Friday, August 7, 2026

Max Miller refuses to end his campaign


Rep. Max Miller (R., Ohio) is under growing pressure to drop his re-election bid amid allegations of domestic abuse, which he denies.

Rep. Chuck Edwards (R., N.C.) just dropped his re-election bid amid his own ethics scandal.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) resigned from Congress a few months ago amid mounting allegations of sexual misconduct, which he also denies.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R., Texas) resigned from Congress at the same time as Swalwell amid threats of expulsion over an affair he allegedly had with a congressional staffer.

And Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, dropped out of the race last month following abuse allegations, which he says aren’t true.

Political scandals, sadly, are nothing new (former Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, is currently in federal prison). But it does seem like they are happening with a heightened frequency lately.

There is a vocal group of lawmakers from both parties that is pushing for congressional leaders to crack down on ethical misbehavior (and, in some cases, illegal behavior). With a bunch of new lawmakers coming into Congress next year and public faith in Capitol Hill in the doldrums, there could be an opportunity to really shake things up.

That is a litany.  And yet Max Miller refuses to step down.  Supposedly donations are off and he's loaned his campaign one million dollars.  Mira Bhakta (The Hill) reports: 

As elections for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District near, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) is losing traction for his campaign amid allegations of abuse from his ex-wife, as his Democratic opponent pulls ahead in a new poll.

In a new co/efficient polling memo, Brook Park City Council member Democrat Brian Poindexter is now leading Miller by 14 points as opposed to a survey from last week that showed the margin between the candidates at 5 points.
The poll added that because of what voters have seen, read or heard about Miller, 48 percent are less likely to support him, with Republicans 37 percent less likely to support the GOP candidate.

Among Republicans, only 11 percent are more likely to support him, and of all voters, 9 percent are more likely to support him.

The rapid margin change is attributed to a public and ongoing battle between the congressman and his ex-wife Emily Moreno, daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio). Miller has repeatedly denied allegations from Moreno that he threw scalding hot water at her, pointed a gun at her head and broke their daughter’s collarbone. 


He really should resign.  But, hey, it's an easy Democratic Party pick up in the midterms so it's a win regardless.  Either Miller drops out or he loses the race. 

Representative Max Miller, the increasingly embattled Republican from Ohio who was accused of physically abusing his ex-wife and young daughter, continued to resist pressure on Friday to drop his re-election bid as the deadline for him to withdraw neared.

Mr. Miller planned to loan his campaign $1 million, according to a person familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe campaign strategy, effectively rebuffing calls from powerful Republicans in the state to withdraw from the race.

Senator Jon Husted, who faces his own tough re-election battle, broke his silence Thursday by publicly urging Mr. Miller to “step aside as a candidate and resign from Congress.” And on Friday, the head of an Ohio-based conservative group, the Center for Christian Virtue, posted on social media that Mr. Miller had “disqualified himself.”

Ohio state law gives local party leaders until 4 p.m. on Monday to name a new candidate, but the law requires two days of notice to convene a meeting to do so. Mr. Miller would most likely have to end his congressional campaign either by Friday or Saturday, though officials have said there is still some confusion about the deadline.

This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"


Friday, August 7, 2026.  Chump squeals "treasonous leaks" thereby confirming that the leaks are true regarding the decimation of stockpiles of US weapons, his war on immigrants continues, Pete Hegseth continues to fail in his role as Secretary of Defense -- and it's failure in one way after another,  Senator Patty Murray notes that a vote to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General is a vote to destroy reproductive rights, and much more. 






On the sixth day of the war with Iran, Donald Trump made a curious comment at a White House event.

“Yesterday, my administration announced decisive action to help keep down the oil prices,” the president declared. Moments later, the Republican went on to say oil prices “have pretty much stabilized.”
It’s never been clear what “decisive” actions the president was referring to. And while a variety of words come to mind when describing oil prices of late, “stabilized” isn’t one of them.

In fact, exactly five months to the day after Trump’s misplaced boast, he delivered remarks in Las Vegas and warned American consumers about the possibility of renewed volatility.

After noting recent improvements in oil prices, the president told his audience, “We may have to send it up again. We may have to — you know what happens when we send it up. But we hope we don’t have to.”

Chump's telling his followers that oil prices might need to increase again?  Does he really not get how many Americans are struggling in the wrecked economy that he created?  




The view from the cliffs must have been exciting
And up to the peaks you were bound
Now you're stranded alone
And the path is unknown
And there is no easy way down

No, it isn't very easy
When you're left on your own
No, it isn't very easy
When each road you take
Is one more mistake
And there's no one to break your fall
And lead you back home

-- "No Easy Way Down," written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, she first recorded the song for her album WRITER




Donald Trump is unpopular. Just 39% of Americans have a favorable view of the president a year and a half into his second term.

Worse yet, Republicans are poised to lose big in the November midterm elections. Trump seems more interested in fighting with Senate leadership than in helping Republicans hold their majorities, and that fight is leaving some in his own party open to moving away from him.
Trump still has a strong grip on the Republican voter base, but the party needs a plan for what happens after he leaves office in 2028. There's no better time to start building it than heading into a likely November beatdown.

 
His popularity has imploded.  It's gone.  It's not coming back.  Nick Hilden notes  more bad news for the Chump:


On Wednesday, the National Review – the preeminent conservative magazine since 1955 — called it: President Donald Trump has done the “impeachable.”

“There is no plausible defense of Trump's TruthSocial scheme,” declared National Review Senior Editor Charles Cooke. “It is flagrantly corrupt. It is impeachable. Congress should intervene. (It won't, I know.)” He posted this assertion over his latest article, entitled “Truth Social’s Early-Access Scheme Is Indefensible.”
As he explains, over the weekend, the Trump Media & Technology Group announced the creation of a “real-time feed on the Truth Social website that will give paying institutions early access to certain high-profile posts for between $60,000 and $100,000 per month.” Cooke doesn’t hold back with his assessment of the scheme, writing, “There is no credible defense of this. The only reason that anyone would want priority access to Truth Social is to gain priority access to President Trump’s pronouncements on that platform. And the only reason that anyone would want priority access to President Trump’s pronouncements on that platform is to act on them for pecuniary gain.”

As Cooke elaborates, “Trump often uses Truth Social as the primary forum for his announcements — announcements that include changes to personnel, the imposition or rescission of tariffs, key foreign policy decisions, and more. These announcements are extremely useful to financial institutions, and, in the age of high-speed trading, the faster those financial institutions can obtain them, the more money those financial institutions can make. Facilitating this access is not a byproduct of Truth Social’s API offering; it is its core — perhaps its sole — purpose. Simply put: President Trump is charging Americans a fee — a fee that, in part, goes into his family’s pockets — for the privilege of receiving news about his official actions earlier than those who do not pay.”
According to Cooke, it is “obvious how unequivocally corrupt this setup is. Technically speaking, the beneficiaries will not gain the information they seek directly from Trump himself, but indirectly, via an API (Application Programming Interface) whose output will be processed by a bunch of semi-autonomous servers and acted upon according to a set of predetermined parameters. But the results will be the same as if Trump had personally picked up the phone.”



