On Second Thought

Pres. TACO Promotes Loyalist from Lawn Care to Homeland Security

By Michael Woyton

WTF?

It should be no surprise to anyone that yet another hire in the administration of President TACO is nothing more than a toady.

And this particular toady has ties to the Heritage Foundation.

Thomas Fugate, 22, is a recent college graduate with a degree in politics, and he has landed a job in the United States Department of Homeland Security overseeing terrorism prevention and an $18 million grant program designed to help municipalities combat violent extremism, ProPublica reported.

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His experience includes interning at the ultra-right Heritage Foundation — “Project 2025” — serving as secretary general of a Model United Nations club, working part-time at an Austin, Texas, H-E-B supermarket and freelance lawn mowing, according to LinkedIn. (NOTE: The link to Fugate’s page no longer works.)

Fugate is now overseeing the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, an office that is supposedly tasked with preventing “hate-fueled attacks, school shootings and other forms of targeted violence,” ProPublica said.

Homeland Security vs. Lawn Care.

What kind of experience did the previous director of the center have, you ask?

William Braniff, previously the center’s director, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, where he was the director of practitioner education of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. He was also on the editorial board of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism-The Hague and served on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism Independent Advisory Committee, to name just a few.

Aside from not being a billionaire — I’m making that assumption — Fugate fits the bill to work for the felon-in-chief.

He’s got no real experience other than loyalty to man doling out the jobs.

In its Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, the Heritage Foundation said career civil servants should be cleaned out of government and replaced with political loyalists “who will unquestioningly and swiftly carry out a president’s orders,” according to the Center for American Progress.

It is all part of the effort to remake this country into a dictatorship.

Thomas Fugate is just the latest face of the adjudicated rapist’s administration.

Add him to the Fox News escapees, the wrestling promoter, the podcaster, a reality TV star and the conspiracy-theorist/heroin addict who are in charge of our government.

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Lead art: Screen grab from Thomas Fugate’s LinkedIn page.

NWS Cuts Will Impact Forecasts; Hegseth Celebrates Pride His Way

By Michael Woyton

Anyone else wish that the firehose of news would slow down just a tad?

There is so much to be pissed off about that there’s hardly any time to sit and craft a reaction.

Here is some of what has my engine idling faster than usual.

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I’ve been concerned about this country turning its back on climate change combined with the gutting of the National Weather Service since I read the plans in Project 2025 last year.

WTVJ-6 meteorologist John Morales warned his Miami-area viewers Tuesday that the staffing cuts at the National Weather Service will impact his forecasts, The Hill reported.

After reminding his audience that he was able in 2019 to confidently say that a hurricane was not going to impact south Florida at that time, he said that might not happen this hurricane season.

“And I am here to tell you, that I am not sure I can do that this year, because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general,” Morales said.

He explained that the NWS’s central and south Florida offices are about 20 to 40 percent understaffed.

Listen to Morales in the video below.

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Now that it’s Pride month, what better way for the administration of President TACO to assert its masculinity and warfighter vibe than by having Defense Secretary Pete “WhiskyLeaks” Hegseth order the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk.

Military.com reported that the order to change the name of the oiler ship came directly from Hegseth and that the timing — during Pride month — was intentional.

Milk, a Navy veteran, was an icon of the early 1970s gay civil rights movement. He was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States and was assassinated while serving on the San Francisco board of supervisors.

It is also being reported that other John Lewis-class oilers — which are a group of ships named after prominent civil rights leaders and activists — are being considered for renaming. They include the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsberg and USNS Harriet Tubman.

Notice a pattern?

According to Military.com, “While there are some rare examples of Navy ships being renamed following construction and christening, those instances are outliers and, broadly, Navy traditions consider renaming a ship to be taboo.”

What a pathetic, chest-thumping small human being Hegseth is.

But then again, so is the felon-in-chief, his boss.

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The latest analysis of the adjudicated rapist’s budget bill by the Congressional Budget Office, released today, estimates that it will increase deficits by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years and increase the number of people without health insurance by 10.9 million by 2034.

Federal spending will be reduced by nearly $1.3 trillion over the 10 years, according to reporting by The Associated Press.

“Ahead of the CBO’s release, the White House and Republican leaders criticized the budget office in a preemptive campaign designed to sow doubt in its findings,” the AP said.

Of course, if the CBO’s findings comported with what the administration wanted, then they wouldn’t be calling the nonpartisan organization “historically wrong” or “flat wrong,” now would they.

