On the Always Deplorable and Frequently Entertaining Brandon Herrera

He will not be going to the US Congress in January, as he lost by 7 points in Tuesday's blue wave.

Katy Padilla Stout won the race for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District on Tuesday against Republican YouTuber Brandon Herrera, flipping the seat formerly held by Republican Tony Gonzales.

The Associated Press called the race for Padilla Stout, a San Antonio attorney and former teacher. The 23rd Congressional District, which includes a significant portion of the Texas-Mexico border, covers most of West Texas between El Paso and San Antonio, including the Big Bend region.

………

It was one of several victories in a historic night for Texas Democrats. Two Democratic representatives, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, held seats that were redistricted to favor Republicans. By late Tuesday night, Republicans had conceded three of the five seats their new congressional map was designed to flip.

The 23rd Congressional District, left largely untouched by the mid-decade redistricting efforts, voted for President Donald Trump by a 15-point margin in 2024.

Padilla Stout’s victory is the first time a Democrat has won the West Texas seat since 2012, when former Rep. Pete Gallego won the seat back from Republicans before subsequently losing his reelection bid.

………

Herrera sparked controversy throughout the campaign as Padilla Stout and others highlighted derogatory comments he has made on his YouTube channel and social media about women and jokes about the Holocaust.

Gonzales resigned from the seat in March amid scandal over an affair he had with a staffer who later died by suicide. Days before his resignation, Gonzales had been forced into a runoff in the Republican primary by Herrera, a staunch gun rights activist, by less than 1,000 votes.

Let's go Brandon, I guess.

Moar Election Updates

TIL that Johnson composed the music for 67 episodes of Dragonball Z.

[image or embed]

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) November 4, 2026 at 10:00 PM

This is actually true


Yeah, the Democrats swept statewide office in Texas

First, we need to note that Lauren Boebert is going down in Colorado's 4th Congressional district. (Cue Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith thinking, "Hah, hah, hah.")

Regarding the US Senate, the Democrats have at least 54 seats, with 2 races, Alaska and Mississippi (!) still too close to call.

In Texas, in addition to the Dems sweeping the statewide offices, the Texas House of Representatives now has a Democratic majority.

Also, the new Texas AG won't be pursuing out of state abortion and abortion medication providers.  Elections have consequences.

State legislatures have flipped to Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and possibly Arizona.

Also, at least 5 governors flipped. 

I'm bummed that Prop 40 (the billionaire tax) appears to be going down to defeat in California. 

Quick Election Update

I'm going to sleep, but it appears almost certain that the Democrats will take control of the House and Senate.

In Texas, it appears that Greg Abbot has been turfed out as Governor of Texas, and Ken "The Most Corrupt Motherf%$#er in Texas" Paxton has lost to James Talerico, and the Democrats have won pretty much all of the state wide elections there.

And Kansas. Hoo boy!  First Democratic Senator from Kansas since the Roosevelt administration. 

Also it looks like Susan "I'm very concerned" Collins has lost in Maine, Abdul El-Sayed has won in Michigan, and Dems flipped 2 Senate seats in the Carolinas, 

W00t! 

Damn

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has been hospitalized for a stroke.

Sen. Chris Murphy is being hospitalized following a stroke, an aide to the Connecticut Democrat said Sunday.

“Yesterday afternoon, Senator Murphy started experiencing numbness in his arm while at his son’s hockey game. He was taken to a local hospital, where it was discovered he had experienced a stroke,” Allison Herwitt, Murphy’s chief of staff, said in a statement.

“He was transferred to Johns Hopkins for further monitoring and is responding well to treatment. The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” she added.

Vote Blue No Matter ……… Never Mind

So the losing candidate in the Michigan US Senate Democratic Party Primary has endorsed the Republican in the race because she wanted the winner, Abdul El-Sayed, to condemn an ad that he had nothing to do with.

In related news, the bulk of her congressional staff resigned and condemned her.

Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, in an extraordinary rebuke of her party’s nominee on the eve of the midterm elections.

Her endorsement came in a video posted to X after she attended an event with Rogers at the predominantly Black Perfecting church in Detroit on Sunday. Stevens’s endorsement was the culmination of an escalating feud between the former primary rivals – primarily over support for Israel – that has roiled one of the most fiercely contested Senate contests of the cycle.

The endorsement was met with immediate pushback from Democrats, who condemned Stevens for her “betrayal”.

Actually, that was noted Israel-hater Chuck Schumer, who called her endorsement a, "Despicable betrayal."