There is "no easy way down" for Chump as he continues his descent.  Sarah K. Burris notes:

Voters who elected President Donald Trump are not happy.

John Gannon, a lifelong Republican and Texas businessman, who voted for Trump, told CBS News the president's administration is "destroying families, jobs." His fiancée was detained by ICE. "They are picking up law-abiding citizens," he told the report.
The couple was headed to Las Vegas for a convention when Gannon's fiancée was nabbed by plainclothes federal agents.

"After leaving the United room, eight officers, ICE agents, swarmed Yasmin and detained her. (They) didn't tell us why and wrestled her off into a car," he recalled of fiancée Yasmin Suarez Reyes.

Trump said throughout the 2024 campaign that he was only going to deport the "worst of the worst" and "criminals." The reality has been something different. Top Trump advisor Stephen Miller, at one point, put a quota on ICE to arrest at least 3,000 people daily. Politico reported that the White House then began to backtrack on the demand.

"Go after the criminals. We're all for that. But leave the mom and pops and the kids alone. Man, he's destroying families," Gannon added.


His war on immigrants awoke the nation and led to nation wide protests.  A letter to the editors of THE LOS ANGELES TIMES makes it clear how fake and harmful his round ups are:

Thank you to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California for exposing the truth about President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids (“Racial slurs and a Google search for car washes: What court records reveal about L.A. immigration raids,” July 29). The claim that they targeted dangerous criminals was always a sham — and ICE agents’ own texts prove it.
They weren’t methodically tracking known criminals. They were Googling the nearest Home Depots, targeting any Latinos they saw, pulling stunts for social media and behaving like they are above the law.
We’ve seen it firsthand. Last June, I responded to an ICE raid in Huntington Park where then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had an entire camera crew — complete with a hair and makeup team — while families were left terrified.
The Harbor Area Peace Patrol documented ICE agents on Terminal Island swapping license plates and even removing them from their vehicles all together.
These raids have been the most sickening abuse of government power in my lifetime. We are a long way away from accountability — but the ACLU’s work has helped bring the truth to light.
Janice Hahn, San Pedro
This writer is a Los Angeles County supervisor.

On the Los Angeles raids, Ashleigh Fields (THE HILL) notes legal action:


A federal judge held the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in contempt following the agency’s delay in complying with an order to release digital copies of communication on the cellphones of more than 800 immigration agents, according to an order unsealed Tuesday. 

District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of former President Biden, ordered DHS to provide imaging from agents’ personal cellphones in January following several immigration raids in Los Angeles last year. 
In the order, plaintiffs alleged the cellphone communications had evidence to support racial profiling allegations against immigration officers.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Public Counsel and other immigration advocacy groups also accused agents of using racial slurs during interactions and argued that access to cellphone data would provide evidence to support their claims. 


Chump's given free reign to crazies like the now gone Gregory Bovino and the still present Stephen Miller to attack and terrorize immigrants (and people mistaken for immigrants).  That was always how it was going to be and that's why some of us noted the importance of supporting Kamala Harris (while others, like Amy Goodman on DEMOCRACY NOW!, did "two [segments] slamming Kamala, two saying Kamala and Chump were the same and one focusing on what Chump did in his first term"  -- see Ava and my "Media: How Amy Goodman harmed immigrants and helped elect Chump").  We knew that it invited racial profiling.  It invited targeting.  And it would target immigrants with no criminal background while also targeting US citizens.   Nicole Charky-Chami (RAW STORY) notes:

An 11-year Army soldier said he felt shocked and betrayed after ICE agents stormed into his wife's green card interview and detained her, Newsweek reported on Thursday.

Staff Sergeant Alexis Jaramillo, 43, described the disbelief after his wife, Maisa Lopes Eliaser, 32, was ripped from his side during what he, his wife, their son and translator thought was an adjustment-of-status appointment on July 8 in Montgomery, Alabama, according to Newsweek.
Lopes Eliaser is a Brazilian national with no criminal record.

"I feel really betrayed," Jaramillo told Newsweek. "I serve this country. And I deserve some security with my family. We were very excited because we knew we were doing the right thing and complying with the government. Then two people came and told me she was going to be detained."
[. . .]
Recent Associated Press reporting shows more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained since President Donald Trump's second term began in January 2025. At least six have been deported and one self-deported.




Pete Hegseth can't stand up for the troops the way a real Secretary of Defense would do.  Prissy Pete's too busy trying to be one of the boys. In the process, he's failing the troops.  Another example?  Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) notes:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is accused of deliberately obscuring the true human cost of the war with Iran – and potentially depriving benefits from the families of service members killed in the conflict.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) publicly called out the Pentagon for quietly removing recent casualty figures from an internal tracking system and reclassified them under a vaguer category, saying the move was "an ongoing manipulation by the Trump administration to hide the true cost of the war in Iran to the American people," reported MS NOW.
“For the purposes of the VA, for example, when you become a veteran, you get a different pension based on whether or not you are a combat-connected injury, or whether your injury was just in operational service,” Duckworth said, calling the reclassification “a slap in the face to our Gold Star families.”

“We actually have folks who have been killed," she added, "and we have one who is still missing in action, that the Gold Star families now don’t have real answers from the Trump administration as to what has happened to their loved ones."
The Illinois Democrat, an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient, plans to introduce the Honoring the Sacrifice of Troops in War Act in the Senate on Thursday, legislation aimed at forcing transparency in how the Defense Department tracks and reports casualties from military operations, and restoring all casualty records tied to Iran operations dating back to Feb. 28.

It's a shame that Duckworth has to go through the trouble of introducing legislation for this.  But that's what happens when a preening Pete becomes Secretary of Defense.  All the make up in the world can't hide the psoriasis and all the make up in the world can't make him look like a warrior either.


U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and the entire New Mexico congressional delegation are demanding answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after revelations that a Department of Defense GPS jamming exercise contributed to a medical plane crash that killed four crew members and ignited a wildfire that burned nearly 32,000 acres.
In a letter obtained exclusively by MeidasTouch, Heinrich was joined by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández, Melanie Stansbury, and Gabe Vasquez, all Democrats, in pressing Hegseth for accountability over the Pentagon's role in the May 13 crash in Lincoln County.

