Yes

In response to the question, "Screwworm Is Back In Texas Cattle—Is DOGE To Blame?" the answer is, "Yes."

DOGE killed the programs fighting the flesh eating maggots, because they all are flesh eating maggots.

New World screwworm, a parasitic fly with larvae that burrow in healthy tissue of cattle, deer, horses and other warm-blooded animals, was discovered in La Pryor, Texas.

The case is the only one that has been identified in the country so far, according to the USDA, but a wider outbreak could severely impact already-suffering cattle numbers and put even more of a strain on ranchers as they spend money on treatment and prevention.

In turn, the price of beef—which has gone up roughly 75% since December 2020—could continue to rise.

The U.S. cattle herd is already at its lowest level in 75 years, and a major screwworm outbreak would cause more calves to die, adult cattle to lose weight and limit what animals are suitable for sale, meaning fewer pounds of beef reaching the market.

Even without a major outbreak, containment efforts may cause the government to implement widespread cattle movement restrictions, limit border crossings or impose quarantine on certain herds, all of which would further impact the nation’s cattle numbers.

The return of screwworm comes after the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, launched by the Trump administration, last year cut funding for a project dedicated to monitoring and containing New World screwworm in Central America.

The funding was axed days before the U.S. ended a temporary suspension of cattle imports from Mexico, meaning livestock was allowed to cross the border without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID).

Agriculture officials and cattle industry leaders raised alarm about the cuts at the time and, for the last several months, pleaded with the government to step in as they monitored screwworm infections moving north through Mexico—but they were ignored, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told NBC News.

If the next Democratic President does not prosecute the sh%$ out of these folks, they will have betrayed their obligations at the most basic level.

Not Enough Bullets

Go old school?DOGE and DHS tried to get the Social Security Administration to declare that 2.7 million people were dead in an attempt to harass immigrants.

Everyone involved in this should never see the sky as a free man.

The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive. 

The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.

Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency’s IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law. Schofield said he realized the plan’s possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, teenagers and senior citizens, including one widow who was a legal permanent resident receiving survivor benefits.


Schofield has provided details on the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The disclosure was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it offers the most detailed account yet of how officials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In an interview with The Post, Schofield said he is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes Americans need to understand how government data can be misused and, in some cases, already has been.

………

Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.

I'm beginning to think that if the DOGE boy's parents had decided to drown them all at birth, (I'm looking at YOU, Mae Musk) the world would be a far better place. 

Well, Trash Belongs in Trash Bags

As the backlash against Flock AI driven license plate readers grow, more and more municipalities are canceling their contracts.

They find two problems, canceling the contract is difficult because of their Byzantine nature, and even when canceled, Flock does not remove them, so the cameras remain on their poles, where anyone with a Flock contract (think ICE) can continue to use them.

Some towns have an interesting way of dealing with this, they are sending out government workers to cover the cameras with trash bags. (alternate link)

The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used. 

Joe Parlette, the deputy city manager of Dayton, said at a city commission meeting last week that the “Dayton Police Department agreed to work with Public Works to put bags over the cameras” as a stop-gap measure until Flock cameras could be removed entirely. I spoke to multiple people in Dayton who said they had seen bagged cameras in the last few days. The Dayton Daily News first reported on the baggings.

Dayton is not the first city to cover its Flock cameras with trash bags because they can’t figure out how to immediately terminate the use of the cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois also covered its cameras with trash bags while it was waiting for the company to remove them from the city. Cities around the country have been reconsidering their relationship with the surveillance company after reporting from 404 Media and local news outlets that showed data from the cameras was making its way to Immigration and Customs Enforcement through Flock’s national camera network.

Flock cameras are usually solar powered, so once installed, it costs more to take them down than it does to leave them there, particularly if the data can be sold to someone else.

Garbage bags are a decent solution to this dynamic. 

Support Your Local Police

It appears that an officer at ICE protests used the injury of a journalist to steal her bag full of photographic equipment.

At least time, he was charged.

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

Later that night, Ms. Katsanis and another photographer, who was on assignment for The Times, made their way to a nearby hospital using a wheelchair given to her by a medic at the scene.

From a hospital bed, she watched on her phone as the AirTag in her camera bag traveled across northern New Jersey — on the highway, then to a private residence, and then to a bar close to that home, she said.

Ms. Katsanis said her boyfriend and the other photographer went out to track the AirTag and found that it had been removed from her bag and was on the side of the road. She said that her name and contact information were still clearly written on the AirTag.

