Trump's Attorney General may press criminal case against Obama and Biden

Occupy Democrats  - In a stunning escalation of Trump-era retribution attempts, Attorney General Pam Bondi has openly declared that the Department of Justice is now investigating what she calls a decade-long "criminal conspiracy" by Democrats - a claim so sweeping it would make a QAnon message board blush.

According to Bondi, the DOJ is now probing supposed "lawfare" carried out under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, alleging a vast, coordinated effort to "weaponize" the justice system against Donald Trump and his allies. The irony? This announcement comes as the same administration aggressively uses federal power to pursue critics, journalists, and political opponents - all while insisting they're the victims.

Bondi's comments, delivered to a friendly conservative outlet, frame routine law enforcement actions as part of a grand Democratic plot. She even suggested that investigations into Trump were never legitimate law enforcement efforts, but rather an ongoing "criminal conspiracy" that conveniently justifies reopening old grievances and punishing perceived enemies.

Even more alarming, Bondi and her allies appear to be laying the groundwork to bypass legal safeguards by branding past investigations as "continuing crimes," a legal maneuver critics warn could be used to erase statutes of limitation and target political opponents indefinitely.

THe GOP's 2025

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1998 poll predictions about 2025

Fun facts

USAFacts  - Californians paid about $275.6 billion more to the federal government than they received, while Virginians received about $89.0 billion more than they paid.  In FY 2024, 38% of federal revenue came from the nation’s four most populous states. Meanwhile, some less-populated states generated more than their populations would suggest. Massachusetts sent $21,933 per person to the federal government, Nebraska contributed $21,922, and Minnesota sent $21,106. 

Recent data shows the national homicide rate fell by 7.8% from 2022 to 2023. In 2023, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama had the highest population-adjusted homicide rates. In contrast, New Hampshire, Utah, and Rhode Island had the lowest rates. Mississippi’s homicide rate was more than 10 times New Hampshire’s. 

Montana had the largest share of federal funds in its budget: 31.8%. Vermont relied the least on federal money; it was 12.8% of its budget in 2021. Meanwhile, California received the most federal aid in absolute terms, it ranked as the second-least dependent state. 

Americans remained interested in the number of voters with a declared political affiliation long after the presidential election. As of August 2025, 45% of all registered voters had declared a party affiliation — 37.4 million registered as Republicans and 44.1 million as Democrats.

 

How effective is protesting?

The Guardian - Trump’s first and second terms have been marked by huge protests, from the 2017 Women’s March to the protests for racial justice after George Floyd’s murder, to this year’s No Kings demonstrations. But how effective is this type of collective action?

According to historians and political scientists who study protest: very. From emancipation to women’s suffrage, from civil rights to Black Lives Matter, mass movement has shaped the arc of American history. Protest has led to the passage of legislation that gave women the right to vote, banned segregation and legalized same-sex marriage. It has also sparked cultural shifts in how Americans perceive things like bodily autonomy, economic inequality and racial bias.
But as with any tool, there are ways to sharpen and blunt a protest’s impact. Here’s what decades of research tells us about what protest can and can’t do.  More

Stupid Trump stuff

Call to Activism - The dumbest fucking thing Donald Trump has ever said:

“Russia wants Ukraine to succeed.”

Robert Reich -   As you’ve probably heard by now, Trump is renaming the White House. In all official government documents and correspondence, it will now be called the “Donald J. Trump White House.”

I’m joking, but it’s not really funny. It’s entirely consistent with what he’s done so far.

On December 22, Trump announced the Navy’s new “Trump-class” battleship.

On December 19, his handpicked Kennedy Center board renamed it the “Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Earlier in the month, he renamed the United States Institute of Peace (an independent nonprofit group created by Congress) the “Donald Trump Institute of Peace.”

The giant ballroom Trump is adding to the White House is already called the “Donald Trump Ballroom” in solicitations to fund it made to billionaires and CEOs.

Trump is lobbying to have the new Washington Commanders’ stadium (on the site of the old RFK Stadium) named “the Donald Trump Stadium.”