Just before midnight that night, a Beechcraft King Air medical transport plane carrying two pilots and two flight nurses took off from Roswell bound for Sierra Blanca Regional Airport in Ruidoso to pick up a patient for transport to Albuquerque. According to the lawmakers, the aircraft's GPS was jammed by a scheduled military test event in the area, causing the routine medical flight to overshoot its landing pattern by 10 miles. At 12:15 a.m. on May 14, the plane slammed into the side of the Capitan Mountains, killing all four crew members instantly and sparking a wildfire that burned for three weeks before crews could contain it.

And yet the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States stayed silent about it for months and months.  They didn't apologize to families of the four killed, they didn't own up to the American people what had taken place.  And they still haven't.  They seem to think no one will know if they just continue to ignore what took place. 




Hegseth's failures just keep piling up.  In yesterday's snapshot, we noted the conditions on the USS LINCOLN and Bruce Golding (INDEPENDENT) reports:

Morale is plummeting on an American aircraft carrier that's running short of food and other supplies as its exhausted crew wages President Donald Trump's war against Iran, worried family members say.

Sailors and Marines serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln have told relatives about being served a half-cup of rice and two tortillas for a meal, and said the ship's store often lacks soap, deodorant and toothpaste, MS NOW reported Wednesday.
Crew members are also worn out by working long, grueling shifts, with some rarely getting a day off, and described broken toilets, moldy showers without hot water and no laundry service for weeks at a time, relatives said.

“The morale is not good,” said Bonnie York, whose stepson is aboard the Lincoln. “Apparently, the ship’s doctor or therapist said they need to hit port soon or people are going to start, you know, losing their minds.”


On the food issue, Cybele Mayes-Osterman (USA TODAY) reported back on April 16th:

Dan F. was alarmed when his daughter, a Marine aboard the USS Tripoli, a warship deployed to fight the Iran war, sent him a photo of a meal served on the ship. A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla.

A picture of a mid-April dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, shared by a service member with his family, was similarly unappetizing – a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.

Dan and other military family members worried that their loved ones deployed to the Middle East are going hungry are filling boxes with items they hope could help service members ride out prolonged deployments in the Middle East – homemade fudge, Jolly Ranchers, crossword puzzle books, playing cards, toothpaste, Girl Scout cookies and fresh socks.

But mail delivery to military ZIP codes across the Middle East has been indefinitely suspended as of April, and packages in transit now hang in limbo.
Dan asked to go by his first name only to protect his daughter from retaliation.

Both the Navy and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth denied reports of food problems.

"My team confirmed the logistics stats for the Lincoln & Tripoli," Hegseth said in a post on X. "Both have 30+ days of Class I supplies (food) on board. NavCent monitors this everyday, for every ship. Our sailors deserve -- and receive --  the best."

Well, Pete, doesn't seem like you're ensuring that the troops have the best.  Not if the issue is still being raised over three months later.  In fact, that would appear to indict you as a lying, do-nothing who wants the title of Secretary of Defense but doesn't want to do any actual work that comes with the position.  Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, Lloyd Austin, Leon Panetta -- even Donald Rumsfeld -- would have been publicly raising hell if they found out that sailors on US carrier didn't have adequate provisions.  Adam Lynch notes MS NOW's Priya Sridhar reporting:

“Deployment was extended for a second time, and they're concerned that this could lead to accidents that could potentially turn deadly,” said Sridhar. And then on top of that, … they're telling me that the sailors and the marines can't take hot showers, that the toilets are nonoperational, that for weeks at a time, there are no access to working laundry facilities, and that they're having to stand in lines to get into the ship's store for 1 to 2 hours. And when they get there, there are no basic hygiene items like toothpaste, deodorant or soap.”

The families’ frustration, added Sridhar, is that they’re hearing about the nation’s winnowing stockpiles of munitions and weapons, which Trump and his defense secretary keep blowing on Iran, and a $67 billion Department of Defense request, and they want their loved ones to be part of the conversation too.


Winnowing stockpiles of munitions and weapons?  Oh, yeah, the reality that has Chump hissing "treason."  Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) explains:

President Donald Trump is crashing out about a report that he confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the U.S. military’s depleted munitions stockpile.

Trump took to Truth Social within the first hour of Thursday to hit back at The Washington Post for reporting that tensions between Hegseth and the president had “boiled over” on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting at Camp David last week.
“The U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history.”

“The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long term jail sentences will be sought!” Trump wrote. Notably, Trump didn’t deny unloading on Hegseth.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has challenged reports that the country’s weapons stockpile is low, and still managed to threaten the leakers with jail time. If the story is false, then why would it be treasonous to tell it?




Steve Benen (MS NOW) addresses Chump's 'treasonous' response:

The first problem with this is that Trump’s efforts to downplay the depleted stockpiles contradict comments he made last week, when the Republican acknowledged the problem he now seems eager to paper over.
The second problem is that Trump’s online statement contradicts itself: The president can argue that the latest reporting is false, or he can argue that the reporting is based on “treasonous leaks.” But to argue both at once doesn’t make sense. As Mother Jones’ David Corn recently summarized in response to a different story, “It’s only a leak if it’s true.”



Using publicly available data, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a national security think tank, estimated that by the end of July, the US had between 759 and 827 Patriot missiles left, down from 2,330 before the conflict began.
It also estimates the US has now used around 60% of terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD) missiles, which are deployed to intercept strikes, Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at CSIS, said on Wednesday.

And Joe DePaolo (MEDIAITE) notes Joe Scarborough's response to the news:

Joe Scarborough was off from Morning Joe on Thursday — but still managed to deliver a hot take that’s sure to get people talking in Washington and beyond.

In a fiery post on X on Thursday, Scarborough sounded off about the blockbuster Washington Post report about President Donald Trump clashing at Camp David with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over what The Post characterized as “extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran.”
Scarborough called it an “unforgivable blunder” compounded by Hegseth’s refusal to acknowledge the shortage.

“When Hegseth attacks media questions on this extreme munitions shortage as “fake news,” he makes this unforgivable blunder worse,” Scarborough wrote. “Congress needs to take action. Americans need the truth. Hegseth can’t give it. He needs to go.”



Turning to Chump's former roll dog, the late Jeffrey Epstein, Brett Meiselas (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) notes:

President Donald Trump's plan to haul Rupert Murdoch into a deposition just hit a wall.