It appears that this was precipitated by members of the Michigan Democratic Party establishment, most notably Debbie Dingell, told her to stop grand-standing and STFU. 

2nd Amendment Time

The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit to prevent certification of the US Senate in Alaska if Mary Peltola wins because there are 2 Dan Sullivans on the ballot.

The thing is that Alaska's election are conducted through instant runoff voting, so even if some people vote for the wrong guy as first choice (Unlikely as the incumbent will be clearly labeled as such on the ballot), their 2nd choice would be the correct Dan Sullivan.

Also, there is no precedent for this sort of federal meddling in an election. 

The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against the Alaska Division of Elections late Thursday, seeking to block the division from certifying the result of the state’s U.S. Senate election if the Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola, wins.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday in Florida that he ordered the lawsuit be filed.

“I’m the one that said, ‘do it,’” he said.

Peltola is the leading opponent to incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, and polls show her with a small lead over Sullivan, but the race also includes two other people — Republican Gerald Heikes of Palmer and undeclared candidate Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg. In the complaint, the Department of Justice claims that Dan J. Sullivan’s candidacy is “frivolous,” and was intended solely to confuse voters and benefit Peltola.

Until there is an investigation to determine the extent of that confusion, the Department of Justice argues, Alaska should not be permitted to certify the result of the ongoing Senate election.

Legal experts immediately dismissed the federal argument as bunk. ……… 

On the general election ballot, the two Sullivans are listed distinctively, as “Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent” and “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.” The state’s Division of Elections does not list a party affiliation for the Petersburg Sullivan, and he is listed as an “undeclared” candidate, a kind of independent, in current records.

In addition, Alaska uses ranked choice voting in general elections, meaning that any remaining confused voters could simply rank both Sullivans in either order.

If none of the four Senate candidates receive at least 50% of the first-choice votes, the lowest finisher will be eliminated and their votes redistributed to voters’ second choices.

This is a part of Trump's ongoing coup attempt.

The Ethical AI Company

Anthropic has been lobbying lawmakers for an AI, "Regulation," bill that, "Would let the government block a model’s release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people."

Furthermore, this would only apply if, the risk is from, "The creation or release of a biological weapon, the model evading its developer’s controls or a cyberattack."

That's awfully white of them.

Representatives for the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic have quietly pitched Capitol Hill lawmakers on a draft bill to regulate frontier AI safety and security, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

………

The bill would let the government block a model’s release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people. The risk must stem from the creation or release of a biological weapon, the model evading its developer’s controls or a cyberattack. The language mirrors that found in California’s AI laws including SB 53, which was signed into law last year.

(emphasis mine)

This is not a serious bill, and California's SB 53 is not a serious law. (Which is probably why Gavin Newsom signed it into law)

Not a Surprise

It appears that DHS ignored restrictions placed by the issuing judge on the search warrant issued against Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

This is not a surprise.  The Trump administration in general, and DHS in particular, are to following the law what Ebola is to French kissing.

Lawyers for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) on Friday accused federal authorities of ignoring key restrictions that a judge placed on the search of the lawmaker’s D.C. residence this week and demanded the immediate return of all property seized from the home. 

In a letter sent to Justice Department prosecutors, attorneys Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz condemned the investigation into Omar’s immigration history as a politically motivated attack on one of President Donald Trump’s chief critics, saying it “violates Representative Omar’s constitutional rights and threatens the separation of powers.”

They also alleged that investigators did not follow specific instructions that a U.S. magistrate judge imposed on how the search should be carried out as they descended upon Omar’s residence in Northeast Washington on Monday, according to a copy of their letter obtained by The Washington Post.

Among the restrictions the attorneys said agents did not follow were provisions requiring investigators to provide Omar’s lawyers with a copy of the warrant and to contact the House Office of General Counsel before carrying out the search. That would have given Omar the chance to consult with congressional attorneys on any legislative work product that might have been exempt from federal seizure, her lawyers said. 

The Post has reported that Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is investigating whether Omar, 44, or members of her family may have lied on decades-old immigration paperwork to secure legal status and eventually U.S. citizenship.

I'm pretty sure that the Trump admin wants to denaturalize her, which is beyond the pale in terms of the norms of behavior, but they also ignored black letter Constitutional law, and a judge's instructions, with regard to the, "Speech and debate clause," which gives complete immunity to lawmakers' actions with regard to their constitutional duties.