“That was a pretty clear sign to me that this was a theft and not just a law enforcement officer holding onto this bag for safekeeping,” said Ms. Katsanis, who reported the missing bag to the attorney general’s office.

This is likely far more common than is reported in the  press. 

A Bucket of Crabs

In a bid for self preservation Pam Bondi fingered Todd Blanche as responsible for the non-release of the Epstein Files.

Even if true, Bondi is still responsible, and still could be subject to things like bar discipline, because she had to know what was going on.

Former attorney general Pam Bondi told lawmakers that Todd Blanche, the man Donald Trump has lined up to replace her, was “in charge” of the US Department of Justice’s controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Appearing before the House oversight and reform committee, which is investigating the late financier and convicted sex offender, Bondi also said she was “not certain of the extent” that Trump knew about the crimes of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, before they became public.

………

Blanche, who served as Bondi’s deputy at the justice department, was responsible for the “entire release of the Epstein files”, Bondi claimed, according to a transcript released by the committee on Thursday. Blanche was appointed as acting attorney general following Bondi’s ouster, and Trump said this week he planned to nominate him for the role permanently.

How about we disbar them both?

Clarence Thomas Learned Corruption from the Master

In news that should surprise no one, Scalia Cheney engaged in virtually identical corrupt behavior, and engaged in a virtually identical defense of the indefensible.

In recent years, Justice Clarence Thomas’s fondness for taking luxury vacations on billionaire-owned superyachts has made Supreme Court ethics reform perhaps the single easiest campaign promise for Democratic politicians to make. But two decades ago, the real-world particulars of Supreme Court conflict-of-interest scandals were smaller in scale: for example, the physical proximity of Justice Antonin Scalia to Vice President Dick Cheney when the two men were sitting in duck blinds, shotguns in hand, waiting to kill some birds.

The saga began in January 2004, shortly after Cheney and Scalia—good friends since their time working together in the Ford administration—traveled to Louisiana for an annual duck hunt hosted by an acquaintance of Scalia’s. Cheney invited Scalia to join him on a government plane for the flight from Washington; Scalia, along with his son and son-in-law, accepted.

The objectionable part of this story (legally speaking, I mean) was that several weeks earlier, the Court had granted certiorari in a case about whether Cheney had to disclose details about clandestine meetings with fossil fuels executives while he was leading a task force responsible for the Bush administration’s energy policy. The Sierra Club had argued that Scalia, fresh off a vacation with the vice president and a free flight on Air Force Two, should recuse himself from the case, on the grounds that his impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.”

Scalia refused, however, releasing a 21-page memo in which he assured the public that he and Cheney had not discussed the case, and had never even been alone together—in duck blinds or otherwise—during the entirety of the trip. After running through a brief history of social relationships between Supreme Court justices and elected officials, from poker games to dinner parties to Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone’s early-morning medicine-ball workouts with members of the Hoover administration, Scalia asserted that a rule requiring the justices to recuse themselves from cases involving their famous friends would be “utterly disabling.”

Gee, it sounds awfully familiar.

Scalia did, as Thomas, Alito, and Roberts do, found press coverage of corruption to be the real problem.

Speaking of Fraud

Following a certification of a class action lawsuit against Tesla for misleading about, "Full Self Driving," Tesla retroactively and surreptitiously changed the terms of existing contracts.

I'm an engineer, not a lawyer dammit,* but this seems to me to be to be a deliberate attempt at spoliation of evidence, which would mean that the judge could (probably should) instruct the jury that this behavior is an indicator that the party in question was acting from a knowledge of their guilt/responsibility.

Here's hoping that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ gets his flabby white ass handed to him in court.

Tesla has retroactively modified “Full Self-Driving” purchase agreements to add “supervised” language that did not exist when owners originally bought the product. In some cases, the original documents have been made entirely inaccessible.

Electrek has confirmed the issue with multiple owners. The contracts in question were signed between 2016 and early 2024, when Tesla sold the package as “Full Self-Driving Capability” — with no mention of “supervised” and the implicit promise of unsupervised autonomy.

……… 

The critical detail: on both accounts, the only documents that are inaccessible are those that would reference FSD purchase details. Every other document, including purchase agreements for vehicles without FSD, opens without issue.

“It’s crazy because there are zero issues opening any documents on both accounts except those that would have the FSD purchase details documented,” Abcarius said. “Super fishy.”