A federal judge on Wednesday granted The Wall Street Journal's request to freeze discovery in Trump's defamation lawsuit over the newspaper's reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, a significant procedural victory that came just hours after lawyers argued over whether the case should be dismissed altogether.
U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles issued the order after hearing oral arguments in Miami federal court on the Journal's motion to dismiss Trump's amended complaint. In a paperless order entered later that day, Gayles stayed, or paused, all discovery pending his decision on whether the lawsuit can proceed.
The decision means Trump cannot force Murdoch, or anyone else connected to the case for that matter, to sit for depositions while the judge decides whether the lawsuit survives. If Gayles ultimately dismisses the case with prejudice, as the Journal has requested, Murdoch may never have to answer Trump's questions under oath.





Stunned may describe Chump's reaction to that Mother Tucker Carlson.  Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) explains:

The former Fox News host invoked the late sex offender – and former Trump pal – Jeffrey Epstein as a symbol of the elite class to which the president belongs and has failed to hold accountable, and Carlson seemingly took a step toward a possible 2028 presidential bid by outlining his "America First" priorities, reported The Daily Beast.
The 57-year-old broadcaster has spent months building a dissident wing within MAGA, teaming with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, 52, who resigned from Congress earlier this year after a bitter split with Trump over what she called broken campaign promises.

Both accuse Trump, 80, of abandoning "America First" principles by entangling the U.S. in the Iran war, deferring to Israel on foreign policy, and mishandling the release of the Epstein files.



New Mexico’s attorney general sued the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice and acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche this week over the DOJ’s refusal to share un-redacted documents from its files on Jeffrey Epstein. The state is investigating crimes that took place at Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in Stanley, New Mexico (pictured above, located in Santa Fe County). The ranch, which Epstein purchased in 1993, is mentioned more than 10,000 times in the files.

“New Mexico has a duty to protect survivors and investigate crimes committed in our state so that perpetrators can be held accountable,” New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement. “We asked the Department of Justice to cooperate by providing access to records that may be critical to identifying victims, witnesses, and additional criminal conduct at Zorro Ranch. Their delay is actively hurting our criminal investigation and delaying justice Epstein survivors deserve.”

The lawsuit (which can be read here) was filed in federal court in Washington, DC yesterday, and argues that the DOJ’s refusal to provide the documents “violates the Administrative Procedure Act and unlawfully interferes with New Mexico’s sovereign authority to investigate and prosecute crimes committed within its borders.”



CNN's Jake Tapper was stunned to hear New Mexico's attorney general suggest that a Trump official lied under oath.

During an interview with Tapper on Wednesday, New Mexico AG Raul Torrez discussed the Department of Justice's handling of records related to dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch. Torrez filed a lawsuit against the DOJ on Wednesday after it ignored a deadline to hand those records over.
"They've never worked with us," Torrez said. "We asked for this information as a law enforcement agency. It's a very common practice for us to reach out to federal prosecutors and investigators and ask for the kinds of investigative files that are at issue here."

Torrez said that the DOJ directed them to the District of New Mexico, "which was odd," and he "knew full well" that that office "didn't have the whole range of files that we were looking for." Torrez complied nonetheless but was still unable to get unredacted files that he needed to investigate Zorro Ranch.
"The bottom line is they're not cooperating," Torrez said. "They're stonewalling this investigation, and that's why we had to take legal action today."
Tapper pointed out that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who currently heads the DOJ, told Congress under oath that the DOJ would cooperate with the New Mexico Department of Justice and help it get the information that it needed. What Torrez was describing suggested that this wasn't true and that Blanche was refusing to cooperate with the New Mexico AG.

"I'm just stunned because you're suggesting that he lied to Congress when he said that under oath," Tapper said. "Lying to Congress is obviously illegal."





MS NOW notes that the Senate is wrapping up business today before going on their planned recess which starts Saturday.


One of the things that they want to do is confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General.  And on that, let's note this from Senator Patty Murray's office:

Murray: “Mr. Blanche told us all exactly what he plans to do if Senators confirm him. His goal was to make the Dobbs decision ‘permanent in every single state.’ Every. Single. State.”

Murray: “This isn’t just a confirmation vote anymore—it’s a roll-call vote on which Senators endorse banning abortion in all 50 states from the federal level. I’m voting NO.”

ICYMI: At Hearing with Acting AG Blanche, Senator Murray Blasts Outrageous Creation of $1.8 Billion MAGA Slush Fund, Presses for Apology to Epstein Victims

***WATCH: Senator Murray’s remarks***

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, spoke on the Senate floor ahead of the vote to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General. Murray condemned Blanche for his disqualifying track record and outright corruption. Murray also sounded the alarm on Blanche’s recent comments made during a private call where Blanche says he will work to make the Dobbs decision “permanent in every single state.”

Senator Murray’s remarks, as delivered, are below:

“M. President, I was never going to come out here and support Todd Blanche for a long list of reasons. I believe he is one of the most corrupt Justice Department officials in our country’s history, for one. He was Trump’s former personal lawyer—and it seems that he never quit!

“The only difference now is that the taxpayers are signing his checks instead of Trump. He was the one who negotiated a $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off violent insurrectionists, and who cut a backroom deal to give the President and his entire corrupt family immunity from IRS investigations.

“Not to forget, Todd Blanche is the guy who botched the Epstein files so badly that survivors had their names and faces exposed, while the names of alleged abusers were hidden. This is a man, who wouldn’t meet with survivors until Senators put him under a tremendous amount of public pressure. And when the meeting eventually got on the books, survivors made it crystal clear that Blanche didn’t listen to them. He was more interested in checking a box than hearing their stories or bringing them justice. 

“All of that is of course absolutely unacceptable and disqualifying. But I come here today to sound the alarm on some of the most disturbing comments I have ever heard from our nation’s top law enforcement official. M. President, I guess Todd Blanche thought no one was listening.

“Because on a private call with anti-abortion activists Mr. Blanche told us all exactly what he plans to do if Senators confirm him.

“His goal was to make the Dobbs decision ‘permanent in every single state.’ Every. Single. State. Not just Texas or Idaho. He wants to ban abortion in Washington state. California. New York. In every state.

“He told them, ‘We will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent.’ Victory over what, exactly? Victory over women who just want to make their own health care decisions? Victory over patients in states where abortion is legal?

“Where voters have said, over and over, at the ballot box: keep your hands off our rights.

“Now, a DOJ spokesperson tried to clean up Blanche’s words. Saying he was only focused on restricting access to medication abortion in all 50 states—as if that’s somehow better.

“Well, I’m here to say I believe the tape. I believe Todd Blanche’s own words.

“So let’s be crystal clear about what this vote is. A vote to confirm Todd Blanche is a vote to endorse his fight to ban abortion in all fifty states. Whatever happened to this is states’ decision? So every Republican who votes yes is voting for exactly that—his words, not mine. And any Republican who votes to confirm him will own that. In every state. In every election.

“So, M. President, this isn’t just a confirmation vote anymore—it’s a roll-call vote on which Senators endorse banning abortion in all 50 states from the federal level. I’m voting no.”

