Cruelty is Back

Happy Friday. There are 634 days until the midterm elections. A dangerous man gets confirmed, a jobs report that might be real and the cruelty is back.

Be advised: This newsletter uses profanity. But Trump uses rubes, and that shit is way worse.

Note: We’ve got a real shocker for you today, Sexy Patriots. Set your faces to stunned. Because you’re not gonna believe it but that guy who was doing the Hitler salute a couple weeks ago and earlier this week called for “white South African” immigrants had a guy who was working for him who’s a racist. Crazy, right?

Goodness! How did that racist shit get in the racist shit club?! How did he slip past all those other racists?! How could Elon Leon miss this guy at his cross burnings?! Yeah, if it seems like we’re being sarcastic, that’s only because we are laying on the sarcasm pretty goddamn thick. Finding a racist in this crowd is like finding fucking water in the ocean. But there’s a lesson of hope here.

We don’t know why this racist little fuck was different than all the other racist little fucks and got the shunning he so richly deserves. And frankly we don’t care. Because at the end of the day this is one less racist little fuck messing around with our shit and that’s a win. And that in and of itself is a reminder that we ain’t dead yet and we can still notch victories over these sick sonsofbitches even if we have to watch them go down one racist little fuck at a time.

So yeah that’s one down and about eleventy kajillion to go, but the journey of a thousand miles and all that shit. Keep your heads up, SPs. Stay in the fight. Fuck the racist little fucks. Y’all have a blessed day.

Note two: Need more hope? Then read this interview with Sen. Brian Schatz who actually gets it. More: New Yorker

Note three: It’s a damn miracle! John Fettermanchin is gonna vote against Tulski Gabbard and RFK Brainworm. It’s really the bare minimum, but we apparently can’t even take that for granted these days. Thanks for not sucking for once this week. More: MSN

Note four: Gosh. It sure is a mystery why one of Pam Bondi’s first moves was disbanding a task force that goes after Russian oligarchs. Guess our government works for them now. More: AP

Note five: Oh. Trump must be shitting ketchup this morning.

Note six: The NCAA really embraced bigotry against trans people fast as hell. We can’t believe the dysfunctional organization that spent decades getting rich off the labor of Black kids would be so shitty. More: AP

Note seven: USAID is gonna go from about 10,000 employees to less than 300. Children will die because of this. So where are all those objective tv journos who were openly sobbing about the Afghanistan withdrawal? More: Reuters

Note eight: We’re told that Elon Leon is destroying the federal government because we have to cut our spending. The reality? Trump’s tax cuts for Leon will add $5 fucking trillion to the debt. More: CRFB

Note nine: Politico is fighting for its life after Elon Leon and Trump made them an enemy yesterday. As we mentioned in the Thursday TBS, we find it pretty hilarious even though we probably shouldn’t. More: The Hill

Note 10: We’re starting to think our convicted felon president is full of shit with that whole law and order thing. And those Q people are full of shit about everything.

Note 11: So this is pretty fucked up. The New York Times is reporting that the CDC posted — and then deleted — data on how the bird flu might be able to spread to cats and then people. It seems pretty obvious that Trump’s plan for the next pandemic is just try to keep it a secret. More: NY Times

Note 12: Update to the opening note — Leon is going all in to try and save his racist little fuck staffer. He’s even attacking the WSJ reporter who broke the story, calling her “disgusting and cruel” and calling for her to be fired. Sorry to get your hopes up.

Note 13: Thank you to Judge Amy Berman Jackson for making sure that Michael Fanone’s heroism is etched in the record. And fuck Trump for pardoning the scum who almost killed him. More: Empty Wheel

Note 14: We’re not gonna give deranged attention whore Kanye West what he so desperately craves except to say sure, nazi fuck, keep asking Trump to pardon Diddy. We want the whole world to know Trump is cool with that evil shit. More: Deadline

Note 15: LOL! This is how you do it!

Note 16: We sure do love President Zelensky. We especially love how he called out Tucker Carlson for “licking [Putin’s] ass.” Well said, sir. More: The Independent

Note 17: Everything is totally fucked, and there’s really no sugarcoating that. But a lot of what we’re seeing is just hype. Trump wants us demoralized. Just remember that the lawsuits have already started, and a lot of this dumb shit is going nowhere. More: NBC

Note 18: The National Cryptologic Museum literally covered up pictures of women and people of color in its Hall of Honor. After being shamed for this racist bullshit, they folded. Keep. Fighting. Back. More: NPR

Note 19: For today’s Happy Ending, well, we were kinda struggling to find something. And then we saw Rep. Maxwell Frost tweeting from the Department of Education, where he and other members of Congress are trying to get in and just had federal cops sicced on them. The resistance isn’t going anywhere, y’all. The fight is just starting.

Note 20: And on that much-needed note, let’s go do some news! We sure hope y’all have a great weekend. And if you watch the Super Bowl, remember to avoid the orange. Love y’all!

Uh-oh

So there are a lot of obvious scumbags who should never be allowed to serve in government but have been nominated by Trump all the same. You know their names because they’re politics famous, like RFK and Tulski. But Russell Vought might be the most dangerous of them all, and he was confirmed yesterday. Democrats did everything they could to stop Vought, the author of Project 2025, someone who told the Senate recently that the 2020 election was “rigged” and someone who said he wants the federal workforce to be “traumatized.” Vought is about to cause a lot of pain and destruction, and we hope people like Susan Collins are ready to eat it.

More: AP

Real or no real?

Well we got a jobs report this morning, and it came in below expectations. But that ain’t the real problem. The real problem is that we have no idea if this shit is even real anymore. Government data is suspect these days. That said, in Joe Biden’s last month in office, the economy ostensibly added 143,000 jobs last month, bringing the unemployment rate down to 4 percent. From now on, expect jobs reports that say Trump created a kabillion jobs and the unemployment rate is 0.0 percent forever.

More: NBC

Evil

In all the chaos and bullshit, it can be easy to forget sometimes just how fucking evil the people we’re up against really are. But the Trump administration is making a deal to house immigrants in fucking shipping containers, and DOJ told the Center for Missing and Exploited Children that it had to stop helping trans kids. Like we said — pure fucking evil. Like how damaged of a human being do you have to be to even come up with this way to attack trans kids who are missing? These are some truly sick fucks we’re up against. Hat-tip to indie journalist Marisa Kabas for yet another important scoop.

More: Semafor, Verge

Today’s clips

President Donald Trump’s calls for the United States to “take over” and “develop” the Gaza Strip have handed jihadist terrorist groups a rallying cry to recruit and inspire attacks against Americans at home and abroad, security experts and former intelligence officials say. More: NBC

Democratic attorneys general in several states vowed Thursday to file a lawsuit to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing federal payment systems containing Americans’ sensitive personal information. More: HuffPost

Under pressure from President Donald Trump and a loyalist at the FCC, CBS News publicly released transcripts and raw video footage as part of an investigation into allegations of “news distortion” over its 2024 election interview with Kamala Harris. More: Mediaite