John Sipher

John Oliver dug up old footage of Trump defending corruption on TV.

He also issued the first-ever corporate pardon to BitMEX, "which had been sentenced to a $100 million fine for violating an anti-money laundering law."

Classic

You know those Epstein files are buried under the new patio at the White House, right?

Larry Summers: "This is way beyond anything Nixon ever did ... this is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers, launching assaults on universities, launching assaults on law firms. This is really scary stuff."

“She had assets that were being murdered…and she couldn’t come home and talk about that…For her to be a professional and be a mother and wife through all those years, it’s a pretty exceptional story and tells you a lot about who she was.” (gift article)

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

A massive regressive national sales tax imposed upon every American by a president with no constitutional authority to impose a national sales tax. The reason why the founders gave this power to Congress is because this would never pass any Congress- even this one.

Withholding judgement. No idea.

Hot air

No idea. I’m waiting. Won’t comment until there is more information.

It’s recent

:-)

Makes sense.

We had a wonderful bull terrier named Sammy. Got her in Moscow. So sweet.

John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel - and Durham Himself - Committed the Crime John Durham Was Hunting - emptywheel The unsealed Durham annex provides evidence that John Brennan and the CIA weren't discussing a Hillary Clinton plan to frame Trump. They were instead discussing an SVR to frame Hillary. And he spent f...

John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel -- and Durham Himself -- Committed the Crime John Durham Was Hunting

www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/03/j...

Not to pile on, but every 'c' in 'Pacific Ocean' is pronounced differently.

I guess she’d aged out. But still seems to fit a certain pattern.

Tariffs without Congressional approval are taxation without representation. Time to throw tea into the harbor.

😕

Can’t tax tips that don’t exist

He lost an election and refused to accept the results.

He forced the Smithsonian to lie about American history.

He fired the head statistician bcuz he didn’t like the jobs numbers.

He can’t handle the truth. We elected the biggest pussy/coward/sore loser in all of human history.

Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook

This is a very good (but also very disturbing) survey from @peterbakernyt.bsky.social of the Trump admin policies that are intended to deprive the public of accurate info about government. I might have also included the expulsions from the White House press pool.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

Brooks and Capehart on Trump's firing of labor statistics head after weak jobs report New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump fires the head of the agency that produces the monthly j...

"I don't think it can cross Donald Trump's mind that there are neutral arbiters who are objective and not politicized. But this is the weakness of authoritarian or pseudo-authoritarian regimes. They create an atmosphere in which it's not possible to be honest with the executive."
to.pbs.org/47hCLKW

The most awful people on Earth have all the money, all the power, all the weapons of mass destruction, and are in charge of everything.

We really should do something about that.

Drowned out: While Texans beg for help, the GOP redraws the map to cheat.

The purpose of the special session wasn’t about flood relief. It was about stealing elections.

Let me make it plain: Over 100 dead. Flood victims plead for help. Republicans were busy rigging maps for Trump.

A guy whose fraudulent university was shut down is telling the Ivy League what to do.

A guy whose businesses went bankrupt multiple times is telling the Fed what to do.

A guy whose best friend was a child sex trafficker is telling the DOJ what to do.

That it’s all the same guy is pretty wild.

They’re coming after cities, universities, professional bureaucrats, and markets. They want to flatten all countervailing institutional power that may exist outside of the executive in order to remake America into their single image.