Electrek has confirmed that other Tesla owners, specifically those with Tesla HW3 vehicles and FSD, have the same issue. The issue specifically affects contracts from the era when Tesla sold FSD without “supervised” language.

………

Making original purchase agreements inaccessible fits a broader pattern.

In August 2024, Tesla deleted a blog post from October 2016 that stated “all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory — including Model 3 — will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.” The post was removed without explanation while lawsuits were building. It is still accessible through the Wayback Machine.

 Now, the original contracts that would show Tesla sold FSD without any “supervised” qualifier are becoming inaccessible — right as Tesla faces up to $14.5 billion in lawsuits spanning FSD false advertising, Autopilot crash liability, and securities fraud.

When will Elon be frog marched out of his offices in handcuffs? 

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Of Course He Did

Remember serial (and surreal) fraudster and former Congressman George Santos?

Well, he is back in the news, because he announced that he would be attending the State of the Union address and then bet that he would not be there on Kalshi, and then did not show up.

George Santos may be the latest individual caught trading on insider information in a prediction market.

According to NPR, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is examining whether the former New York congressman placed bets on Kalshi using nonpublic details about his own plans. The market in question centered on whether Santos would attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February.

In the days leading up to the State of the Union address, Santos posted a video on X stating he would appear in the event. That public confirmation pushed the odds of his attendance on Kalshi close to 75% the night before the event, drawing millions of dollars in wagers across related markets. Santos did not show up to the State of the Union address, however. During the speech he posted on X that he was watching from an airport television instead. The odds on his attendance collapsed shortly afterward.

The first thing learned (more accurately re-learned) is that George Santos is a cheap bunco artist.

The second thing learned is that this is a feature, and not a bug of the, "Prediction markets." 

Of Course They Will

Trump has chickened out over the slush fund, but the order giving Trump and his family a free pass on tax fraud will remain.

I'm wondering if this was the real goal all along. 

The Justice Department is standing by an extraordinary measure giving President Trump, his family and his businesses potentially lucrative protection from I.R.S. investigations, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said on Tuesday.

Mr. Blanche’s remarks about the tax protections came during an appearance in front of a House Appropriations subcommittee, in which he told lawmakers that the Trump administration was abandoning a related plan to create a $1.8 billion fund to pay restitution to people who claimed they were victims of government “weaponization.”

Mr. Blanche said the end of the fund would not affect the separate agreement shielding Mr. Trump from audits of tax returns he and his family had already filed. Both proposals had emerged in recent weeks as part of a settlement of Mr. Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S. But now only the measure benefiting the Trumps will survive, Mr. Blanche said.

“Nothing has changed with that,” he said, referring to the tax proposal. “We’re not moving forward with the anti-weaponization fund.”

Mr. Blanche’s directive left in place a staggering public benefit to a president who has sought to bend the government toward his own financial interests. A host of thorny legal questions also remain. Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S. was revived last week by a judge concerned about potential deception in the agreement to withdraw the suit and to release the Trumps from any ongoing audits.

These protections could be immensely valuable to Mr. Trump and his family, who have faced repeated audits from the Internal Revenue Service. Just one investigation by the I.R.S. stemmed in part from how Mr. Trump claimed losses on his Chicago tower could have cost him more than $100 million, The New York Times has reported. The Trump Organization had recently entered settlement talks with the I.R.S. to try to resolve the audit, The Times previously reported.

Tax lawyers and former I.R.S. officials have said that the protection for Mr. Trump was unprecedented in its scope and form, particularly since it extends to “affiliates” of the Trumps. Pre-existing I.R.S. procedure has been to audit the president every year, rather than confer on him sweeping protection from scrutiny on tax returns already filed.

 

Meatloaf for Dinner Again?

New rules from the Department of Agriculture will drastically increase the speed of lines in slaughter houses, which will results in more worker injuries, particularly repetitive stress injuries, and increase contamination, likely including a human finger or two.

Welcome to a reboot of Upton Sinclaire's The Jungle.

The country’s poultry and swine processing plants, already incredibly dangerous workplaces, are poised to get a green light from the Trump administration to vastly speed up the work. In February, the Agriculture Department released two proposed regulations to increase evisceration line speeds for hogs, chickens, and turkeys. The swine plant proposal removes the current maximum of 1,106 hogs an hour and instead imposes no limit at all, allowing companies “to determine their own line speeds,” which has never happened before. The proposed poultry rule, meanwhile, allows all chicken plants to run at 175 birds per minute, a limit that has only applied previously to plants involved in a pilot program. Turkey processing plants could increase from 55 to 60 birds per minute.