###



The following sites updated:



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Thursday, August 6, 2026

Musk lost $87 billion yesterday

Alien Musk.  The threat to democracy.  Triple citizen -- South Africa by his father and his birthplace, Canada by his mother and the US by lying after he fled South Africa because apartheid was about to end -- destroying the world.  AJ Tiarsmith (24/7 Wall Street) reports:

Elon Musk lost roughly $87 billion in a single trading session on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, according to Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires Index, which showed his fortune sliding from $783.3 billion to $696.1 billion, an 11.1% drop. Bloomberg's Billionaires Index pegged the hit at roughly $89.6 billion, taking him to $687 billion, with the gap reflecting different methodologies for valuing his private and newly public stakes. The trigger: SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) shares fell 13.61% after its first quarterly report as a public company.

$87 billion.  Oh, too bad.  If only he could have been totally wiped out.  Well we can hope, right?  We can hope it can happen and that he'll stop butting into our business in this country.  But I had a dream where he died from a stroke.  Over the weekend, I woke up with heartburn in the midst of a dream where all the networks were reporting he had a late night stroke and had passed away in his sleep.  

One can hope. 


The Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s federal cost-cutting baby, significantly overstated its savings, a new investigation found.

Musk’s original ambition was to save the government $2 trillion in federal spending. DOGE itself touted $215 billion in savings, as of its last update in January 2026.
Its website promises that its numbers “will initially be updated weekly; over time, the website will improve, and the updates will converge to real-time.”

The initiative, which officially ceased operations on July 4, 2026, did not update its numbers for the last six months of its existence.

The broken promise to update its numbers in real time is representative of the whole DOGE operation, as confirmed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s new analysis of its savings that don’t add up.

The congressional watchdog found Thursday that roughly $110 billion of DOGE’s claimed savings came from contracts, grants, and leases, including “108 leases it reported that it cut were already being phased out when DOGE was established.”

DOGE also said it terminated 13,476 government contracts, but the new report showed that number was overstated by nearly 2,000, adding up to about $27.4 billion in contracts that were not actually canceled.

The GAO noted: “In these cases, another action, such as reducing the contract value or deobligating some funds, could have occurred.”

“We found that DOGE did not accurately report actions taken on contracts,” the analysis reads.


Musk is a liar, a con man, a grifter and, most of all, a fake. Barron's notes:

Elon Musk looks to be losing his powers. SpaceX shareholders didn’t like their chief executive’s promises of huge spending to come in an AI race that only seems to be boosting hardware suppliers.
When Musk presents Tesla earnings, he often lifts the stock with bold statements about the robot-dominated future to come. But when it comes to SpaceX, his comments seemed to have the opposite effect.


This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"


Thursday, August 6, 2026.  New Mexico is being stalled and ignored in their request to the US Justice Dept for information regarding Jeffrey Epstein, non-journalism major Bari Weiss continues to show off her lack of journalistic training and knowledge,  Hegseth face multiple scandals, and much more. 






Chump's a mess, as Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) notes in the video above.  And not very in touch with reality.  Iraq?  AL JAZEERA reports:

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is facing a mounting political and security crisis as a September 30 deadline to restrict all weapons to state control approaches.

While a number of armed groups, such as Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib al-Imam Ali, have agreed to integrate into the state’s armed forces, the defiant stance of some powerful Shia paramilitaries threatens to derail the initiative.
Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned Iraqi paramilitary group and one of the country’s most heavily armed factions, has explicitly rejected the government’s mandate, pledging instead to retain what it calls “resistance weapons” and further develop its arsenal.

Similarly, the influential Harakat al-Nujaba has said the government’s push to confiscate arms should target illegal weapons causing chaos, not those held by fighters who “defended Iraq, its holy sites, and its people during the most difficult circumstances”.


The militias are not going to be turned out by Ali al-Zaidi.  Before the US troops left, the Shi'ite militias were already present and were already disobeying the rules and laws (you couldn't, for example, be a militia with a military wing and also be a political party elected to Parliament).  A few prime minister candidates did make claims to the effect that they would end the militias but none of them did.  The militias are too much a part of Iraq now.  They were folded into the government forces many, many years ago.

If Chump and his administration thought Ali would be able to address this -- and apparently they did think that -- then they know nothing of Iraq's recent history.  



Let's move over to the US miliary and the fact that they killed some people.  No, not over in Iran, here in the United States.  Joe Wilkins (FUTURISM) notes:

New bombshell reporting by Wired reveals an incident in which the testing of an experimental GPS jammer resulted in a medical plane crashing into the side of a mountain.

The horrifying incident happened in May, the publication reports, when a small twin-engine medevac aircraft carrying two pilots and two medical workers departed from Roswell, New Mexico. Heading West for the small mountain village of Ruidoso, the crew became the victim of an electronic warfare exercise being conducted at the nearby White Sands Missile Range, a test which rendered their navigational system inoperable.
Due to a combination of low visibility and an air-traffic control that was stretched far beyond capacity — at least three other planes reported navigation disruptions due to the GPS jamming — the pilots failed to register a mountainous formation between their plane and the landing strip.

As airline pilot and aviation crash analyst Juan Browne told Wired, the visual effect of that approach would have been stupefying. “When those lights go out, man, you know you are in big trouble,” Browne explained.

Unfortunately, the disoriented crew ran straight into the side of a mountain they likely never saw, resulting in the loss of every life on board. It’s the first known instance where military GPS jamming played a role in downing a civilian plane in US airspace. Reported incidents of GPS jamming within the continental US have skyrocketed in recent years. According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the number of GPS interference events went from four in 2020 to 50 in 2024, and 40 across 2025.


Jeff Wise reported on this at WIRED July 30th.  Pete Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense.  This is on him.  And he should have announced it when it happened  Instead, he thought he could lie and not say anything.  He thought he could lie to the American people.  He thought he could cover this up.  Hegseth is not fit to be Secretary of Defense.  This was clear when JD Vance had to provide the tie splitting vote to get him confirmed.  He wasn't qualified for the post in any manner, shape or form.  He'd never run a big agency or organization.  His money problems as the head of DoD?  Reflect his mad spending as the head of two different charity organizations.  And his non-stop lies?  That's what the country has learned to expect from FOX "NEWS" TV personalities. 

There should be a Congressional investigation into this.  

And, it goes without saying, apologies to the family members of the deceased.  But Hegseth will probably attempt to play this off as not his fault and not anything that the country needs to be concerned about.




Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) reports on some reactions to WIRED's story:

Outraged is mounting over a new report revealing U.S. military testing in New Mexico may have played a role in a fatal plane crash.