Even Elon “I’m Not on Drugs” Musk is now against the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.”

He said the spending package was a disgusting abomination and was massive, outrageous and filled with pork.

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U.S. Attorney Alina “Parking Lot Lawyer” Habba is being sued for “malicious prosecution” of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

Baraka, who is running in the Democratic primary for New Jersey governor, claims Habba “directed and ratified” his arrest, and she defamed him in inflammatory statements on television and social media, Politico reported.

Federal prosecutors recently dropped a criminal charge against Baraka for alleged trespassing at an immigrant detention facility in his city.

The lawsuit can be read in full through this link.

His suit includes comments from a judge who admonished Habba’s office in its handling of the arrest, saying there was an “apparent rush” to charge him, followed by an “embarrassing retraction.”

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Word to the wise: Take a bag lunch if you visit one of the grifter-in-chief’s golf clubs.

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Lead art: Screen grab from WTVJ-6.

In This Administration, Cruelty Is a Feature

By Michael Woyton

From the felon in the Oval to senators to masked thugs, if it wasn’t clear before, it certainly is now.

In President TACO’s administration, cruelty is not a bug, it is a feature.

During a recent press availability, the grifter-in-chief answered a question about former President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis by calling him “not a smart person” and a “somewhat vicious person.”

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The man in the orange makeup said that he doesn’t feel sorry for Biden because of what Biden did “with his political opponent” — spoiler alert: he was talking about himself — and because Biden hurt a lot of people.

To follow that, over the weekend, the adjudicated rapist reposted on social media the bizarre claim that Biden was executed in 2020 and “replaced with clones or robots.”

Let that sink in for a minute, while we page Jake Tapper whose recent book said Biden was the one who is and was mentally deficient.

Moving on to the Senate, which is preparing to deal with axing health care and SNAP benefits in the budget bill, Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst made light of her constituents’ concerns that people might die if health care is taken away by saying at a town hall, “Well, we all are going to die.”

Because that comment was not well-received, Ernst decided to apologize … and managed to make things worse.

She posted a video Saturday while walking through a cemetery and said she wanted to sincerely apologize for her town hall statement in which she “made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth,” per the Des Moines Register.

“So I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well,” she said dripping with sarcasm.

Ernst then encouraged those who want eternal, everlasting life to embrace Jesus Christ.

I supposed the only reason it wasn’t worse than it already was is because Ernst was holding her phone so she couldn’t make air quotes when she said “sincerely apologize.”

Remember that she is the senator who initially said she was not going to support Pete “I Promise to Stop Being an Alcoholic” Hegseth to run the Pentagon, but turned around and voted for him anyway because “Americans deserve a strong Secretary of Defense.”

And then there’s ICE.

We’ve seen them use zip-ties on children and set off smoke bombs to disperse members of the public who are protesting their thug-like methods.

It even happened at the district office of Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, when Department of Homeland Security agents forcefully entered the office and handcuffed a member of his staff.

In a statement, Nadler called the incident “aggressive and heavy-handed” and said it was evidence of “a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries.”

He called on the president and DHS to stop using such dangerous tactics.

“If this can happen in a Member of Congress’s office, it can happen to anyone — and it is happening,” Nadler said.

The latest is the targeting of immigrants who are dutifully showing up at court to appear before a judge.

“Some are green-card holders, some are asylum seekers, others may be seeking other protections from removal,” said immigrant rights attorney Rachel Levenson.

She described what is going on in lower Manhattan in an interview with Hell Gate.

Levenson said ICE agents have for the past two weeks been stationed at three of New York City’s immigration courthouse, “arresting dozens of immigrants who have shown up for routine hearings for their immigration cases as part of the Trump administration’s targeting of asylum seekers.”

She said her organization — Make the Road NY — has tracked 50 people whose cases were dismissed only to have the majority of them arrested by ICE immediately afterward.

People are being forced to either be arrested at court, Levenson said, or, if they don’t show up for their hearing, have a removal order put out on them anyway.

She’s hoping that the federal courts will intervene soon, but until that happens she said it was important for immigration attorneys to show up to see what is happening and for volunteers to help walk people safely from court out of the building.

Read her entire interview through this link.

No doubt, unless the felon-in-chief is reined in, the level of cruelty will increase and, sorry Sen. Ernst, people will die.

