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It is with a heavy heart that we admit Spines for Senators (S4S) has failed in its mission to provide invertebrate lawmakers with the transformational surgeries they so desperately need. To be blunt, we weren’t fully prepared for the challenges presented by these feckless losers. We thought some of them (one of them?) wanted to be better. How wrong we were.

They voted unanimously to install Marco Rubio (one of our organization’s many lost causes) as secretary of state. They passed the Laken Riley Act. Amy Klobuchar is still—still!—talking about finding common ground and working together with the party that plunged our country into a constitutional crisis.

The Dems are getting focused: Armed with new polling showing Musk’s popularity in the toilet, key Democratic leaders are going after the top adviser to President Donald Trump who is dismantling the federal government. They are attempting to subpoena him and introducing legislation to block him from receiving federal contracts while he holds a “special” role leading Trump’s cost-cutting crusade… “If you oppose Donald Trump, making Elon Musk the face of his administration is the smart way to go,” said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. “Where the rubber really hits the road on all of this is for people who are inclined to be supportive of Donald Trump and they, for whatever reason, think Donald Trump is on their side. But many of them have a different view of Elon Musk.” […] New internal polling, conducted on behalf of House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, found Musk is viewed negatively among 1,000 registered voters in battleground districts. Just 43 percent approve of him and 51 percent view him unfavorably.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to move Palestinians out of Gaza and that there are about 1.7 to 1.8 million people to move. The pre-war population of Gaza was 2.3 million. About 100,000 Gazans managed to flee to the Sinai in Egypt (presumably a combination of bribes and sympathetic border guards who disagree with Sisi’s “let them die” policy.

So we’re looking at 400,000 to 500,000 deaths if Trumps figures are accurate. Yes, I know, Trump: but he’s been briefed and why use those numbers?

I wrote:

Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast: "The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn't that easy to do. But I opened it up and it's pouring… pic.twitter.com/UcHiv8uZRe — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 6, 2025 Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast: “The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn’t that easy to do. But I opened it up and it’s pouring down.” It’s actually raining right now so I guess he’s turned the valve on and pointed it up at the sky? Where are the farmers whose water has been wasted and which they’ll need next summer? Well… Agriculture is a form of legalized gambling here in California, our land is prone to deluge or drought. Our farmers, relentlessly adapting, are as innovative as any set of suits in Silicon Valley, learning new ways to grow more food with less water.

If the State Department takes over USAID, experts fear foreign assistance will stop unless it has a perceived benefit for Trump.

The post Trump’s Attacks on USAID Spark Fear That Lifesaving Care Will Become “Transactional” appeared first on The Intercept.

Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has refused to rule out making New Zealand the 7th State of Australia and is said to also have his eyes on buying West Timor. ”I said yesterday that I view President Trump as a very... Read More ›

The blackmail is though The addled, dementia patient in the White House is misinformed, as usual, Nieman Lab unpacked the “scandal.” Is your brain hurting, just from reading that? If Politico was, in fact, being bribed in exchange for slanted coverage, that would be noteworthy. It is, of course, not. Some of MAGA’s biggest brains seem to have noticed that several million federal dollars went to Politico and assumed that they came from a “Bribery—Media Fellow Travelers” line item in the budget. Instead, the money comes from federal offices buying subscriptions to Politico’s bureaucracy-focused Pro products. Government offices (and even Republican political campaigns!) have paid for news subscriptions for literal centuries. By the Trumpist line of logic, whenever a government department buys some desks or office chairs, it’s actually bribing Ikea to twist its Lagkapten and Grönfjäll into supporting DEI.

. And, yes, there is a strong connection between the knapsack problem and Bellman’s principle of optimality through dynamic programming, which leverages the principle of optimality to break the problem into smaller subproblems and build up the solution …

He could go down in history as one of the worst Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial philosophy when he acquires a company is to immediately shut down everything and then restore a few once they get the lay of the land and determine what he thinks is necessary. We saw that at Twitter when he came in and fired everyone, determined that any kind of moderation was unnecessary and it’s now overrun with bots, disinformation, foreign propaganda and Nazis. He likes that. He fired the disaster team that made Twitter an important resource during those times, getting out information you could rely on as real. As we found out during the LA fires, it’s completely useless for that purpose now. He thinks the United States federal government is just like twitter. For instance he said this just the other night: “Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.” “These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time.

Last week, Trump released an executive order pledging to combat antisemitism by ordering a draconian...

We’re proud that Jason Roeder’s funny and poignant Griefstrike! is a semi-finalist for the 2025 Thurber Prize. Here’s an interview we did with Jason when the book first came out.

Elon Musk and his allies have been sowing chaos in the civil service and hijacking government infrastructure. Journalist Nathan Tankus explains why.

After plunging USAID and its network of contractors into chaos, communications breakdowns and bureaucratic snafus leave projects stalled.

The post Marco Rubio’s USAID “Humanitarian Waiver” Isn’t Helping Restart Lifesaving Programs appeared first on The Intercept.

He really thinks the Palestinians are pets who can be rehomed to a “farm in the country.” He’s doubling down. (I wonder if everyone is aware that Trump’s new Ambassador to Israel,Mike Huckabee, has said that there’s no such thing as a Palestinian? Yeah…) This is awfully cute:  Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday proposed offering residents the right to resettle in any country that will have them after U.S. President Donald Trump‘s plan to take over Gaza and relocate Palestinians to neighboring countries. Saying the people of Gaza should have the same right to freedom of movement and migration that was the norm around the world, Katz announced on X that the plan would provide a range of exit options, including via land crossings, as well as special arrangements to depart by sea and air. He singled out Canada as a top potential destination due to what he said was its “structured immigration program” and previously stated willingness to accept migrants from Gaza.