………

In their letter Friday, Omar’s attorneys said the warrant required federal prosecutors to advise the congresswoman of those “speech and debate” protections and ask her to waive them. The lawyers maintained that did not happen and that agents executing the search prevented Omar from contacting legal counsel for more than an hour after the search had begun.

As much as Trump might want it to be, legislating while black is not a crime. 

Tru Dat

When Defector says that, "A blue wave won’t mean sh%$ if the chumps get their way," (%$# mine) they are noting that if the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) remains in firm control of the House and Senate Democratic Caucuses, then any opportunity created from the recapture of Congress will be squandered.

Feckless cowards do not make things better.

You might have heard there’s an election coming soon. Given that this is The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetimes, No. 536, the campaign industrial complex has rested a 1,000-pound boulder atop the SPAM button in an attempt to curry favor with you, the voter. This is why I, a Marylander, am bombarded with campaign ads/flyers/robocalls 48 hours a day, including TV ads for Senate candidates in states nowhere near mine, Ohio and Texas in particular. It’s also why Donald Trump has used taxpayer money to buy up national airtime for an ad that features him walking menacingly toward the camera, like you’re about to be his next victim. Thank you, Mister President!

You’ll notice that much of this long-distance haranguing is being waged by the Republican Party, almost certainly because their current polling nationwide is abysmal. If those numbers hold—although you and I know better than to trust polls—the GOP stands on the brink of losing both houses of Congress, plus a number of crucial state elections. That’s why they’re flooding the airwaves with a steady stream of dogs%$#. These are tactics of desperation.

All of this is somewhat heartening to me, the screechy liberal. The idea of President F%$# head finally getting a firm check on his power is enough to make me almost kinda sorta think things here in the U.S. can actually get better. But if this blue wave materializes—I am in no way predicting that will happen, please do not tell people that I predicted anything—I already know that the path to progress will be impeded by the same coterie of gutless motherf%$#ers I’ve been having to deal with as long as I’ve been a registered voter.

When asked if impeachment was a top priority, Jeffries said “of course not” during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’ve made clear from the very beginning that our top priority is going to be to drive down the high cost of living.”

So nothing about restoring the rule of law or challenging the current expansive view of the executive, just posturing over prices.

And now onto Chuck Schumer:

………

Schumer is the senator who took more donations from private equity than any other. He's the guy whose asshole kid is a lobbyist for Amazon. He's the frog that continually insists the water he’s sitting in isn’t coming to a boil. Schumer has presided over every catastrophic decision Democrats have made in the Trump era, and is one of the primary reasons that Trump has won the presidency. Twice. This man is a f%$#ing loser. He’s paid to be a loser, and he’s only interested in sharing leadership duties with fellow genteel scum like Jeffries: people hard-wired to let Republicans get the best of them time and time again.

I am so f%$#ing sick of these chumps. I’m sick of every victory notched by the Democrats being a fleeting one. Right now, Donald Trump is an historically unpopular president, and he has made the party he rules over equally despised. During Trump's second term in office, he has destroyed this nation’s preventive healthcare infrastructure, wiped out entire fields of scientific research, unleashed a fascist police force on American cities, started an insane war, murdered dozens of people in cold blood, desecrated the national park system, f%$#ed up the Reflecting Pool, and literally torn down the White House itself. Every oval that Americans fill in on the D side of a ballot this fall is them saying “F%$# Donald Trump” as loudly and clearly as possible. And Hakeem Jeffries wants to check his swing if he dares to utter it himself? Sit on a gavel, you f%$#ing clown.

And finally the conclusion:

………

They’ll probably lose that 2028 election. You know why? Because they don’t CARE if they lose. They never have, and even Donald Trump’s ongoing looting of this nation isn’t going to compel them to start. This is what happens when a two-party system becomes too big to fail. Reach the penthouse of the Democratic Party and you’ll never go hungry again. Even if you lose an election, you’ll just end up with a better paying job working for the same machine. So I don’t have to wonder why Schumer has managed to endure, despite gladly acting as a doormat for our most evil public officials. As that fucker sees it, being a chump is his job. He’s certainly not interested in making things better for you and me. If Democrats like him wielded power on behalf of regular people for once, they'd be expected to continue doing so, and that would be bad for both their bank accounts and their minimal work ethic. As such, here I find myself again having to vote blue all the way down the ballot, again hoping that it will yield tangible results when everything tell me otherwise.

The geriatric leadership of the Democratic Party must be overthrown.

Factio democratica instauratio (Nulla est institut factionis democratica) delenda est. 