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Lead art: Screen grab from Forbes via YouTube

Pres. TACO’s ICE Uses Smoke Bombs, Zip-Ties Children

By Michael Woyton

Masked ICE agents stormed through a San Diego neighborhood Friday, handcuffing employees of two restaurants, taking away three or four of them, according to a witness.

A crowd of people shouting “shame” surrounded a federal vehicle, and after sounding sirens “multiple times,” agents used a smoke bomb to disperse the crowd.

There have been reports of other instances in which smoke bombs were used during ICE raids.

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We have to wonder just how long before it escalates to ICE firing weapons at people protesting the actions of unidentified, armed federal agents on the streets of the United States.

When it does, we know that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem will be OK with it.

She’ll just be thinking those people are her dogs.

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On Thursday in San Antonio, Texas, three children who appeared to be between 9 and 12 years old had their hands zip-tied and were detained along with adults who were thought to be relatives after being found by a judge to be no longer subject to removal proceedings.

ICE did not immediately respond as to why the children were zip-tied and detained, according to My San Antonio.

Guillermo Hernandez III, an immigration lawyer in San Antonio, said he’s never seen families with children detained like this.

“We have not seen this before, and I think the point is to instill fear and kind of be cruel about this process,” he said.

It was unclear also whether the agents who took the children were working for ICE, because the agents identified themselves as “FBI.”

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A U.S. citizen. A 20-plus-year-old criminal conviction. In a wheelchair. This is the America of President TACO.

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I think this comment says it all.

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Lead art: Screen grab from @hillcrestsandiego via Instagram

Rep Takes Felon to Task for West Point Speech

By Michael Woyton

I wasn’t surprised to read that my congressman — Rep. Pat Ryan, D-Gardiner — was as pissed as the rest of us after hearing the grifter-in-chief’s ~~rant~~ commencement address at the United States Military Academy in West Point.

President Donald J. Felon trashed diversity and drag shows, told a stadium full of graduates who became second lieutenants that no one was joining the military and advised them to avoid trophy wives in the hour-long speech Saturday.

Ryan, who is a graduate of West Point and represents New York’s 18th Congressional District where West Point is located, wrote in an op-ed in USA Today that he didn’t have an opportunity to speak with the president about concerns his constituents have.

Why no opportunity? The adjudicated rapist high-tailed it out of the Hudson Valley immediately after ending his speech.

“Trump didn’t even have the decency to stay and shake the graduating cadets’ hands, a longstanding tradition embraced by every president from Biden to Reagan — instead he went golfing,” Ryan wrote.

The congressman said he was honored to participate in the ceremony to celebrate the young graduates.

“They deserved the day to be totally focused on their selfless dedication to serving our country,” Ryan wrote.

“Unfortunately, that is not the speech they got from the president. Instead, wearing a bright red MAGA hat, he delivered an overtly political and incredibly divisive campaign speech,” he wrote.

Ryan decided to send the president a letter after the ceremony asking him to think about the future of those graduates and “the future of ALL our men and women in uniform.”

In the letter, he told the president that firing 83,000 VA employees will have detrimental impacts on the quality and accessibility of care for veterans.

Ryan said that cutting funding for mental health care and cancer research will kill veterans.

He also said that closing beds at the Castle Point VA, where he himself received medical care, will put veterans’ lives at risk.

“You’re politicizing our military and our service academies, including with the hat you wore today,” Ryan wrote. “Your insistence on making our troops loyal to you — rather than our country and Constitution — puts us all in danger. You must stop.”

Well said, congressman.

Read Rep. Ryan’s complete letter to the president through this link.

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This is what happens when a conspiracy theorist is in charge. If they can’t find proof of something, they will just make it up.

I’ve said it before: RFK Jr. doesn’t care if people die.

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Lead photo: West Point – The U.S. Military Academy via Defense.gov

DOGE Can Access Treasury; Colleges Must Obey King; More

By Michael Woyton

This and that from Bluesky Social.

Does anybody believe this administration really created a process to prevent improper private data disclosures much less trained Musk’s DOGErs?

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Well, the felon-in-chief did have a university once.

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Hey, grifter, it’s either “$61 Billion” or “61 Billion Dollars.” And Canada is not considering the offer.

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I thought we really wanted people who could put the tiny screws into iPhones. She’s an idiot, but then so is the president.

And I don’t think I’m ever going to graduate!

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And speaking of tiny screws in iPhones, watch this explanation from Tim Cook, who knows what he is talking about.