“Defund them,” wrote attorney and political consultant Briahna Joy Gray Tuesday in a social media post on X, referring to the U.S. military.
The fatal flight ended on May 14 when a civilian plane on a medical transport mission crashed into the side of a mountain after the pilots became "disoriented," Wired reported last week.

While the cause of the crash has yet to be officially determined, Wired's aviation reporter Jeff Wise noted testing at the White Sands Missile Range may have played a role in the incident.

“While the crash was the first fatal accident in the US known to be linked to electronic warfare, there’s no reason to think it will be the last," Wise wrote.

Christopher Hale, a Democratic political operative and former congressional candidate, laid the blame for the accident squarely on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of being responsible for “killing everyone on board” the aircraft.



Moving over to the late Jeffrey Estein whose decades long friendship with Donald Chump has earned him protection even in death.  Alexandra Miller (SCRIPP NEWS) reports:

Scripps News has learned the New Mexico Department of Justice has filed a 40-page lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing the agency of failing to comply with repeated records requests related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The state is seeking documents tied to investigations into Epstein, his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico and any alleged co-conspirators.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he has made repeated requests for the records since taking over the investigation earlier this year.

The U.S. Department of Justice has argued Torrez's requests are overly broad and has cited privacy concerns and ongoing investigations as reasons for withholding the records. The New Mexico Department of Justice disputes those claims, arguing Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has made clear the department is not conducting any active investigations into the matter.


So grasp that Todd Blanche thinks he deserves to be confirmed as Attorney General yet as acting Attorney General, he's unwilling to comply with requests from the New Mexico Dept of Justice.  Grasp that the message New Mexico is being given includes that they can't honor the requests because of "ongoing investigations."  Ongoing investigations?  Blanche and Ka$h Patel have both claimed that there is nothing more that the Justice Dept can do. But they're denying records to New Mexico on the grounds of "ongoing investigations." 

Todd Blanche, when making an effort (what he considers an effort) to garner support for becoming AG, will not supply New Mexico with the needed documents. 



Staying with the topic of Chump's friend Jeffrey Epstein, Alyssa Ray (THE WRAP) reports 

CBS News pushed back after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released a report suggesting the network "suppressed" a "60 Minutes" segment about Jeffrey Epstein, calling the claim "categorically false."

"We are proud of our aggressive and extensive reporting on the Epstein scandal," a spokesperson for CBS said in a statement to media. "That reporting continues. We air pieces when they are ready, and suggesting that an interview is being 'suppressed' for any reason is categorically false."

Bari Weiss.  Stupid, transphobic Bari Weiss.  Stupid, transphobic, opinion columnist Bari Weiss.  No one's suggesting "an interview" has been suppressed.  We're suggesting an investigative report has been suppressed.  Because it has been.  


On March 26, 2026, Senator Wyden sat for a taped interview at a Senate Finance
Committee hearing room with former 60 minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. The interview
was part of a broader segment being prepared by 60 minutes regarding the conduct of Wall Street
banks and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands with regard to Jeffrey Epstein and his
associates. Over the course of the interview Senator Wyden answered questions related to his
multi-year investigation into transactions financing Epstein’s sex trafficking operation and
potential consequences for banks over potentially willful violations of federal anti-money
laundering laws.
However, shortly after the taping of the interview with Senator Wyden, CBS News
Leadership led by Bari Weiss made the decision to fire Sharyn Alfonsi.218 As a result, the
interview with Senator Wyden will not be aired and it is unclear whether Bari Weiss and CBS
News Leadership will allow the broader segment to ever be aired. 

Again, were a real journalist overseeing this -- not columnist Bari Weiss who holds a history degree and has no real training in journalism -- it would have been grasped that a news segment would be more than just an interview with one person.  Sharyn Alfonsi is an investigative journalist and she interviewed Wyden at the end of March and worked on the segment beyond the interview with Wyden.  


Bari is an untrained idiot.  It's not as if she went to journalism school and then attempted to be that (bad) columnist for THE NEW YORK TIMES.  She didn't study journalism.  She studied history.  She doesn't know what she's doing and that's why the ratings have tanked for CBS NEWS since she took over.  She's uneducated and she's unqualified.  







Wyden, a ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, released the report on August 4. 

The committee said it concerned “years of complicity by top officials at multiple Wall Street Banks” and alleged that Epstein was able to move large sums of money while banks delayed reporting suspicious activity. Newsweek could not independently verify the claims made in the report.

“I said from the start that if you want to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up, you had to follow the money,” Wyden said in a statement after the report’s release. 

“My small team of investigators did what Trump’s attorney general and Treasury secretary said was impossible: they connected the dots and found evidence of multiple crimes related to Epstein’s associates.”

He wrote in the report: “Wall Street banks looked the other way as Epstein withdrew millions of dollars in cash with no clear business purpose and was party to thousands of suspicious wire transfers worth more than $1 billion.”

One of the most striking claims involves Deutsche Bank. 

Wyden’s Senate report alleged that the bank failed to promptly report more than $250 million in suspicious Epstein-related transactions. 

Bank of America was also cited with over roughly $170 million in alleged transactions linked to another billionaire, while JPMorgan Chase was also mentioned in the report.









The transactions in question reportedly total more than $420 million and involve exchanges with disgraced investor Leon Black, as well as payments to individuals in Russia and Eastern Europe. While representatives for the banks and Black have maintained that they did not facilitate wrongdoing or were engaged in legitimate business, the Senate report argues that these institutions effectively turned a blind eye to obvious warning signs.

The fallout from the report extends beyond Wall Street, raising questions about transparency at the highest levels of government and media. Wyden has pointed to roadblocks in obtaining Treasury files and alleged that a recent media merger played a role in suppressing a broadcast interview about his findings.



By the way, Chris Wallace weighed in on the proposed PARAMOUNT and WARNER BROS merger and, no surprise, he's for it.  (No surprise because he's a ghoul and because he works for PARAMOUNT.)  He writes:

Over my 55 years in the news business, I have built a reputation for being fair, for playing it straight. Here's some straight talk. I have problems with some of the journalism at CBS News. Just as I had problems with some of the journalism at Fox and CNN when I worked at both of those news operations.  But I don't believe government - either at the federal or state level, whether it is controlled by Republicans or Democrats - should use its powers to determine who owns a news platform or to control how that outlet reports the news. 

No one with true news knowledge has ever seen you as fair or as someone who played it straight.  Nor did anyone see your father as such and you're worse than your sexist father was -- and I'm not just referring to his Barbra Streisand interview, we can go back, we can all the way back to when he was forced to work with  Jacqueline Susann and his snippy nonsense that he pulled then. It's amazing, however, that he wants to write about TV news while noting (a) that the lawsuits he's addressing don't bring up the issue of TV news and insisting that thanks to YOUTUBE, et al, TV news doesn't matter anymore.  No, Chris Wallace, you're what no longer matters.  And people reading headlines on YOUTUBE or anywhere and yacking about the news aren't doing news.

