Author: JavaElemental ☕

Writer, news junky, geek, social media nerd. "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." - Arthur Ashe. She/Her.

The FBI raided Mar-A-Lago yesterday.

Trump apparently liveblogged the raid on his crappy “Truth Social” social media site.

Welp.

Former President Donald Trump said on Monday that FBI agents had searched his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., and opened his safe.

The FBI and Department of Justice declined to comment, although Eric Trump said Monday night that he was told the search was related to the possible mishandling of government secrets the Justice Department is known to be investigating after the National Archives retrieved White House records from Mar-a-Lago.

NPR: Trump says FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida

Predictably, MAGA Cultist Twitter, which includes many elected congresscritters, governors, and pundits, had an entire histrionic meltdown over the situation. Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever her stupid name is was all “DEFUND THE FBI” and Marco Rubio was crybabying through several tweets and some idgit from the Florida state congress was yelling that Florida should make the FBI illegal and Kevin McCarthy was trying to be all scary and claiming the GOP would investigate basically everyone when they took back the House*. It was all very dramatic.

(* This is a very good reason not to let the GOP take back the House this midterm. I mean, there are literal tons of good reasons, but this one, I.E., years of time and money wasted on BS “investigations,” ranks near the top.)

It’s important to point out that we don’t actually know what the raid was about. Everyone’s pretty sure it has something to do with those classified documents Trump stole on his way out the door – I think NBC actually confirmed that? – but otherwise, we don’t know anything about it yet. Reasonable people who know how this sort of thing works think it probably has something to do with that, but that there must also be something bigger/related going on, because this whole thing is absolutely unprecedented and wouldn’t have been undertaken all willy-nilly. Like, you don’t just get federal judges to sign off on FBI search warrants against former presidents because you got a wild hair up your ass some Monday afternoon.

We also don’t know what’s going to come of this. Is Trump going to get indicted? We don’t know. Dude’s in a lot of legal trouble, both federally and in a few states, and that was before this all went down.

There’s a non-zero chance we could put a former president behind bars, and that would be amazing. Honestly? It’s overdue. Powerful bastards should live in constant, quaking fear of the consequences of their actions and that they don’t is a goddamn travesty.

As to how likely it is that Trump sees the inside of a jail cell… well, it’s more likely today than it was Sunday, I guess, but I still wouldn’t rank the odds super high.

But just in case, do you remember impeachment.fyi, the website/newsletter run by Dan Sinker that ran down all the developments in the impeachment trials every day? Well, to cover his bases, he fired up indictment.fyi last night. You can visit indictment.fyi to sign up for free, and if this turns into a show, Sinker will email the daily developments to you like he did during the impeachments.

Links

Republicans are evil.

SHE. IS. TEN.

Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Jim Bopp, an Indiana lawyer who has authored model legislation for anti-abortion state lawmakers to adopt in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, told POLITICO on Thursday the 10-year-old Ohio girl who crossed state lines to receive an abortion in his state should have carried her pregnancy to term and would have been required to do so under his law.

Bopp, the National Right to Life Committee’s general counsel, said his law only provides exceptions when the pregnant person’s life is in danger.

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp said in a phone interview on Thursday.

National Right to Life official: 10-year-old should have had baby, Politico

Republicans are showing you that they’re evil. This certainly isn’t the first time they’ve done that, either. This is, I don’t know, the millionth time. You need to start believing them.

Daily Thoughts: Garbage People

Today’s random thoughts and whatnot.

Shortly after the fall of Roe v. Wade, a story made the rounds on the Internet about a 10 year old girl in Ohio who’d been raped, gotten pregnant, and had had to go to Indiana for the abortion because she was three days past Ohio’s six week limit when her pregnancy was discovered.

Republican talking heads, being the horrific monsters they are, immediately decried the story as fake. (Two examples, here and here.)

Well, the bastard rapist was arrested and charged yesterday.

Fucking garbage GOP.

