If you have any doubt about what the US would look like under a second TFG administration, just look at Israel.  The parallels are uncanny.  Think about it – Bibi Netanyahu, the country’s totalitarian leader, is under indictment for corruption, bribery, and breach of trust; sound familiar?  Despite these charges, he was re-elected in 2022 with a tiny 4 seat majority in parliament; sound familiar?  Despite this tiny majority he’s rammed through a number of “reforms” which are nothing but power grabs.  Since Netanyahu controls both the executive office and parliament, the only check on his power has been Israel’s supreme court, which has made life inconvenient in his takeover.  He fixed that yesterday by ramming through a very unpopular bill stripping the court of much of its oversight authority; Israelis are now rioting in the streets.

Netanyahu is backed by ultra-right and ultra-religious radicals who are protecting him; sound familiar?  Since 2022 they’ve been consolidating their power and are now in the process of taking over the West Bank and expanding Israeli settlements by stripping land from Palestinians, limiting the civil rights of Palestinians, inserting religion and limiting the rights of secular Israelis, and limiting LGBTQ rights.  The military has stepped up persecution of Palestinians with violent attacks on their settlements and refugee camps, claiming to be rooting out “terrorists”.

TFG’s henchmen are already laying plans should he take office again; their intent is to consolidate all government power under the president, stripping independence of the DOJ (especially the FBI), the IRS, the EPA, the FCC, FTC, and all functions independent of the White House.  They also plan to strip government employee protections, purge the agencies and install loyalists throughout the government.  It’s exactly what Netanyahu is doing in Israel, but on a much larger scale.  Both plans are the same, and that is to institutionalize corruption.

The only real difference between Netanyahu’s takeover of Israel and TFG’s plan?  He already controls the SCOTUS.  That should send cold chills down your back.

Gym Jordan was on MTP this morning babbling about how law enforcement has been weaponized, but only when it comes to conservatives being investigated.  He’s all over the “weaponized” FBI trying to protect school board members whose lives are being threatened, but completely blind to the tsunami of blatant law breaking on his own side.  When Chuck Todd brought up the fact that the NY Assistant US Attorney, Charles McGonigal, has been charged with taking money from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, Jordan stated he was going to investigate that, but brushed Todd off when he pointed out that Paul Manafort was Deripaska’s primary contact between the TFG campaign and the Russians.  He wants to investigate the Steele dossier, but is not interested in investigating whether the US Attorney’s office in NY was suppressing the dossier and leaking other stories to the press intended to damage Hillary during the 2016.  The new conservative House majority has only a few goals for this term – cementing in their own power, hamstringing the federal government, and exacting revenge for TFG’s loss in 2020.  That’s it, period.  They don’t give a flying shit about their country or their constituents; their only tools are retribution and disinformation.

When asked about the George Floyd act and reforming policing in the US, Jordan took the usual position of conservatives today, saying that the US government has no role in policing reform and that it must be handled at “state and local levels”.  This is the strategy now followed by most Republicans who shirk responsibility to avoid being blamed for the consequences.  It’s also the SCOTUS’s normal response to all issues of privacy, individual rights, civil rights, and voting rights.  The Court, under Roberts, has now taken the position of taking no position on critical issues like privacy, gun safety laws, campaign finance, radical gerrymandering, and systemic voter suppression, punting all those issues to the state level which in 35 states is under the iron fisted control of minority Republicans cemented into power by…wait for it…radical gerrymandering and voter suppression.  The Court has also gone so far as drawing the idiotic conclusions that money doesn’t corrupt and that magically the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed.

At the state level, DeSantis and Abbott are the poster children for shirking their duty.  They both habitually override local county and city officials who are trying to protect their own citizens by grabbing power at the state level to hamstring them, but then take no responsibility for massive failures like the 2021 Texas power failure that killed 700 Texans.  By keep a “free market” ideology where free markets don’t exist, they avoid blame when their own constituents suffer from their negligence.  By hiding behind idiotic libertarian ideology that has never worked anywhere on the planet, they can blame faceless villains rather than doing their goddam jobs to improve the lives of their constituents.

This is the biggest fraud that’s been committed against the American people, but they retain power through two strategies – using disinformation to blame non-existent bogeymen for their own failures, and radical gerrymandering that creates a base of voters who believe their destructionist rhetoric and bullshit.  AND, it’s getting worse, not better.