I've never mistaken what I do here as news unless I'm covering a Congressional hearing I attended.  

Amy Goodman does not do a news program.  She does a public affairs program.  And that's what most of the YOUTUBE videos qualify as.  So, no, it's not news.  

(B) WARNER BROS shouldn't be sold off right now.  That's because it was purchased in 2022.  And a few of us were loudly opposed to that takeover merger (in Congress, Joaquin Castro was the loudest voice and the sanest).  But the Chris Wallaces of the world were all for it.  And what happened?  The sleaze bags who took over shelved three films because they figured that could get more money ripping off the insurance companies.  They cancelled a ton of shows.  They took their cheap ass 'reality' and 'lifestyle' programs and tried to pimp them and multiply them.  We don't need another merger. 

And we certainly don't need PARAMOUNT's just greenlit again CLUELESS TV show where non-actress Alicia Silverstone will return as Cher 30 years later with her life turned into a tizzy when her own daughter -- should be granddaughter, it's 30 years later -- enters high school.  That's the kind of 'brave' and 'new' and 'innovative' programming that we can expect from PARAMOUNT and they'll quickly move that same brave and innovative programming to WARNER BROS if they get approval for the merger. 


Let's turn to Prissy Hegseth, our Secretary of Defense.  Joe Sommerlad (INDEPENDENT) reports:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nominee for Army chief of staff could struggle to win confirmation because Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee oppose his candidacy, according to a report.

Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who commanded the famed 82nd Airborne Division, has served in the role in an acting capacity since Hegseth controversially fired the popular Gen. Randy George in April.
Hegseth had wanted to nominate LaNeve in May, The Wall Street Journal reports, but was informed at the time by the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, that his man did not have the votes to win out.

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and her GOP colleagues are reportedly concerned that LaNeve has only been a four-star general for six months, whereas most chiefs of staff have typically served at least 18 months at that rank before assuming the top role, the WSJ said.


The Republican Party’s confidence in United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to be waning, amid growing frustrations over the war with Iran dragging on with no end in sight.

“I don’t have any confidence in him anymore. I think he’s all over the place,” Senator Thom Tillis said of Hegseth in an interview with US newspaper The Hill last week. “I think he’s got a massive insecurity complex, he has a lack of experience in large organisations, he m
Tillis spoke of a growing crisis of confidence in Hegseth’s leadership within the Senate, as the US and Iran appear no closer to a lasting peace deal despite the soaring costs of the war that the US and Israel launched on Iran on February 28.

“I have heard out of the Pentagon that there’s a loss of confidence – within the Pentagon,” the senator said. “And of course then everyone here on [Capitol Hill] hears those same concerns.”
icromanages too much.”


That's far from Hegseth's only problem.  Will Neal (DAILY BEAST) notes:

Sailors fighting President Donald Trump’s war with Iran are washing in moldy showers and rationing meals in the ninth month of a mission that shows zero signs of ending.

The USS Abraham Lincoln sailed out of San Diego in November on a deployment supposed to last seven months. Trump, 80, launched his air campaign against Iran in February. The carrier has been in the fight ever since, and its 5,000-plus sailors and Marines still have no homecoming date. The president said the conflict would last a “few weeks.” It’s been five months.
Bonnie York, whose stepson is aboard the Lincoln, told MS NOW she had been told a doctor or therapist on the ship warned the crew needed to reach port before people started “losing their minds.” She voted for Trump—and partly because he promised not to start any new wars. She no longer believes the country is safer for it. “You’ve essentially stranded them out there,” she said of the crew.
Relatives of the crew told the network they fear the exhaustion on board will get someone killed. A dozen spoke to the outlet about the conditions, and most asked not to be named, fearing retaliation against their relatives on the vessel.
Brett Snow, a Navy veteran with a son on the ship, said the grind has produced a situation “ripe for accidents.” Even in peacetime, he said, a carrier is one of the most hazardous places to work.

Apparently Hegseth has not only never been stationed on a naval carrier, he also doesn't have a mind capable of learning what it entails. 





Then there's wife number three, his current wife.  Lesley Abravanel (OK) notes: 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing sharp public backlash after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday, August 3, appointing Hegseth's third wife, Jennifer Rauchet, as the chairwoman of the newly created Presidential Military Spouse Commission.

Critics have labeled the appointment a "scam" and an act of favoritism, citing Rauchet's lack of formal government credentials and her history of controversial involvement in Pentagon operations.

The Presidential Military Spouse Commission is a newly formed White House panel consisting of more than 20 military spouses.
It is tasked with advising the commander-in-chief on critical quality-of-life issues impacting military families, including employment stability for military spouses facing high unemployment rates, healthcare access and child care availability, housing security and education during frequent relocations.
Critics argue that appointing the Defense Secretary's spouse to lead an advisory council on military affairs bypasses highly qualified, independent advocates with deeper backgrounds in the military community.




The Trump administration has detained dozens of parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. troops, an Associated Press investigation has revealed, as it rolls back immigration protections for military families in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda.

This marks a significant departure from decades of bipartisan consensus that shielded such individuals from deportation.
More than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained since Trump took office, with at least six already deported, according to the AP’s first accounting of these cases, which the government does not track.

Currently, at least eight immediate family members of U.S. service members remain in federal immigration custody.

Experts warn that this reversal could undermine military preparedness, even as the U.S. is engaged in conflict abroad.

The policy has left military personnel without crucial emotional support and caretakers for their children, delayed deployments, and forced some to take leave.

"How can I even focus on my military career because I have to worry about how my wife is doing?" said Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, whose wife was detained in front of their 6-year-old daughter in July while he was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states it does not compile data on these cases.
[. . .]
Experts in military immigration law, including Dan Gividen, who served as ICE’s deputy chief counsel from 2016 to 2019 under Trump, describe this as a stark shift.
Gividen stated that during his tenure, immigration authorities rarely detained service members' immediate family members unless they had committed violent crimes.

"We would not place them into removal proceedings, period. That’s insane," Gividen said.

"The fact that they’re doing it now is just outrageous." Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney and retired lieutenant colonel, noted that previous administrations typically canceled past removal orders to ensure troops could focus on their duties. "If soldiers are preoccupied with detained or deported family, they're not concentrating on their job anymore," she explained.


President Donald Trump’s administration has detained dozens of parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. troops as it rolls back immigration protections for military families to pursue its mass deportation agenda, an Associated Press investigation found.