‘There’s no such thing as normal’: 13 essential lessons about sex

The seriousness of AI chatbots

NPR - Psychologists and safety advocates say parents are right to be concerned about AI chatbots, some of which claim to be their children’s “best friends.” The fast-moving technology has few safeguards in place, and risks damaging kids’ social development and mental health. In a recent Senate hearing, parents of two teens testified that prolonged chatbot interactions encouraged their children’s suicide plans. Experts note that teenagers are particularly vulnerable because adolescence is a time of rapid brain development shaped by experiences. Here are some expert strategies to help families navigate technology safely: 📱 Keep an open dialogue with your child about what kind of technology they are using and why. Have frequent, non-judgmental and candid conversations.  📱 It is important for parents and children to understand that chatbots can also make errors. Fact-check the information AI provides.  📱 Set time limits or limit certain types of content on chatbots.  📱 Look out for warning signs in vulnerable teens, such as sudden and persistent changes in mood, isolation or changes in how engaged they are at school. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or be in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Gaza

NPR - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Trump yesterday in Mar-a-Lago to discuss how the Gaza ceasefire plan will move into the next phase. The two men also sent a stern warning to Iran not to try rebuilding its nuclear or missile capacity.

🎧 The two leaders did not publicly announce plans for the next steps in the ceasefire after the meeting, NPR’s Michele Kelemen tells Up First. The president has not appointed his Board of Peace or said who will run Gaza. Hamas has shown no signs of relinquishing power or its weapons. Much of Gaza remains in ruins. Even though aid is getting in, Kelemen says there have been reports of children dying because of cold weather and floods.

The DOJ crackdown on corporate DEI is getting real

MS NOW - One of the first executive orders President Donald Trump signed in January declared war on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or “DEI,” initiatives in schools and workplaces. It’s been left to the Justice Department’s overstretched team of government lawyers to pick battles in the president’s campaign against equality measures. According to The Wall Street Journal, the DOJ is now scrutinizing corporations with federal contracts, including Alphabet’s Google and Verizon Communications. (Neither the companies named nor the Justice Department provided comment to the Journal, and MS NOW has yet to independently verify the Journal’s reporting.)

The Justice Department is reportedly looking to make novel use of the False Claims Act, an 1863 law written to take on profiteering defense contractors bilking the Union government. In recent years, it’s been more often used against health care corporations that overcharge the government for services provided. 

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche flagged this new approach using the False Claims Act in a May memo announcing a new “Civil Rights Fraud Initiative.” Blanche asserted that Trump’s executive order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” bars companies from taking federal money “while knowingly engaging in racist preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities,” including DEI programs. Those who do, he warned, could be held liable under the False Claims Act.  MORE

Aside from the major shift in how the Trump administration law wants this law applied, Blanche’s memo marks a change in how the Justice Department is handling these cases. 

Radical changes promised for Trump's second term

NY Times -   Donald J. Trump promised to drive America in a different direction. One year into his second term, he is doing so, enacting or seeking fundamental changes to policy, politics and society.

He has driven illegal crossings at the border to record lows and has made clear that the United States has shut the door to most nonwhite refugees. He has eliminated diversity programs in the government and has pushed corporate America to do the same.

He helped bring about an uneasy cease-fire in Gaza, threatened to cut off aid to Ukraine and sent the military to kill suspected drug smugglers at sea while deploying troops under federal control into the streets of U.S. cities. He has put immense strain on relations with traditional allies and has pursued policies, including on cryptocurrencies, that have enriched his family and some of his top aides.

He has upended the global trading system by raising taxes on imports, arguing that doing so would eventually bring back jobs. At the same time, he has extended big corporate and income tax cuts from his first term. He has reversed Biden administration policies intended to address climate change, dismantled government agencies without getting congressional approval and slashed the federal work force.

Mr. Trump’s dizzying first year back in office has been polarizing, to say the least. The handful of other presidents who had comparatively momentous first years were responding to a true national crisis: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Depression. The United States faced no such emergency in January, but Mr. Trump has routinely governed through emergency powers.

Meanwhile. . .

NPR - Women wrote all of the top 10 books people borrowed this year through the public library app Libby.  A judge in California ruled that the federal government is allowed to share basic information about Medicaid participants with ICE.

UN Refugee Agency  - 117 million. That's how many people are forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. That's equivalent to the population of Japan, the 12th largest country in the world. From Sudan to Afghanistan to Ukraine, your help is urgently needed.