The rules, which come after the meatpacking industry has repeatedly lobbied for the ability to run lines as fast as possible, will almost certainly lead to more worker injuries. Workers will be left with chronic pain or amputated digits and limbs, but they will make these companies more money. “More meat, more profits,” noted Kathleen Fagan, an adjunct professor in the Case Western University school of medicine and a former medical officer at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. The effects of this new rule will not only be felt by workers; it also threatens to let more foodborne pathogens infect Americans’ meat.

The industry, which is already made up of highly profitable conglomerates, has unsuccessfully tried for this before. Under President Barack Obama, it pressed for higher speeds overall; instead, the administration allowed 20 poultry plants to run faster as a pilot program. Under the first Trump administration, the industry petitioned to get rid of “arbitrary line speed limitations,” but rather than accede to that demand, more plants were allowed to apply for waivers to join the pilot and increase their speeds.

 

It Was as True . . . As Turnips Is. It Was as True . . . As Taxes Is. And Nothing’s Truer than Them

Imagine being so unable to love your child that you set fire to the whole damn world instead.

[image or embed]

— George Wallace (@mrgeorgewallace.bsky.social) June 1, 2026 at 4:10 PM

Great wisdom.

He truly is a truly horrible human being. 

It's Taco Monday!

I do not mean the snack involving fillings held in a tortilla, rather, I am referring to the acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out, and in this case, Donald Trump has put a hold on his $1.776 billion "Lawfare" fund.

It appears that even his most sycophantic allies in Congress felt that this was a bridge too far.

The Trump administration plans to drop its controversial $1.8 billion "weaponization" fund the president sought to compensate alleged victims of prosecutorial misconduct under the Biden administration, two senior administration officials told Axios.

Why it matters: Bashed as a political slush fund that could be tapped by those convicted in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Trump's proposal has drawn bipartisan pushback in the GOP-led House and Senate.

Also, a Federal judge has opened an inquiry as to whether Trump and the DoJ perpetrated a fraud on the court, (it clearly is) which has the potential for major sanctions.

A federal judge ordered President Trump to respond to "grievous" accusations that his settlement with the IRS, which led to the creation of his anti-weaponization fund, was "premised on deception."

Why it matters: The order comes the same day a separate judge placed a temporary hold on the $1.776 billion pot of money, another potential hurdle to the administration's controversial settlement plan.

Driving the news: U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams' order followed a earlier motion from 35 former federal judges, who implored her to reopen the case brought in January over the leak of Trump's tax returns.

• The coalition of judges alleged in their Wednesday filing that the settlement "raises profound questions about the parties' candor toward the Court and manipulation of the judicial system."
• Williams ordered the plaintiffs to respond by June 12 to the allegations of collusion, the assertion the dismissal was "premised on deception by the Parties," and the question of whether the case should be reopened.

It appears that Trump has finally done something so transparently corrupt that even Republican members of Congress are balking.

Remember When the Florida Bar Said That It Could Not Discipline a Sitting Attorney General?

Well, Pam Bondi is no longer AG, and more than 120 lawyers have resubmitted the ethics complaint to the Bar.

I figure that said Bar will find a way to do nothing. 

Since President Donald Trump fired U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in April, a coalition of law professors, former judges and attorneys has urged the Florida Bar once again to open an investigation into allegations of professional misconduct against Bondi while the state-licensed lawyer headed the Department of Justice.

The liberal- and moderate-leaning group of more than 120 attorneys, led by former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince, filed a complaint against Bondi with the state bar on Wednesday. They allege she violated several ethics rules while she zealously pursued Trump’s agenda targeting immigrants and his political enemies. The complaint also accuses her of misleading the public about the Justice Department’s files on convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein and mishandling the release of those documents.

………

Last June, the Florida Bar rejected the coalition’s initial request to open an investigation into Bondi, citing a jurisdictional issue that it “does not investigate or prosecute sitting officers appointed under the U.S. Constitution while they are in office.” But Bondi, a Florida native who previously served as a state prosecutor in Tampa and attorney general under Gov. Rick Scott, is no longer a Justice Department employee, which should compel the Florida Bar to open the investigation, the coalition said in its 25-page complaint.