More than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained since Trump took office for a second term, and at least six have been deported and one self-deported, the AP found in the first accounting of such detentions, which the government does not track. At least eight immediate family members of U.S. service members remain in federal immigration custody.
[. . .]

The Department of Homeland Security has said it does not compile data on these cases. The AP obtained information by analyzing thousands of federal court records compiled by Habeas Dockets, a project run by the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative; by reviewing existing media coverage; and by verifying information with family members and attorneys. The actual number is likely much higher than the 52 cases AP found.


And yet as this goes public, silence from Hegseth who, as the Secretary of Defense, should have been raising this issue all along.  But the troops are just props to him. 


Staying with the topic of Chump's war on immigrants, José Olivares (GUARDIAN) reports:


One hunger striker in an immigration detention center was force-fed for almost six months.

One detained immigrant with mental health problems was about to be force-fed, until his attorney intervened and stopped the process.

And another hunger striker was almost force-fed, but gave in and broke her hunger strike as coercive procedures loomed.
These are among 10 separate cases the Guardian found, since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has attempted to subject detained hunger strikers to involuntary medical procedures, including force-feeding. Of those, ICE subjected at least three – but probably five – who were protesting against the conditions of their confinement, to the procedures. Human rights organizations have widely condemned force-feeding as torture.
Now, as ICE detains more immigrants nationwide, immigrant rights organizations and medical experts worry more people will be subjected to involuntary medical procedures.

Among the 10 cases, the Guardian can exclusively reveal, are an Afghan man who was force-fed for months in Texas, a Ukrainian man with mental health problems in detention whose looming force-feeding in Florida was stopped by his attorney, and a Saudi Arabian woman who ended up in hospital while on hunger strike in Louisiana and eventually broke her strike in Texas before she was subjected to the procedure.


ICE has targeted immigrants -- and those they suspect of being immigrants -- from the start.  Even those immigrants who went through all the hoops to come into this country have been targeted.  Billal Rahman (NEWSWEEK) notes:


A federal judge has ordered the release of a 20-year-old Tongan man who was legally admitted to the United States and found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “coerced” him into signing a document that the government later claimed waived his rights to challenge deportation.
In a 3-page order issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Noël Wise of the Northern District of California ruled that ICE coerced Cornelius Kaihau Holani, a 20-year-old citizen of New Zealand of Tongan ethnicity with no criminal record or prior immigration enforcement history, into signing a document after detaining him at Oakland International Airport and transporting him to an ICE office in San Francisco.

The ruling is a blow to the Trump administration’s deportation system, with the court finding that federal immigration officials likely violated basic due process protections.



Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:

Reports raise corruption concerns, question whether administration officials and their families may be exerting improper influence over DoD awards

“Our service members in harm’s way and the taxpayers footing the bill deserve to know that those dollars are being spent through a competitive process, not funneled into the bank accounts of administration cronies.”

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); Representative Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee; Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI); and Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), in writing to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense (DoD), asking for an investigation of recent reports of $3.2 billion in government awards flowing to over a dozen companies with ties to President Trump’s sons.

“We are concerned about a growing cloud of corruption amid questions about whether the President’s family and administration officials may be abusing their positions to influence DoD awards, and the extent to which this is undermining the competitive, apolitical contracting process used to ensure that service members have the best equipment and most effective technologies and weapons systems on the market,” wrote the lawmakers.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are affiliated with two investment companies, 1789 Capital and American Ventures, which have reportedly poured money into at least 15 companies in the defense sector. New reports revealed that, after the Trump-tied firms became involved, these companies received $3.2 billion in federal awards and an additional $3.1 billion in future contract options.

“The potential for corruption is obvious,” wrote the lawmakers. 

The lawmakers requested the Inspector General determine which Pentagon awards under the Trump administration have involved companies with ties to the Trump family and other administration officials, and asked for a review of the decision-making process to determine whether DoD officials or outside entities complied with ethical guidelines.

“Your determination of whether any Trump-affiliated company may have obtained financial benefits from DoD contracts or awards is particularly important in light of President Trump’s admission that his children “have inside information” in “almost anything they do” with regard to their investment portfolios,” wrote the lawmakers.

The lawmakers also asked the DoD IG to examine the Pentagon’s existing framework for award-making to determine whether it is sufficient to prevent conflicts of interest, and whether it should be strengthened. Specifically, they requested an evaluation of several proposals in the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) meant to strengthen ethics requirements for Pentagon awards, including a provision that requires a new code of conduct for employees of the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) and other investment arms of the Pentagon.

“Our service members in harm’s way and the taxpayers footing the bill deserve to know that those dollars are being spent through a competitive process, not funneled into the bank accounts of administration cronies,” concluded the lawmakers.

The lawmakers are escalating their oversight as reports of Trump-affiliated entities gaining huge DoD contracts grow, and the administration refuses to address concerns about self-enrichment and influence peddling at the Pentagon.

“[Previous] unsatisfactory response[s] left us with more concerns that OSC is unaware of or willfully ignoring the potential for corruption in the awards process at the expense of U.S. national security,” wrote the lawmakers.

Senator Warren has had longstanding concerns over potential conflicts of interest, revolving door abuse, and national security concerns in DoD’s acquisition process:

  • In July 2026, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg and Director of OSC David Lorch on the DoD’s new initiatives to populate a new contracting office with finance, tech, and defense industry insiders — and offering them government paychecks of up to $438,000 annually.
  • In July 2026, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pressed Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg about conflicts of interest in his overseeing Golden Dome contracts going to companies tied to the private equity firm he founded, Cerberus. 
  • In June 2026, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pressed DoD on the potential conflicts of interest surrounding lucrative DoD loans and deals following reporting that the White House allegedly intervened to secure an OSC loan to a Trump Jr.-backed company. 
  • In June 2026, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pushed for a provision in the fiscal year 2027 NDAA prohibiting OSC from making equity investments in companies where the President, Vice President, Cabinet members, other executive officers with a role in investment decisions, and their families hold a stake. 
  • In March 2026, after DoD failed to provide answers to the vast majority of questions in her January letter, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pressed DoD and OSC on the processes in place to ensure that DoD contracts and loans are being fairly awarded to companies.
  • In January 2026, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) raised concerns about DoD and OSC handing out loans and contracts to companies with ties to the Trump family.
  • In September 2023, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering at DoD, reiterating her request for increased transparency from OSC and seeking clarification on how DoD is interpreting ethics restrictions.
  • In July 2023, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) raised concerns that DoD’s OSC hired private sector individuals who appeared to have direct financial conflicts of interest with defense consultants and defense contractors. 
  • In June 2023, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) reintroduced the Department of Defense Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act to strengthen ethics laws in DoD contracts.  

###





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