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Lead art by Michael Woyton

Is It Time for 25A Now?

By Michael Woyton

I was trying not to give a certain CNN anchor any ink regarding his book about how President Joe Biden had the temerity to age.

But after this weekend, I think it’s worth mentioning that it seems Jake Tapper, who co-wrote “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” should have devoted even a fraction of the time it took to write his book to covering the current occupant of the Oval Office and his continuing descent into madness.

Mainstream media keeps sane-washing President Donald J. Felon by not reporting on him as they did almost hourly on Biden over the past year.

The New York Times headline on the speech was “Trump Gives Commencement Address at West Point, Stressing a New Era.”

The Washington Post’s was “Trump addresses a West Point upended by his changes.”

Bloomberg’s headline ran as “Trump Speaks to West Point Grads About ‘Turbulent’ Times.”

Meanwhile, Mother Jones’ headline was spot on: ‘Trump Unleashes Bizarre Commencement Speech at West Point.”

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Here is Mother Jones’ lede: “You may assume that derision of drag shows would not come up in a commencement address at the prestigious US Military Academy known as West Point—but you would be wrong.”

The article by Julianne McShane went on to describe the nearly hour-long speech as trashing DEI policies, taking credit for rebuilding the military and talking about being a victim — all while wearing a MAGA hat.

McShane wrote that there were “a few moments of normalcy” in the address. “But they were sandwiched in between multiple bizarre comments from Trump,” including the job of the military is not to host drag shows, but to “spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun”; nobody joined the military over the past few years (this was said to a graduating class that began under the Biden administration); and telling the graduates to stay away from marriages to “trophy wives.”

He also broke with tradition by leaving immediately after his speech instead of shaking the graduates’ hands as they crossed the stage.

On Sunday, the grifter-in-chief said Russian President Vladimir Putin has “gone absolutely CRAZY!” and is needlessly killing a lot of people. Projection?

While I agree with that, he also said that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.” Again, projection?

He repeated the tired excuse that the war never would by started if he had been president.

I am assuming he doesn’t remember saying during the campaign that he would be able to end the war “in 24 hours” after taking office. Yeah, presidenting is hard.

Then there was his “Happy Memorial Day” — seriously? — social media post in which he railed against “THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS” and called out Biden as incompetent and “USA HATING JUDGES” as sick and dangerous.

You get the picture.

There is way too much to talk about when it comes to this dangerous, unintelligent, vindictive person. So why can’t the Times or the Post delve into the dangerous, unintelligent and vindictive stuff more?

With his Bitcoin dinners, and now enriching himself via a super PAC by charging $5 million for a one-on-one meeting, it seems the only reason he wants to call himself president is to keep the cash coming in. Winning the election got him a get-out-of-jail card, after all.

We will continue to see threats against citizens and legal immigrants alike, as well as efforts to shut down important parts of the government and educational institutions unless more light is shown on the expanding madness of the wannabe king.

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“Our sacred rule of law in under attack” — Scott Pelley

Read Pelley’s entire speech through this link.

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Lead art by The White House via Defense.gov

What’s More Important Than ‘Biden Is Old’?

By Michael Woyton

The news of former President Joe Biden’s diagnosis of metastasized prostate cancer is incredibly sad.

The prognosis is encouraging, but with cancer, nothing is a certainty.

What is a certainty is the dignity that Biden is showing in publicly dealing with it.

What is also a certainty, unfortunately, is how the media is obsessing over it, now combined with the release of Jake Tapper’s book that condemns the former president for getting old.

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It’s also a certainty that the magas will take the low road regarding Biden’s health as exemplified by the felon’s eldest son who is blaming Jill Biden for a coverup.

You know something, mainstream media, there really are other things you can write about that are more important.

In no particular order, here are a few suggestions:

Tr*mp wanting to investigate James Comey and Bruce Springteen
The war in Ukraine is still going on since “Day 1”
Homeland Security being upset at gestapo comparison
No one is talking about the “attempted assassination” and the fact that no medical records have been released
Why were the keys to the country given to fascist billionaire Elon Musk who then turned our personal data over to a bunch of sycophantic children?
The president cannot formulate a complete sentence and thinks he made up the word “equalize.”
The attorney general who lobbied for Qatar OK’ing gift of a 747 to the president
The more losses in court for executive orders and actions the louder the talk of making judges answerable to the president
Dismantling/attempts to privatize government services
RFK Jr. was chosen for health secretary
Legislative branch of government ceding power to the executive willingly
The buy-in to Afrikaners fleeing from genocide
The president not take responsibility for anything, while taking credit for legislation/actions that occurred during previous administrations
All during the campaign Tr*mp said he knew nothing about Project 2025 and the media played along
All the money that has changed hands in favor of Tr*mp and his family: Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, CBS, ABC, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
Tr*mp crypto coin scam
The unidentified, masked, plain-clothes gangs rounding up immigrants and U.S. citizens alike
How about talking about fascism being allowed to take over our country?

