Trump’s Truth Social got an $8 million cash injection that it never disclosed from an unknown source tied to a shady, porn-friendly bank in the Caribbean run by a Russian entrepreneur who has recently started buying up multimillion dollar houses in Miami washingtonpost.com/technology/202… For those playing along at home, the front runner to be the Party of Family Values’ nominee for president not only had an affair with a porn star while his third wife nursed his fifth child, but his company is also propped up by money tied a bank that facilitates porn payments

Some fan mail My first question is WHICH TX school shooting is he talking about? Uvalde? Santa Fe? Or did he mean to say Tennessee? Which is what the tweet that I presume he was referring to was about?

The George Santos indictment appears to raise one of the threads of the early Santos saga that I hadn't thought about in a while: Redstone Strategies, the company that Santos appears to have variously described as an LLC, a super PAC, and a dark money group to different donors

https://twitter.com/RobertMaguire_/status/1613592698048348175

On the left is NYT description where Santos describes Redstone as a super PAC ("independent expenditure only cmte"), and the right is the indictment showing that the money went to a "company #1" (i.e. not a super PAC).

Crow calls the ProPublica report a "political hit job" by a group that's "funded by leftists." But ProPublica—which was founded by a former WSJ publisher and managing editor—provided Crow a detailed list of questions and printed his responses in full
dallasnews.com/news/2023/04/1… “It’s worth noting that he and Justice Thomas were given detailed, written questions in advance of our stories. Thomas declined to respond. Crow’s answers were included in full. He questioned none of the facts we reported.” - Stephen Engelberg, editor in chief of ProPublica

Donald Trump and his sons spent 4 years promising they didn't engage in international business while he was president.

They lied.

A @CREWcrew analysis of his taxes found that he made up to $160 million from international business dealings as president. citizensforethics.org/reports-invest… As Republicans in Congress dig into the minutia of Hunter Biden's business deals in China, they remain completely unperturbed by the millions in income from China that Trump kept hidden during his presidency, even lying about when he closed his Chinese bank account

1/ One of several notable details from Trump's financial disclosure obtained by @CREWcrew today was this valuation of Seven Springs. It potentially VASTLY overstates the actual value of the property, which is important because the NY AG is currently suing him for potential fraud 2/ Notice that the reported valuation of the property is "Over $50 million." It caught my eye because the Seven Springs property is the subject of a lawsuit filed last September by @NewYorkStateAG alleging potential financial fraud by Trump's businesses ag.ny.gov/press-release/…

The Clarence Thomas is somehow even worse than we thought: ProPublica has now uncovered the first known instance of money flowing from Harlan Crow to Thomas, which the Supreme Court justice never disclosed. propublica.org/article/claren… "Given the role Crow has played in subsidizing the lifestyle of Thomas and his wife, you have to wonder if this was an effort to put cash in their pockets." - @CREWcrew's Ginny Canter propublica.org/article/claren…

There was a rigorous study last year that concluded—after controlling for things like the age and the urban-rural divide over fifty years—that “the more conservative the policies [of a state], the larger the threat to life expectancy.”

https://twitter.com/nsjersey/status/1642165562464673794

Age-adjusted mortality rates (AAMR) by party over time. Look at how that gap widens over the years. bmj.com/content/377/bm…

Republican majority in Missouri House gives initial approval to a budget that defunds pre-K programs and public libraries.
kcur.org/politics-elect… Missouri Republicans have some interesting priorities

Nothing says say "We're the party of regular Americans" like recruiting candidates based on their stratospheric wealth because you don't have grassroots support politico.com/news/2023/03/2… This is an acknowledgment of something that's been happening for decades now: As the Supreme Court has dismantled campaign finance reforms and the cost of running for office has skyrocketed, elections have come to overwhelmingly favor wealthy candidates.