19 rules for doing your laundry better

Donald Trump

Time -  After returning to office, Donald Trump’s net worth jumped to $7.3 billion, up from $3.9 billion in 2024, according to a tally that Forbes published in September. In mid-December, Trump Media and Technology Group announced a planned merger with TAE Technologies, a company working to develop nuclear fusion technology. That merger was the latest move to raise questions about Trump and conflicts of interests, given that his Administration oversees the regulation of the nuclear industry.

Most modern Presidents before Trump put their assets into blind trusts or broadly diversified funds in order to avoid concerns from the public about the White House favoring policy decisions that would benefit a President financially. Trump didn’t do that for his first term, and hasn’t done that for his second. Since his inauguration a year ago, he’s continued to stay involved in his companies while also entering into new ventures that have soared in value.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in May that Trump was abiding by all applicable conflict-of-interest laws. "I think everybody, the American public, believe it's absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency,"

Critics argue that Trump has created the impression that he might be willing to make decisions as President that benefit himself and his family over the country. Wealthy individuals and sovereign wealth funds are able to invest in stocks and crypto currencies that could increase the President’s wealth and those same investors could launch a fire sale that could reduce their value. “That is a new pressure point on an American President that we’ve not previously seen, and a reason why Presidents divest from their assets to not have even the appearance of being able to be gotten to through their finances,” says Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning nonprofit that tracks the influence of money in government.

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Via Annie

Russia

Republicans Against Trump - Russian newspaper today: “America no longer sees our country as a threat…The US leader’s philosophy is closer to the values of Russia’s president, not the politicians of the Old World…he sees Europe as a liberal stronghold that must be destroyed…”

Housing

Politics

Age of Senators

Meanwhile. . .

Japan now sees 850,000 more funerals than births each year. The gap will soon widen to 1,000,000 more deaths than births.

Chicago’s Mayor Is Caught in a Trap

Jacobin -  When labor activist Brandon Johnson upset Paul Vallas in Chicago’s 2023 runoff mayoral election, the Left had good cause for optimism. One of their own, a former Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) activist, had just won the highest elected office in the third largest city in the United States. And, even better, he did so with an explicit commitment to pursuing a racial and economic justice platform. After the Sanders 2020 campaign, it was a much-needed glimmer of hope for the American left.

And for a time it seemed that the hard work of local activists had finally paid off. Johnson’s victory was made possible by support from the United Working Families Party, founded as a coalition between the CTU and Service Employees International Union Health Care Indiana Illinois and now including a range of other progressive unions, along with the impressive get-out-the-vote efforts of community-based organizations. While Johnson’s assembly of a traditional electoral coalition of blacks, Latinos, and lakefront white liberals was certainly formidable, it would be the governing coalition that would determine whether or not he could fulfill his social democratic agenda. Inevitably, this would mean working with real estate developers and the corporate class writ large to feed the growth machine with financial incentives and corporate subsidies.

This conundrum was hardly unique to Chicago. Brandon Johnson, like all progressive mayors, is caught in this contradiction of urban governance in America; he cannot govern without accommodating the financial, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors. But he cannot accommodate the FIRE sectors and build “the safest, most affordable big city in America.” Examining the challenges confronting Brandon Johnson can help to anticipate the kind of governing constraints that Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who lacks the benefit of an activated institutional base such as the CTU, will soon face from the much more powerful FIRE sectors in New York. If Chicago was a battle, then New York will be nothing less than a full-scale war.

Polls

@PpollingNumbers

Unfavorable 64% Favorable 34%

The Guardian  -  Twice as many Americans believe their financial security is getting worse than better, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian, and they are increasingly blaming the White House.

The poll, conducted by Harris, will be a further blow to Donald Trump’s efforts to fight off criticism of his handling of the economy and contains some worrying findings for the president.

Nearly half (45%) of Americans said their financial security is getting worse compared to 20% who said it’s getting better.

57% of Americans said the US economy is undergoing a recession, up 11% from a similar poll that was conducted in February.

The US is not experiencing a recession, which is typically defined as two quarters of negative growth. And last week, the US posted far stronger than expected economic growth figures for the summer months.