As Anna Russel Would Say, "I'm Not Making This Up, You Know."

When he was deposed in a federal corruption investigation, Texas Attorney General and Senate candidate Ken Paxton that a stock transfer was an effort by one of his donors was in order to please God.

Either he is completely delusional. or completely without integrity. (Probably both)

Ken Paxton sat for hours in a federal building in Fort Worth as government lawyers grilled him under oath about his growing wealth and questionable investing history.

At the time, in December 2014, Mr. Paxton was a fast-rising Republican star. He had just been elected the next attorney general of Texas. But outside of public view, he was under scrutiny as part of a federal investigation into possible fraud.

The deposition in the case, obtained by The New York Times, was one of the earliest episodes in what would become a decade-long pattern for Mr. Paxton: accusations of corruption and other illegal conduct repeatedly emerged, only to be resolved without a conviction.

………

The 2014 deposition was part of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Servergy Inc., a technology start-up based in McKinney, Texas, which is part of the district that Mr. Paxton represented as a state lawmaker. The start-up’s founder, William Mapp III, known as Bill, was accused of making false claims to investors.

The S.E.C.’s lawyers wanted to know whether Mr. Paxton hid that he had received compensation for recruiting investors for the company.

………

Mr. Paxton’s recounting of the Servergy transaction began at a Dairy Queen in McKinney. In the deposition, he said he intended to invest $100,000 in Servergy and met Mr. Mapp there to give him a check. Mr. Mapp turned down the money, Mr. Paxton said, and instead gifted him 100,000 shares of stock.

Mr. Paxton attributed Mr. Mapp’s generosity to his religious beliefs.

“I said, Well, who do I make the check out to?” Mr. Paxton told the government lawyers, according to the deposition. “He said, I can’t take your money. God doesn’t want me to take your money.”

The value of the shares eventually grew to $200,000, according to Mr. Mapp’s emails to Mr. Paxton that were described in the deposition.

(emphasis mine)

How did he not go the jail for this? 

 

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), So Much Winning

In Michigan Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is leading in the polls against Mike Rogers and Maine’s Troy Jackson is behind Susan Collins.

The difference between these campaigns?  Troy Jackson is following the advice of the mainstream Democratic Party political consultants.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are to winning elections what Ebola is to French kissing.

The New York Times has a new article headlined “Democrats Show Strength in Michigan Senate Race but Trail in Maine, Polls Find.” It highlights the divergent electoral prospects of two Democratic Senate candidates: Michigan’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Maine’s Troy Jackson. Both Michigan and Maine are swing states that have voted statewide for both Democrats and Republicans in recent years, yet polls currently show El-Sayed leading his opponent, Mike Rogers, by five percentage points, while Jackson is trailing Republican Susan Collins by three percent.

We have to regard polls skeptically. In the primary, polls showing El-Sayed far ahead of his rivals turned out to be wildly wrong, and his ultimate victory was very narrow. But the paper’s report also presents some illuminating facts, beyond the raw polling data. They note that:

In Michigan, support for Dr. El-Sayed appears to be fueled by the popularity of his economic message and his vocal support for single-payer health care. He is more trusted to handle the cost of living by nine points, the only Democrat who is more trusted on the issue across the three states. And despite a bitter primary, a whopping 95 percent of Democrats are now supporting his candidacy. Dr. El-Sayed is also winning 8 percent of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2024 election, more than either of the other two Democrats in the survey. Abel Kang, a social worker from Grand Rapids, said he knew very little about Mr. Rogers other than his support of Mr. Trump. Mr. Kang said he planned to support Dr. El-Sayed largely because of economic issues and his support of single-payer health care. “He is talking about free health care,” said Mr. Kang, 47, an independent. “Personally, I think that is a necessity. It’s a basic human need.”  

The paper spends less time trying to explain why Troy Jackson is not having as much success during an electoral cycle that is widely assumed to favor Democrats, who hold an 11-point national lead on the “generic” congressional ballot. They note that Susan Collins is seen by “a majority of Maine voters as more likely than Mr. Jackson to be an effective senator and as having better character.” But a recent report in New York magazine adds critical additional context to help us understand why the Jackson campaign isn’t catching fire. In it, Rebecca Traister documents that Jackson’s campaign has been directed in large part by establishment Democratic consultants who are crushing Jackson’s main sources of appeal: his populism, his authenticity, his ability to connect with ordinary people. Traister’s report is full of utterly damning findings:

“These advisers are frustrated by Jackson and his backwoods cadence, his insistence on taking questions, and his unapologetically progressive stances. Jackson, a decent, marble-mouthed logger with a phone belt clip[…] has often deferred to their expertise, angering longtime allies and organizers who have their own thoughts on how he can win. “These people are very convincing… He’s being taken advantage of by people who have a lot of power and influence in this political sphere.” 