When Trump is finally indicted, the main rallying cry from his allies will be that the indictment is the kind of thing you only see in authoritarian countries or banana republics. But...it's not. Holding leaders accountable happens in democracies all the time. Just not here. 🧵 1/ Look at France for example, which has charged two former presidents with crimes. One of them, Nicolas Sarkozy, was found guilty of corruption and illegal use of campaign funds in two separate trials in 2021! (Who's the "racaille" now?) bbc.com/news/world-eur…

"You have a top-ranking official...someone who is now President of the United States whose family was taking money from foreign entities. For what? We have no idea." - Byron Donalds, literally describing Trump's conduct, which Republicans happily ignored

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1636792681777987585

Unlike Biden, Trump had an entire business empire that he refused to divest, which was used by special interests and foreign governments to enrich Trump while they tried to curry favor with his administration. citizensforethics.org/reports-invest…

In one instance, they counted Bank of America giving $18 billion to “BLM.” Turns out it was mortgages and small business loans to Black people. So basically, if you do business with Black people, the Claremont Institute thinks you’re donating to “BLM”

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1636084876582477830

And it was only $1.25 billion. They pulled the number out of their ass, and THEY’RE LOANS. So they’re all going to be paid back!

Can we please for the love of dog make this the last time we ever spring forward? Stop this pointless insanity. I’m not making a comment on which time is better. I DON’T CARE. Pick one. I just don’t ever want to spring forward ever again.

Seems like a big deal that majority-white Republicans in two different states are trying to 1) handpick judges and prosecutors in a majority-Black city and 2) create a system that would allow them to punish or remove a Black prosecutor they don't like (who is investigating them) “Your data proves what this is really about...These numbers prove there is no merit to their [Republican] claim. And so it is apartheid in Jackson, Mississippi.” theguardian.com/us-news/ng-int…

Leonard Leo won the decades-long war for the Supreme Court. Now he's turning his $1.6 billion war chest to culture wars, including so-called "woke capitalism" (i.e. investing that takes into account climate change, diversity, and corporate transparency)
wsj.com/articles/conse… Just as with CRT, this whole idea of "woke capitalism" is a gimmick. For example, the backlash has already prompted one of the anti-ESG targets, BlackRock, to point out just how un-"woke" it is when it comes to the "E" in ESG.

The staff of former Arizona AG spent 10,000 hours investigating voting irregularities in the 2020 election. When they came back with a report detailing the almost complete lack of evidence for Trump and his allies' claims of fraud, he kept it private.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… The following month, the AG—who was running for US Senate seat—released an "Interim Report" claiming he had discovered "serious vulnerabilities," ignoring edits from his own investigators refuting his assertions.

The Trump campaign paid an outside firm in 2020 to prove electoral fraud claims, but they never released the findings because the firm found no evidence of fraud and disputed many of Trump's theories washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/… "They looked at everything'

I clicked the Taylor Lorenz trending link, and it's just a bunch of anti-vax ghouls and grifters piling on her pain and assuming the people she cares about are dying because they're....vaccinated Yes. People do not die from the vaccine.

https://twitter.com/CageyBee33/status/1624533142618128384

They wanted a baby so bad. She finally got pregnant, then the doctor told her the baby’s organs were growing outside its body. The pregnancy was not viable and her life was at risk, but anti-abortion laws forced her to leave the state to get care
cnn.com/2023/02/08/hea… Abortion opponents always talk about it as though people are just willy nilly deciding to get abortions later in their term. They never talk about the people who desperately want kids, but end up needing abortion care

I love new people! Many of my closest friends are new people. I married one. They’re not strangers if you talk to them, and if you do, you’ll learn a lot about how they make this country better!

https://twitter.com/abughazalehkat/status/1623126182840475650

Love how Carlson brings up a real problem (male labor force participation), then he moves seamlessly to asserting that it's being ignored (it's not), that it's caused by immigrants (it's not), which is worsened by a border that's been "open...for 2 years" (it hasn't)