Trump's Diplomatic Envoy Got It Big Time Wrong

Bild: “Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is said to have completely misunderstood some of the Russians’ statements and misinterpreted them as a concession from Putin. He had misunderstood a ‘peaceful withdrawal’ of the...
1/3 2/ Ukrainians from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia demanded by Russia as an offer of the ‘peaceful withdrawal’ of the Russians from these regions.”

Said a Ukrainian official: “Witkoff doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
...

Dictators love elections. They just hate free and fair elections

Russian President Vladimir Putin spends more than $1 billion to create the illusion that his citizens have the ability to elect their own leaders. With electronic voting and an accessible three-day in-person...
1/5 2/ voting period, voter turnout is always high. And Putin always wins in a landslide. What better way to legitimize his illegitimate grip on power?

Putin claims to have won 88% of the vote in his last election. Earlier this week, Trump insisted that his...

Jessica Valenti: Texas Republicans are hellbent on punishing abortion patients and anyone who helps them—and this week they’re pushing sweeping legislation that does both.

On its face, Senate Bill 2880 is already extreme: It expands Texas’s ‘bounty hunter’ law, letting...
1/5 2/ private citizens file $100,000 lawsuits against anyone who manufactures abortion pills, brings them into the state, or “provides” them to patients—language so vague it could mean almost anything. It also hands the Attorney General power to sue on behalf of fetuses, and...

Charlie Sykes: “Maybe we missed the exact moment it happened. But last week, it was obvious that we have long since passed the tipping point. We’re not slouching toward it, or waiting for some imaginary redline to be crossed. After years of warning about threats to...
1/4 2/ democracy, the rule of law, norms, corruption, toxic narcissism, it was all right there. Live in the Oval Office…”

“Last week, Trump imposed trillions of dollars in tariffs, suspended them, and exempted companies who paid him tribute, all without any input from a...

RFK Jr.: Health and Human Services Cuts: Life Support: Over 7,000 workers at the Dept. of Health and Human Services were laid off and entire divisions eliminated yesterday morning in what one fired staffer called a “bloodbath.”

Breakdown: Of the thousands of positions...
1/4 2/ impacted, 2,400 were from the CDC, 1,200 the NIH, and 3,500 the FDA. Multiple staffers told Rolling Stone that the cuts were made without regard for institutional knowledge. In total, about 24% of HHS has been let go.

Decimation: Entire teams were eliminated. The team...

Musk’s Purges Suddenly Take a Horrific Turn—and Wreck an Ugly MAGA Lie

We can now be depressingly confident that their mass cuts are killing people and hurting red-state businesses.

It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned...
1/4 2/ for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the US and distributed by the USAID, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”
...

‘I Was an Investor in the Trump Memecoin’

Jonathan Last: “I woke up in the small hours Sat. morning. Couldn’t sleep. Checked the news and saw Trump had launched his own memecoin. I don't usually dabble in crypto, but I poked around the $TRUMP website to see how hard it...
1/4 2/ would be for, say, a working-class, middle-aged guy in rural America to figure out how to purchase the token. The answer was: very easy. Anyone with a 5th grade education and a debit card can buy $TRUMP coins in about five minutes.”

“I looked at the clock. In a few hours...

Moms for Liberty founder Bridget Ziegler and her husband "prowled" Florida bars for women, police memo says

Brazen right-wing hypocrisy strikes again! Moms for Liberty co-founder and rabid anti-LGBTQ asshole Bridget Ziegler is back in the news again after Sarasota...
1/5🧵 2/ police released a memo containing text messages between Ziegler and her husband, Christian, who she reportedly sent out on regular bar prowls to hunt for prospective women for the couple to have sex with. "Don’t come home until your d*ck is wet," Bridget...

GOP Lawmaker Threatened Mass Shooting and Rape

New Hampshire Rep. Jon Stone’s (R) law enforcement career ended “when he threatened to kill fellow police officers in a shooting spree, and murder his chief after raping the chief’s wife and children, all while ...
1/2 2/ he was already under scrutiny for his inappropriate relationship with a teen girl,” InDepthNH reports.

New docs show Chinese fugitive mogul Guo Wengui funneled millions into MAGA world

The disgraced criminal, who fled from China in 2014 after learning he was to be arrested for rape, fraud, bribery, kidnapping, and money laundering, was arrested in March ...
1/4🧵 2/ 2023 in the United States for — you guessed it — a massive $1 billion fraud. You will also not be surprised to learn this man is buddies with fellow fraudsters and criminals Steve Bannon and Jason Miller, who received millions of dollars in stolen money ...