[The] effect of the campaign on the 58-year-old Jackson is readily apparent. Typically an impassioned speaker, Jackson has become more tentative, with answers on Israel and ICE getting muddier. His political identity is now undergoing an awkward transformation before voters’ eyes as he struggles to incorporate new, seemingly foreign talking points. Internal campaign documents instruct him to say, when asked about his position that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, “No matter what you’re comfortable calling it, I think we can all agree this is senseless violence.”

“The Jackson campaign’s wariness of in-person events seems to merge with a general suspicion of Mainers and their conviction that they know what’s best for Jackson. A handful of them who work as staffers at this point “are treated like garbage” by the campaign bosses, according to one source[…] “They think it’s going well when Troy is boring AF,” said another person with knowledge of the campaign.” […] “They want to run this campaign through numbers and spreadsheets. And wherever a campaign is connecting with people or doing anything quirky or unique, they’re like, ‘This is bad and weird.’” A lot of this friction comes down to competing theories of how to win elections. The people running Jackson’s campaign are relying on heavy vetting, poll testing, and data that pinpoints exactly who may be persuadable. They focus on ads, the messages neatly sculpted, while the candidate attends fundraisers and does call time, raising more money to pay for more ads. Emphasizing ads over a field operation is more profitable for the companies running that campaign. TKO and McCollister’s firm, Frame, make and sell ads for Jackson.”

Say what you will about Graham Plattner, but he went all over the state, and he listened to and talked to voters.

This was popular and provided a contrast with both with Collins and his primary opponent Mills.

Of course, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) consultants cannot tolerate this, because campaigning in person and talking to voters does not make them any money. 

Republicans may be the opposition, but the The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is the enemy.

Least Surprising News of the Day

Is anyone surprised that Maine Senator Susan Collins was likely engaging in corrupt pay to play campaign donations with a defense contractor and that the FBI was hot on her trail until the Trump DoJ stood down the investigation?

I'm not. 

Collins has responded with a profoundly misleading denial.

In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C.

For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling behind her likely 2020 Democratic challenger in fundraising.

Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, was on a mission to close that gap. Reed was meeting that day with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatek. A year earlier, Collins had helped their company land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. Now, seated at a coffee shop not far from the U.S. Capitol, Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation.

Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. More consequentially, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.

But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.

To quote the Maine Senator, this apparent quid pro quo makes me, "Concerned."

'Ere, He Says He's Not Dead

Mitch McConnell has returned to the Senate after 3 months gone.

He's talking about health issues, but my guess is that he was spending the last 3 months going all Thelma and Louise, though I could be wrong about that. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Read between the lines before you block me. 😉 pic.twitter.com/fiI7PK2zhf

— Joe G (@EastEndJoe) September 12, 2026

This is a sublime commentary on Schrodinger's Senator.

Ken Paxton Corrupt?

Also, the sky is blue, Trump is a moron, and housecats are sometimes uncooperative.

It turns out that in an attempt to conceal his extensive real estate holdings, the Texas Attorney General omitted his real estate empire from required reports.

It should be noted that he did this because his property holdings constitute supporting evidence of his corruption.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said.

Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences.

He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value.

The apparent errors and omissions the newsrooms found obscure the extent of Paxton’s income streams, assets and debt, making it difficult for voters to make sense of his finances as they mull whether to support him in November’s election, the ethics experts said.

“It reflects either pure sloppiness on Paxton’s part or a deliberate effort to conceal some of his investments and property holdings,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the nonpartisan good-government group Public Citizen.

There is no, "Or," here.  It's a deliberate event at a coverup. 

Worse than Useless

Just the thing for caving I am referring, of course, to the dead eyed leader of the Democratic Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, and exemplar of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), Hakeem Jeffries, who was just caught meeting with Trump son in law Jared Kushner.

Nice job of pre-capitulation.  Showing your belly to these guys is going to work out just great.

Democrats and other Donald Trump critics reacted incredulously to a New York Times report on Sunday that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner, the president’s influential son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration.

The reported meeting comes months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats are favored to retake the US House, a development that would make Jeffries speaker. If they are in the majority, Democrats are expected to use their oversight power to aggressively investigate the Trump administration, including self-enrichment by the president and his family.