Also,

Screencap, tweet, Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR): "The market is down ~13% in the past year, and inflation is up 9.1%. The only way to fix this catastrophe is to vote Republican." at 6:19 AM on Jul 13, 2022
Republicans are fantastic at the economy. That’s why every time we elect one the economy shits itself and the next Democratic president has to spend 75% of their term fixing it. 🙄
Screencap, tweet, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn): "Why can’t the left say the word “woman”?" at 9:14 AM on Jul 13, 2022
I am so sick of this disingenuous bullshit from these asshole GOPs. Racist, homophobic, transphobic, power-hungry, trapped in the past, money-hungry useless garbage people, every last single one.

Reading List

I have a bad habit of bookmarking links on Twitter to share here, and then forgetting to share them. Here’s a big list of the stories I’ve been forgetting to share.

Daily Thoughts: Pretty Space Photos

Today’s random thoughts and whatnot.

NASA released more of the first images from the James Webb Space telescope this morning. They’re pretty amazing.

Ooo. New desktop wallpaper for me!

🤯 HuffPo: White House Privately Signaling It’s Moving Forward With Anti-Abortion Court Pick – “Despite outcry from Democrats and reproductive rights groups, Biden isn’t backing off plans to nominate Chad Meredith, a source tells HuffPost.”

I cannot understand this. Even if this is a deal to give McConnell one judge and he stops blocking the rest, Biden must realize McConnell is gonna renege on the deal, right? That’s what he does.

This! I used to huddle up in coats even on 90°+ degree summer days, it was so damn cold in our office. Also,

  • Noise
  • Co-workers who only want to chat when I’m working
  • Constant interruptions

One thing I’ve been struck by over the years of the Trump administration, through all the stories that came out, and now during these hearings, is how unutterably hellish working for that administration must have been. All the yelling, swearing, and constant abuse. Like, I have no use for anyone who actually worked for the Trump administration, but still, working there must have been abominably miserable.

Two good Twitter threads, here and here, to read and consider.

Short Twitter thread full of good reminders.

Rep. Murphy walking through evidence that shows that the march to the capitol wasn’t spontaneous. I genuinely don’t know how you watch these hearings and walk away not believing this was a planned coup attempt.

Pair this with that TikTok “Oh, I fucked up” sound.

I’m a little bit annoyed with the way Rep. Thompson keeps introducing the women representatives as “the young lady,” or “the young woman.” I know that’s sort of a generational thing and meant to be complimentary, but it feels diminishing. Don’t love it.

Reading List

Daily Thoughts: Committee Hearing Tomorrow

Today’s random thoughts and whatnot.

FYI: There’s another Jan. 6 Committee hearing tomorrow, July 12, starting at 1 p.m. ET. I’ve been watching on YouTube (here). Apparently tomorrow’s hearing will be covering connections between the Trump administration and fascist/Nazi/white supremacist militias like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

Reading List

  1. The Atlantic: Why The Past 10 Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid – “It’s not just a phase.”
  2. CNN: Accounts of Trump angrily demanding to go to Capitol on January 6 circulated in Secret Service over past year – “Then-President Donald Trump angrily demanded to go to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and berated his protective detail when he didn’t get his way, according to two Secret Service sources who say they heard about the incident from multiple agents, including the driver of the presidential SUV where it occurred.”
  3. Chuck Wendig: ‘Don’t Complain’ Is Not A Winning Political Message – “Complaining about the Democrats and Biden is entirely fair game. It is, in fact, part and parcel of our democracy, to be able to complain about them, to demand that they do better — not just better, but the very best they can do.”
  4. Vox: 10 ways to fix a broken Supreme Court – “Democrats don’t have the votes right now for major Supreme Court reform. But if they pick up seats, they could have many options.”
  5. NPR: Alabama is using the case that ended Roe to argue it can ban gender-affirming care – “Days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can prohibit abortion, Alabama has seized on the decision to argue that the state should also be able to ban gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender youths.”