But no, “Joe Biden is old” is the media obsession du jour because it’s easy to do.

The media needs to do better.

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Lead art: Screen grab from CNN

Felon Admits Tariffs Will Be Paid by Us

By Michael Woyton

The manbaby in the White House is furious that Walmart said the world’s largest retailer may pass along any tariffs to its customers.

On Thursday, Walmart CRO John David Rainey said in an interview that the company had never seen a time when prices have increased so high so quickly.

He then explained that he was concerned that people shopping at Walmart might start seeing higher prices in May and in June.

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That set off President Donald J. Felon, who posted on social media that the company “should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain.”

The grifter-in-chief said, “Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING.”

So I’m a little confused.

Is the mayor of Mar-a-Lago finally admitting that tariffs will be paid by the customer buying goods shipped to America?

Or has he forgotten his own lie that tariffs will be borne by the China and the other countries where much of what we want and need come from?

No one in his or her right mind ever believed that retailers or manufacturers would let the tariffs eat into their profits.

Are you finally admitting you lied, Donnie?

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Chairman Mao would be proud of the grifter-in-chief.

The adjudicated rapist’s official White House photo is now glowering from a 50-foot banner hung on the façade of the Department of Agriculture.

Hanging also on the building is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, WUSA 9 reported.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins is spinning the addition of the president’s face as a “rebirth” of the department.

Former Republican strategist and now vocal opponent of the current Oval Office occupant Tim Miller said on social media that it was “deeply creepy.”

I agree, and will add that this is something dictators do. Oh … wait …

But thank you someone-on-the-internet for altering the image (below) by adding three other panels.

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Lead art: Screen grab from Google Maps.

Arrested Milwaukee Judge Says She’s Immune from Prosecution

By Michael Woyton

A Milwaukee County judge, who was arrested after being accused of helping an undocumented immigrant get away from ICE, filed a motion Wednesday to have her case dismissed.

Judge Hannah Dugan, who was indicted by a federal grand jury for obstructing an official proceeding and concealing a person from arrest, is citing judicial immunity and overreach by federal prosecutors, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

To bolster her argument to have the case dismissed, Dugan is using the felon-in-chief’s SCOTUS-granted immunity.

“The problems with this prosecution are legion, but most immediately, the government cannot prosecute Judge Dugan because she is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts,” her motion read. “Immunity is not a defense to the prosecution to be determined later by a jury or court; it is an absolute bar to the prosecution at the outset. See Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 630 (2024).”

The SCOTUS 6-3 decision ruled that the president was immune from prosecution for official acts.

Dugan was arrested a week after ICE agents chased Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant appearing before the judge on state misdemeanor battery charges, in a hallway near Dugan’s courtroom, the Washington Post said.

Not only did FBI Director Kash Patel announce her arrest on social media and posted a photo of her being led away in handcuffs, but Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the judge of “protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime.”

Dugan is suspended from the bench while her case proceeds, but the New York Times said a sign on the courthouse door still invites lawyers to arrange meetings by Zoom if defendants feel unsafe having to physically appear in court.

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The largest retailer in the U.S. and the world is concerned about rising prices.

Appearing Thursday on CNBC, Walmart CFO John David Rainey said the company has never seen a period where prices have gone up as high as quickly.

He said that he was concerned that customers will start seeing higher prices this month and in June, according to Time.

Attention GOPmaga members of Congress as you plot to cut Medicaid while giving billionaires a large tax cut: How will you justify your vote on the budget to your constituents who will be paying more soon or doing without?

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Save the date! June 14 is a nationwide day of defiance: No Kings.

It’s also Flag Day and the day the authoritarian-in-chief is throwing himself a multimillion-dollar military parade that we will be paying for.

For more information about the protests, go here.

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Lead art: Screen grab from FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth via YouTube