Anti-Abortion GOP Lawmaker Paid for Abortion

Colorado state Rep. Richard Holtorf (R), a candidate for Colorado’s 4th congressional district, disclosed Friday that he financed an abortion for one of two girlfriends he impregnated, saying it helped her “live her ...
1/3 2/ best life,” KUSA reports.

“Holtorf did not appear to recognize the disconnect between his statement lauding the benefits of abortion access for his pregnant girlfriend and his staunch opposition to abortion rights, which led him ...
1/2

Attorney General Ken Paxton possibly faces two securities fraud cases, one state and one federal

Texas Tribune: The first case in Texas state court involves"[s]ecurities fraud charges, a case that has stretched out for eight years and counting, starting with an indictment ...1/4 2/ just months after he took office in 2015. The case has been delayed for years by pretrial disputes — including a back-and-forth battle over the trial venue that saw it moved to Houston from Collin County, which Paxton represented as a state ...

House GOP Push to Impeach Biden Has Not Gone Well

Philip Bump: “This is not how Comer’s first year running Oversight worked out. Instead of using his majority to methodically flesh out the existing allegations against the president, Comer and his allies — including ...
1/3🧵 2/ Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — found themselves offering up baseless or debunked allegations to a conservative media ravenous for them. Throughout 2023, Comer, Jordan and their allies made little progress toward Comer’s stated target ...

Every day, more corporate gouging.

Email I received today from Amazon👇

"We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will ...
1/4🧵 2/ include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from ...

Capitol Rioter Nabbed in Bumble Dating App Sting

“Nearly three years ago, a young Democratic professional in the nation’s capital was sitting in her apartment after the Jan. 6 attack and saw that the FBI was looking for ...
1/4🧵 2/ help identifying the rioters who stormed the US Capitol. So she opened up the Bumble dating app, changed her political beliefs to [MAGA] and got to swiping,” NBC News reports.“The woman reached out to several Donald Trump supporters who the app showed were in the ...

House Awaits Ethics Report on George Santos

“Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has evaded two efforts this year to oust him from the House. A third time could end up differently, depending on the results of a long-awaited ethics report this week.”
...
1/4🧵 2/ “The House Ethics Committee is slated to release the findings of its investigation into Santos regarding a slew of charges, including campaign finance fraud and bribery, by Friday. If it’s damning, as many expect, New York Republicans who have ...

Jonathan Karl’s new book, excerpted in The Atlantic, explores why Donald Trump chose Waco, Texas for his first rally.

Shortly after the rally was announced, I asked Steve Bannon, who had served as the CEO of Trump’s 2016 campaign and had once again emerged as one of ...
1/5🧵 2/ Trump’s most important advisers, why the former president would go to Waco for his big campaign reboot. He wasn’t coy.

Said Bannon: “We’re the Trump Davidians.”

Even less subtle than the venue of the rally was how Trump kicked it off, standing ...

Trump-endorsed governor candidate wants to force 9-year-olds to have their rapists’ babies

SURJ: That’s not a typo, folks. Mitch McConnell's hand-picked gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron really is that extreme. And you might be thinking, even in...
1/3🧵 2/ a red state like Kentucky, game over. But you’d be wrong. Andy Beshear may be America’s most popular Democratic governor with a great chance of winning re-election next week, but MAGA Republicans are spending millions on smears and disinformation to beat him. We need all ...

Mike Johnson Has Never Reported Having a Bank Account

Daily Beast: “Over the course of seven years, Johnson has never reported a checking or savings account in his name, nor in the name of his wife or any of his children, disclosures show. In fact, he ...
1/4🧵 2/ doesn’t appear to have money stashed in any investments, with his latest filing—covering 2022—showing no assets whatsoever.”

“Of course, it’s unlikely Johnson doesn’t actually have a bank account. What’s more likely is Johnson lives paycheck to ...

House GOP Infighting Continues

“Republicans hoped Mike Johnson’s ascension marked a detente from the personal vitriol of a three-week speaker fight. That ceasefire appears to be over already,” Politico reports.
...
1/4🧵 2/ “Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the architect of ousting Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, is openly sparring with multiple members, including taking aim at a key committee chair. New York Republicans want to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY) from the House, a vote ...

Mike Johnson Is an ‘End-of-Days’ Republican

Roula Khalaf: “That is the most sobering fact about America’s new second in line to be president. But we cannot overlook Johnson’s Christian fundamentalism. He is a sincere biblical literalist. As an active legal ...
1/4🧵 2/ ally of the Southern Baptist Convention, and also as a Louisiana and now Washington legislator, Johnson has a 25-year record of Christian extremism.”

“He believes homosexuality is unnatural and should be illegal, he supports a federal outlawing of abortion in any ...