“Now that Ms. Bondi is no longer Attorney General, it is imperative that The Florida Bar open an investigation of her apparent misconduct in that office,” the complaint says. “Ms. Bondi’s misdeeds were not minor — they resulted in prejudice to the legal rights of those contending with the Department of Justice and injury to the public’s perception of the fairness of the legal system.”

………

One month before Bondi’s firing, the Justice Department proposed a new regulation that would allow the agency to review a complaint of professional and ethics misconduct against a former employee before any state bar investigation.

………

The complaint says Bondi caused the exodus of hundreds of federal prosecutors who were fired or resigned. They included some Miami-based prosecutors who were associated with the special counsel’s prosecution of Trump for his alleged withholding of classified documents and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters’ assault on the Capitol. The complaint also says the Justice Department under her watch violated federal court orders in dozens of immigration and related protest cases, and it pursued prosecutions of Trump’s political adversaries and others without sufficient probable cause that they committed crimes.

………

“Ms. Bondi took her practice of prosecuting without probable cause to a new level after September 20, 2025, when President Trump upbraided her, in a message that he posted on social media, for not moving quicker to pursue his enemies,” the complaint says. “Bondi promptly launched criminal prosecutions or investigations of the named individuals and others. These prosecutions all share a second characteristic: a lack of probable cause.”

A major portion of the coalition’s complaint zeroes in on Bondi’s handling of the so-called Epstein files, the Justice Department’s sex-trafficking investigation that has caused a political furor among Trump’s right-wing base. Epstein was convicted of soliciting minor girls in a state plea deal in West Palm Beach in 2008, but federal prosecutors filed a sex-trafficking indictment against him in 2019, which ended with his suicide in a lock-up that year.

While the complaint is not a bad thing, it really should be a prelude to her being arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed.

I Like This

Did you know that you could sue any recipient of money from Donald Trump's slush fund?

By you, I mean any American citizen, and possibly domestically domiciled corporate entities as well.

You see, everyone has standing to sue under the False Claims Act, AKA the Lincoln Law:

The Justice Department’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which would pay out public money in compensation for alleged overreach in federal prosecutions, including for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, has been accurately described as one of the most nakedly corrupt actions in American history. It would give a tacit endorsement from every American taxpayer to the notion that the Capitol Riot’s only transgression, for example, came from those who tried to punish its perpetrators for attempting to halt the outcome of an election.

News of the fund has triggered massive political backlash and at least temporarily derailed a party-line reconciliation bill funding immigration enforcement operations for the next three years. Senate Republicans didn’t want to go on the record siding with Donald Trump’s crony slush fund, and left Washington rather than being confronted with such a question in a reconciliation “vote-a-rama.” What they will take up in June is currently unknown.

There are efforts within Congress to kill the slush fund, but those will inevitably run up against Republican politics in the wake of Trump demonstrating full control of the party base in recent primaries. Congress has the power of the purse, but it delegated the authority for the Justice Department to pay out settlements unilaterally when it established something called the Judgment Fund in 1956. Any attempt to change that legislatively will almost certainly meet the president’s veto pen.

Yet there is another potential deterrent to January 6th rioters or anyone else taking money from the fund: a mechanism whereby any American can recover improper government payments deemed “false claims,” plus significant additional damages. Recipients of the slush fund, under this approach, could have to pay back three times as much money as they took out.

Sweet! 

………

But if a judge can be convinced that this fund, established with no transparency and no congressional or judicial oversight, which emerged from a lawsuit between a sitting president and his own government, and is arguably contrary to the purpose of the Judgment Fund from which it derives authority, is an unconstitutional scheme to defraud the government by its very structure, then anyone can sue to recoup the money, and then some, under the False Claims Act of 1863. 

This law could also apply to the Acting Attorney General as well as whoever sits on the committee making the grants. 

The legal principle behind this is called qui tam. 

Quote of the Day

To Call Paxton Ethically Challenged Is to Call Jeffrey Dahmer Suffering from an Eating Disorder

—US Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), on the myriad of unethical actions taken by current Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton over the decades

I am not giving Tillis the benefit of the doubt here.

I think that his outrage is almost entirely about the fact that members of his private club , the US Senate, are being knocked off in primaries.

Still the characterization is both true and evocative. 

The Charges Were Bullsh%$

2 Weeks ago, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed felony conspiracy charges against the "Broadview Six".

It appears that the prosecutors were f%$#ing around, and found out:

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the felony conspiracy count against the remaining defendants in the “Broadview Six” case, further winnowing a politically charged prosecution that is now down to misdemeanor counts of impeding an immigration agent.