There are longstanding conflict-of-interest concerns about the way Kushner has continued to make money from foreign nations as he works on foreign affairs, including conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza.

There is no excuse for this.  Kushner holds no government position, and he is arguably the most aggressive grifter among the Trump Crime Family except (perhaps) for Donnie "Small Hands".  

………

Nonetheless, among some who lamented the reported gathering was Tommy Vietor, previously an aide to former president Barack Obama and now a co-host of the left-leaning podcast Pod Save America.

“Jared Kushner has no actual government job he just uses his family connections to get money from gulf autocrats and fund corrupt deals. The only way [Jeffries] should work with him is with demands for documents and subpoenas,” Vietor posted.

In April, Democrats on the House judiciary committee opened an investigation into Kushner’s financial conflict of interest. The investigation is focused on the way Kushner’s private business has raised money from Gulf nations while Kushner served as a special envoy for peace for the government.

“You cannot both be a diplomat and a financial pawn of the Saudi monarchy at the same time; you cannot faithfully represent the United States with billions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati cash burning a hole in every pocket of every suit you own,” Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, wrote in an April letter to Kushner.

What a useless excuse for a leader.

Useless as Tits on a Bull

I am referring, of course, to the dead eyed leader of the House Democratic Caucus Hakeem Jeffries.

He decided that it would somehow be a good thing to come out in opposition of Medicare for All, because lobbyists gotta write those checks.

If the Dems take over the House and Senate this November, it will be in spite of mooks like Jeffries, not because of them.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) announced his opposition to Medicare for All on the same day a CBS News poll found 90 percent of Democratic voters support the idea — and 72 hours after a Yale University study showed the program would save 114,000 American lives and $1 trillion every single year.

Here’s some important context: Jeffries has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign cash from healthcare PACs in the 2026 election cycle and didn’t face any primary challenge holding him accountable to Democratic voters’ desires, despite him representing a deep New York City blue district.

If you think what I’ve just described is so cartoonish that it must be an overstatement, think again — it’s all too real and all too emblematic of Democratic politics.

But the good news is that other prominent Democrats are starting to speak out more forcefully against their party’s direction and this kind of betrayal.

The very epitome of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Rat-F%$#er in Chief

Todd Blanch has been confirmed as US Attorney General by the Senate.

I'm pretty sure that he is going to be a lot worse than John Mitchell or William Barr.

One hopes that he suffers the fate of the former, jail time and disbarment, and not of the latter, no consequences and lucrative gigs.

I'm Calling Bullsh%$

So, Todd Blanche has announced that he will be canceling the Trump slush fund in order to get Republican votes for his nomination as US Attorney General, he also issued a related memo saying that the IRS amnesty will only apply to Trump, his businesses, and his immediate family.

Unsurprisingly, the Republicans have declared that this is enough.

Equally unsurprisingly, even though the one of the memos is signed by Todd Blanche. they mean nothing, because the "settlement" requires signatures from all parties to modify.

It's all bad legal theater. 

Texas Senator John Cornyn and North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis just caved to Donald Trump’s demands, paving the way for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to move toward a full Senate confirmation.

The two Republican holdouts announced Monday that they had reached a deal with the Justice Department that they claimed satisfied their aims to end Trump’s $1.8 “anti-weaponization” fund.

“We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund,” the outgoing lawmakers said in a joint statement. “Additionally, the Department has acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, addressing concerns that multiple of our Republican colleagues share.”

………

On its face, Blanche’s note appeared to terminate the fund, specifying that the order was “rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” However, journalists were quick to comment that the language employed in the rest of Blanche’s memo not only suggested that the honey pot fund would be preserved in some form, but also failed to terminate Trump’s underlying IRS immunity arrangement.

This makes Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper after selling out Czechoslovakia look like a profile in courage.

This is Literally Beyond Parody

So, the paper run by the Amazon sociopath just published an OP/ED titled, "Will Maine uproot Susan Collins? I went to a potato festival to find out."

The rest of the article is even worse. 

That's the hed printed at the top.  The title you would see on a news search would be, "Susan Collins faces a populist test in Maine Senate race," which is what the title tag is set to.probably to avoid widespread mockery.

No link, they don't deserve even the meager traffic that my sh%$#y little blog would send them.

Yeah, the author is a MAGAt, and yes, the Washington Post OP/ED page has gotten even worse than the travesty it was under the mismanagement of the late (and unlamented) Fred Hiatt.