But the pessimism underscores an economically tumultuous year. Americans have reported feeling shaken by Trump’s tariffs, mass government layoffs and a crackdown on immigration. The Conference Board’s measure of consumer confidence has dropped for five consecutive months.

Trump regime

Charles F. Coleman Jr, MS NOW - . As a civil rights attorney, this year has been even worse than the nightmare I expected.... The speed of the dismantling of this country’s civil rights protections is one reason. Another is the breadth of the administration’s attacks: including on police accountability measures, voting rights protections, guards against workplace discrimination and the concept of environmental racism.

Trump made Harmeet Dhillon, an ultra-conservative opponent of accepted civil rights law, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and she swiftly withdrew the DOJ from numerous consent decrees with law enforcement agencies across the country. These consent decrees were the result of investigations — and, in some cases, litigation — that the Department of Justice bought on behalf of individuals whose rights were violated by police.

Dhillon’s withdraw from those agreements wasn’t just a disregard for DOJ staff and the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect federally guaranteed rights. It also was a dog whistle to police to expect wide latitude and little oversight from a president who signed an executive order this year that he said would “unleash” the country’s police.

Trump, who has continued to push the bogus claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, signed a March executive order called “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” which, among other things, demands that states implement voting procedures that require an ID proving American citizenship to vote. Voting rights advocates have long resisted that idea because many people have difficulty obtaining the type of identification the executive order requires.

That same order directs federal agencies to share private voter data with states and ties the receipt of federal funds to compliance. Not only do the provisions of this order threaten to disenfranchise millions of American voters — particularly Black people and other people of color, women, low-income voters and naturalized citizens — the measure itself is an unprecedented, and arguably unconstitutional, siphoning of power to the executive branch. More

 Anthony L. Fisher, MS NOW  - The first words in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights are “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Many social conservatives — who otherwise consider themselves “originalists” when it comes to reading the text of the Constitution — have long argued that the Founders didn’t really mean those words and that they actually intended for America to be a Christian nation.

That’s nonsense, of course. No less an authority than Thomas Jefferson spoke of a “wall of separation between the church and state,” and he made the argument in practical, not philosophical terms. Jefferson and James Madison both argued that forcing anyone to pay taxes to a government that was allied with a church or faith they didn’t belong to would deprive them of their religious liberty.

So the separation of church and state actually protects religious liberty and protects us from being compelled by the government to finance someone else’s religion. Sounds pretty American to me! 

That’s not how the Trump administration appears to see it, though. Apparently still fighting the fictitious “War on Christmas” and continuing its tradition of trampling on the Constitution, the administration broke with the long-standing American government tradition of sticking with secular Santa-and-reindeer or jingle bells imagery in its official Christmas messaging. Instead, several administration figures and agencies posted overtly religious Christian messages from their official government accounts on Christmas Day. More

Workers

Robert Reich - Increase in productivity since 1979: 87% ... Increase in hourly pay since 1979: 32%. Just so happens that ~25% of workers were unionized in 1979. Today? 10%.

Wall Street Journal - Companies are looking to stay lean into 2026 while relying on technology to take on more tasks. Forecasters at jobs site Indeed expect relatively minimal hiring growth, and some firms are already vowing to keep the size of their employee bases roughly flat. At a gathering of CEOs in Midtown Manhattan this month organized by the Yale School of Management, 66% of leaders surveyed said they planned to either fire workers or maintain the size of their existing teams next year. Only a third indicated they planned to hire 

What America Might Look Like With Zero Immigration

The School That Churns Out America’s Auctioneers

Trump regime

PBS -   The Trump administration says it plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the nation’s premier atmospheric science center. It was founded in 1960 and has facilitated generations of breakthroughs in climate and weather science. 

Money

RBReich  - America's richest 10% now hold 60% of the nation's wealth.  The bottom half of America? It holds just 6%.

Increase in productivity since 1979: 87% Increase in hourly pay since 1979: 32% 25% of workers were unionized in 1979. Today? 10%.

Amy_Siskind -  At least 717 companies filed for bankruptcy through November, the highest tally since 2010.

KobeissiLetter - Medical costs in the US now account for a record 11.6% of US GDP, with healthcare expenditures doubling since 2012. This comes as consumer spending on healthcare services rose to $3.6 trillion in Q3 2025, an all-time high.