“Congratulations, you all are no longer charged with felonies,” U.S. District Judge April Perry told the four defendants in granting a motion from prosecutors to dismiss the lone conspiracy charge in the indictment.

The decision comes days after defense attorneys accused the U.S. attorney’s office of reneging on a promise to dismiss the charge, deciding instead to wait until after trial — which prosecutors said was the “usual” protocol for the office.

Attorney Christopher Parente, who represents Oak Park Trustee Brian Straw, took it a step further, suggesting the delay in dismissing the charge was part of a “shell game” to avoid having to turn over unredacted grand jury transcripts to the judge.

Surprise, it was a part of a shell game by the prosecutors.  They were trying to cover up their own misconduct before the grand jury.

What misconduct?  Funny you should ask.

The unraveling of the politically charged “Broadview Six” case against Operation Midway Blitz protesters began earlier this week when a federal judge agreed to look at unredacted grand jury transcripts to “see if there is anything suspicious” about portions that had been mysteriously removed by the U.S. attorney’s office.

………

Before two separate grand juries last year, a federal prosecutor repeatedly stepped over the line, including “vouching” about the strength of the evidence, telling panel members who disagreed with the prosecution’s theory of the case that they could just leave, and having “ex parte” communications with a grand juror outside the proceedings, according to a series of bombshell revelations in court Thursday.

The first grand jury refused to return an indictment, leading to a second panel being convened, the transcript showed. That time, several grand jurors “made comments” and walked out of the proceedings. The testimony of the agent ended abruptly, and they had to start anew the next day to get the indictment.

“Although I am not going to prejudge the issue without a hearing, I will say that I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made,” Perry told the assembled parties, according to the transcript. “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

Perry also said there was a “potential” for “sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations, including lack of candor to the court,” the transcript showed.

The stunning developments led U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to announce in court that he was dismissing all remaining counts in the case, which had been scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday.

These were the misdemeanor charges that were not dismissed 2 weeks ago. 

I'm thinking that a formal bar complaint is in order here. 

Snark of the day

It's not a specific line, it's the entire video about the complete vacuity of the SpaceX IPO.

Patrick Boyle is both amusing and infuriating here.

Back in the days when we-actually enforced stock fraud laws, Elon would be in jail.

Headline of the Day

Court To DOGE Bros: Asking ChatGPT ‘Yo, Is This DEI?’ Is Not Proper Legal Process & Also A First Amendment Violation

—Techdirt

We really do live in the stupidest timeline. 

This is the lamest case of letting ChatGPT doing your homework ever. 

Legal Eagle Completely Loses His Sh%$

IMHO, he is completely justified in doing so.

Devin Stone is profoundly unamused by the Trump slush fund, and I am surprised that he did not turn green and grow 8 feet tall.

OK, This is Beyond Comically Corrupt

So, Donald Trumps pet lawyer has announced an $1,776,000,000.00 "settlement" in the case of an IRS contractor leaking Trump's tax returns.

That money goes to a slush fund that they are calling an fund to reimburse "victims of weaponization and lawfare."

The Justice Department announced on Monday that it was setting up a new $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who it said were victims of “weaponization and lawfare,” a group that will almost certainly be made up of President Trump’s political allies.

The creation of the fund came in exchange for Mr. Trump’s dropping his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, as well as two administrative claims he had made against the federal government that he currently controls.

The Justice Department said Mr. Trump would not himself receive money from the fund. But it did not provide many other details about how it would operate or who could be eligible for compensation. That fueled criticism that the money was a “slush fund” that Mr. Trump would use to pay supporters who have faced federal investigations and convictions, including those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

You know, that is pretty f%$#ing corrupt ……… But wait, there's more.

The "settlement" also includes provisions ending all audits of Trump and his Spawn by the IRS.

The Justice Department has granted President Trump, his family and businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, a potentially lucrative arrangement that could shield the president from significant financial liability.

The provision, quietly inserted on Tuesday as a supplement to a remarkable deal that also created a $1.8 billion compensation fund aimed at benefiting Mr. Trump’s allies, protects the president, his relatives and his businesses from pending audits and tax prosecutions.

The one-page document, signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Mr. Trump, his family members and businesses.

The provision invited immediate criticism as tax experts raised the possibility that it was illegal. 

POSSIBLY illegal? 

Meanwhile, some House Democrats are working on a discharge petition to force a vote on this fund.

It would be nice if they could, but I'm not expecting much.