u/GreenerMark

"In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins. The agency was examining interactions between Collins and a top donor: Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navatek.

According to Kao, in 2019, the head of the pro-Collins super PAC met with him and other Navatek execs and asked for a $500,000 donation. Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. For the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Kao sent an initial $150,000 to the super PAC using a shell company, saying he had cleared it with his lawyer. The head of the super PAC knew Kao was behind the donation. “Very smart,” he replied in an email viewed by ProPublica.

Weeks later, Kao told his team Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts.

But the FBI saw through Kao’s shell company ruse. In 2022, a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. Facing years in prison, Kao revealed the full scheme to the FBI, hoping to reduce his sentence. What he told them has never before become public.Kao and his close associates donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, allowing Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with more than $40 million a year in government funds. Collins, Kao said, was Navatek’s most important patron.

Then President Donald Trump returned to office — and the FBI and Department of Justice teams that handled public corruption cases were eviscerated. The investigation died, and the government stopped talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress."

Senate hearing with Jack Smith today: Republican senators clearly aren't trying to separate themselves from Trump.

I'm a few episodes in and feel like everyone needs to watch Dopesick. Without giving too much away, we need to understand what corporations and billionaires are willing to do to you, me, and our families to make obscene amounts of money and how they methodically groom good but unsuspecting people and co-opt institutions for their own nefarious goals.

Great cast, great writing, and an infuriating true story.

"Professor Matt Wilson, a co-author of the study, noted how strongly the economic ripples were felt outside of immigrant communities in the area. The report estimates that decreased consumer mobility cost retail shops and restaurants in non-immigrant neighborhoods roughly $1.26 billion, while costing the state of Illinois an estimated $107 million in lost tax revenue.

'We see a 9% drop in retail and a 10% drop in restaurant visits, and it persisted for about a year,' Wilson told NPR. 'And it's not that it recovered after a year. People's behavior systematically changed after January 20, 2025.' He says the city has yet to recover."

"Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.

Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a 'Rumor Control' website to rebut them."

"This year, election officials also saw delays in transferring ballots returned in drop boxes in one county that needed to be counted by another. In Island County, for example, ballots mailed over by neighboring Skagit County were postmarked on Aug. 7, but weren’t delivered until after election certification, which was Aug. 18, according to the secretary of state’s office."

The state’s Legislative Ethics Board signed an order Wednesday requiring Rep. Joel McEntire, R-Cathlamet, to pay a $500 civil penalty to the state treasurer, with $250 of that suspended if he has no further ethics violations through the end of the 2028 election cycle. 

The violation stemmed from an online interaction in April between McEntire and open government advocate Brittany Voie, a Chehalis resident and constituent of McEntire.

“If you had a more successful page you wouldn’t need to be on food stamps,” McEntire wrote from his personal Facebook account in a post to Voie. “Let me check in and see what other great government programs you take advantage of.”

Well, the creativity that Republicans show in their criminal behavior is impressive anyway....

I guess he blew all their money on wading pool paint, gold leaf, ballrooms, and patriot missiles...

“I have determined that for 2027, base pay and locality pay for civilian federal employees will not change from the 2026 rates,” Trump wrote in his alternative pay plan letter, quietly transmitted to Congress on Wednesday. “This decision will maintain fiscal responsibility without harming the government’s ability to recruit and retain well qualified employees.”

On the cesspool of misinformation that is r/SeattleWA and elsewhere, there is a lot of misinformation about the in-state tuition program that the U.S. DOJ is suddenly worried about. The program has a number of requirements, starting with a high school diploma from a Washington high school plus a minimum 12-months of residency prior to starting college. In addition, most eligible students have or have had some type of temporary status, including:

• Current or expired Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status
• A current Employment Authorization Document (EAD)
• Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
• Refugee
• Asylee
• Pending Adjustment of Status (applied for green card)
• One of the following visa statuses: A, DV, E, G, H-1B, H4, I, K, L1, L2, N, NATO, O, Q, R, S, T, U, or V
• Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) status or Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) status

These are students who are not eligible for federal financial aid, yet they and their families pay taxes. Anyone who works here pays social security taxes, yet non-citizens never collect the benefits. And contrary to what the bigots say, crime rates among immigrants are significantly lower than for native-born citizens.

A cowardly thief is trying to steal the valor and honor of a true American hero.

“While at the side of his Captain on the bridge of the battleship U.S.S. WEST VIRGINIA, Mess Attendant First Class Doris Miller, despite enemy strafing and bombing and in the face of a serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety, and later manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge.”

He shot down four to six Japanese bombers without any training on the weapon.

When Trump was asked on Friday whether naval families were worried about conditions on board, he replied: “No, they’re not.” He said that the Lincoln’s deployment, now in its ninth month, was “not nearly long enough”.

Earlier, Hegseth also swatted away families’ concerns, saying that the reality onboard the Lincoln had been “completely misrepresented”.

The sister of a Lincoln crew member in his late 30s said that the remarks made her want to grab Trump and Hegseth and shake them. “I grew up in a United States where you have to be very respectful of the military, as they’re making the ultimate sacrifice and protecting their country, and now you have the commander-in-chief and defense secretary dismissing their experiences and calling them liars. I’m really angry,” she said.

She added: “It’s a feeling of betrayal. These are frustrating, false and careless comments, and they are going to have a lot of consequences for my brother.”

The mother of a sailor on board the Lincoln in his early 20s said: “My son signed up to serve his country. But why isn’t his country serving him? They are not feeding him or supplying clean water, and living conditions are horrible. He didn’t sign up for that.”

"Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire and the Republican nominee in Ohio’s gubernatorial race, served as the frontman for a dubious pharmaceutical company and then cashed out weeks before its dramatic crash."

Donna Brazile, a political strategist and former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The question is, can two different wings of the same party function, unify and function as a governing majority if the Democrats win the majority? I contend that the answer is yes. We’ll agree on very important matters like the economy, improving the lives of the American people, making things more affordable again and not focusing on vanity projects, so the extent that we’re all running on the same message of affordability, the answer is yes.”

Spineless Republicans have shown they will always confirm the most vile, corrupt, and incompetent nominees that Trump puts in front of them. The worst is yet to come, if he gets a chance to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. We can stop this for good in 2026 if we vote blue.

Defeat Collins, Paxton, Husted, Rogers, and Whatley!

"The war is not going well. A conflict that Trump thought might take a few weeks at most has now stretched into its sixth month, and, try as he might, he can’t get out of it. He has declared victory many times and threatened to wipe Iran off the map nearly as often. Neither has happened. At this point, his unfulfilled threats—with Iran calling his bluff—have almost become a dark running gag."

The lawsuit describes the purported settlement as “an unprecedented, unlawful, and breathtakingly corrupt attempt by the President and members of his cabinet to manipulate the legal process and laws intended to prevent political interference to achieve benefits that President Trump and his political allies could not have obtained lawfully.”