It’s now been a week since the communications office of the Supreme Court announced that Clarence Thomas had been hospitalized “for an infection” and that he would go home in a few days.  That few days has now expanded to a full week, and repeated attempts by the press to get more information on him have been met with silence.  This is one of the most odd set of circumstances about the health of a SCOTUS justice that I can recall, especially after the detailed blow by blow reporting from the court about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health in the few years before she passed away in 2020.

Coincidently, news is breaking daily about the deep involvement of Thomas’ wife, Ginni, in the effort to overturn the US presidential election in order to illegally keep Trump in office after he lost.  It turns out that not only did she attend the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6th, she communicated extensively with Mark Meadows and others in the conspiracy to overturn the election by amplifying lies about non-existent voter fraud.  Apparently there were 29 texts between them from the election to January 10, 2021.  She also communicated with other like minded folks in Trumpland including Jared Kushner.

Not coincidently, Justice Thomas voted against the other 8 justices when the court refused to intervene in the order to release Trump’s WH records.  He also wrote a dissent when the Court declined to hear the Pennsylvania case that was seeking to disqualify mail-in ballots in that state.  Ginni Thomas also publicly supported expelling Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the RNC when they voted to impeach Trump in the second impeachment and then joined the January 6th Committee.  In her texts to others in Trumpland, she also repeated QAnon bullshit conspiracy theories, loudly proclaiming the election was stolen and supporting the lawyers spreading the lies.  Worse, she has Justice Thomas’ ear 24/7/365 and even mentioned to Meadows in one text that she was talking to her “best friend” about how the election was stolen.  Not coincidently, her “best friend” has ruled 100% in Trump’s favor in cases brought before him.

The stink of the Thomases’ corruption just adds to the existing stench of the cheating and partisanship that has finally overtaken the Court since McConnell successfully stole Merrick Garland’s seat and then rammed through the nominations of Kavanaugh and Barrett, clearly unqualified nominees.  The Court has been rapidly undoing decades of precedent in many areas with particular focus on taking away a woman’s right to seek her own healthcare and making it harder for non-Republicans to vote.  John Roberts has been concerned about the eroding public confidence in the Court, and with good reason.  In a recent Gallup survey, confidence in the Court has declined to a low point of 40%.  Twenty years ago, confidence was as high as 62%.

Is it merely coincidence that Justice Thomas has suddenly dropped off the face of the earth as the scandal of his wife’s deep involvement in the insurrection comes to light?  I think not.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a sudden retirement from the bench to avoid what looks to be the first impeachment case built against a SCOTUS justice.  Nothing else explains the deafening silence about Thomas’s supposed health problem and hospitalization.  We’ll be watching this one closely.

Trump got his money’s worth this morning, using one of his judges on the DC Court to overrule district court judge Emmet Sullivan, ordering him to immediately drop the charges against Michael Flynn to which he had twice pleaded guilty.  The order was written by Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee and protege of none other than Clarence Thomas.  Rao was joined by Karen Henderson, an HW appointee.  Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, disagreed.

The judicial branch of our government is now completely corrupted, caught in the iron grip of Trump criminality.

While were watching Trump’s disgraceful performance in Helsinki on Monday, Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee to the the DC Circuit Court, handed religious fanatics a huge victory by ruling in Trump’s favor for his shift in Health and Human Services spending.  The new policy is shifting up to $260 million per year in federal grants from reproductive health programs such as birth control to faith based organizations that teach abstinence only.  In the ruling, McFadden said, “courts cannot review substantive objections to a non-final agency action, nor can they require formal rulemaking for a change in agency procedure.”  Essentially McFadden, a long time member of the ultra-conservative Federalist society, said that the courts, who are supposed to be a check over legislative and executive authority, don’t have the jurisdiction to do just that.

The effect of this ruling is that, once again, like under Bush II, federal dollars for healthcare are being drained and sent to churches and other religious organizations.

Remember how we talked over the weekend about Brett Talley, the unqualified man-child nominated by Cheeto Jesus to the Federal Bench?  Well.  A little detail came out today that he conveniently omitted from his Justice Department disclosure…Talley happens to be married to…wait for it, Ann Donaldson, the chief of staff to the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II.  That’s right, folks – Donald Trump just nominated, and the Judiciary Committee just approved, a candidate for a lifetime federal judgeship who has NEVER argued ANY case in court, has been out of law school for three years, worked in the Justice Department office that determines judiciary nominees, AND is married to a current White House lawyer.

Outside of his obvious profound lack of qualifications, I think I just counted THREE blatant and easily disqualifying conflicts of interest for this nominee.  The corruption and incompetence of this administration is like none I’ve ever witnessed – or even read about.