weisselberg, who for decades was one of Donald Trump's most trusted and loyal employees as chief financial officer of the Trump family business, pleaded guilty on Thursday to 15 counts ranging from grand larceny to tax fraud, becoming the latest person close to the 45th President to plead guilty or be convicted at trial of a felony.

Weisselberg changed his 2021 plea of not guilty to guilty in state court in lower Manhattan. Under an agreement made with prosecutors and detailed in court, Weisselberg will serve five months in prison and receive five months probation, in exchange for testifying at the trial of his former co-defendant and longtime employer, the Trump Organization. He agreed to pay $1.9m in back taxes, interest, and penalties, to New York State and New York City.

He's going to testify. He has all the financial secrets. That's going to crack Trump Org wide open. Well, well worth the compromise.

Robear wrote:

He's going to testify. He has all the financial secrets. That's going to crack Trump Org wide open. Well, well worth the compromise.

Only if he does it before Republicans can take over.

Robear wrote:

He's going to testify. He has all the financial secrets. That's going to crack Trump Org wide open. Well, well worth the compromise.

I admire your ability to count unhatched chickens, my friend. Flies in the face of decades of Teflon Don's lived experience, but hey, who's counting.

Jonman wrote:
Robear wrote:

He's going to testify. He has all the financial secrets. That's going to crack Trump Org wide open. Well, well worth the compromise.

I admire your ability to count unhatched chickens, my friend. Flies in the face of decades of Teflon Don's lived experience, but hey, who's counting.

He plead guilty. The five months is contingent upon testifying in court and he can't plead the fifth about anything related to the 15 counts.

The Trumps will not be looking forward to his testimony.

Yeah call me when the Trumps have real consequences from this beyond a sense of unease.