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Senate Judiciary Democrats used their final moments ahead of Todd Blanche’s nomination vote Tuesday to remind the committee of numerous reasons why the acting attorney general should not be permanently promoted—but apparently all Republicans heard was a bunch of “whining.”Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt was quick to mock his Democratic committee colleagues, sharing a derogatory note on X that he penned during the proceedings.​​“So much whining!” the note read.Schmitt’s language is an interesting choice, considering that the “whining” was an explicit exploration of why Donald Trump’s personal attorney should not have the keys to the Justice Department.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse referred to Blanche’s botched rollout of the Epstein files as just one reason why he should be disqualified from consideration. Whitehouse reminded the committee that even other Trump officials—notably, former Attorney General Pam Bondi—said Blanche was responsible for the bungled release.Senator Dick Durbin effectively accused Blanche of violating his oath of office by having “aided and abetted the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States” rather than “serving the American people and upholding the rule of law and the Constitution.”Durbin further accused Blanche—who is, again, in the running to be America’s preeminent lawyer—of lying under oath about statements relating to Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund “to avoid offending President Trump.”Other damning details cited by Democrats involved Blanche’s personal role in crafting the collusive settlement between the DOJ, Trump’s personal attorneys, and the IRS that laid the groundwork for the taxpayer-funded honeypot. Liberal lawmakers also chided Blanche’s utilization of the Justice Department within his current limited capacity to target Trump’s perceived political enemies with bogus criminal cases.Democrats noted that Blanche still had not walked back a deal to protect Trump, a convicted tax fraudster, against future IRS investigations. But perhaps most scathing were the repeat references to Blanche’s bad lawyering. Democrats pointed to a petition signed by hundreds of Blanche’s former colleagues that claimed Blanche was simply unfit to be America’s top law enforcement official. The New York City Bar Association also protested Blanche’s nomination, accusing Blanche of having dubious ethical standards that failed to meet the standard required by the office.Schmitt’s dismissive tone could only suggest that he either didn’t listen to the complaints or he simply doesn’t care.

The US has imposed more tariffs on Chinese goods, blacklisted dozens more Chinese companies, and banned new Chinese humanoid robots.

[This essay is part of a series of essays by Michael Albert which critiques Classical Left Ideologies and their value, meaning, and relevance in the context of today’s Left and the struggle for a better world. The full series can be found here.] This article was conceived and written back in the early 1970s and excerpted [...]

It’s been only a few days since federal prosecutors moved to dismiss criminal charges against former Olympian David Hearn, and the Department of Justice’s remaining vandalism cases have already fallen apart like cheap pool lining. The DOJ indicated Monday night that it would not prosecute the remaining two defendants accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Cameron Thiers and Sophie Dennison-Gibby.In a filing Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia acknowledged that damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by the contractor’s flawed installation of the pool lining, and blamed the Department of the Interior for initially claiming that the damage was “entirely caused by vandals.” The government also quietly dismissed charges against defendant Justin Carreno on Friday.  G. Allen Dale, an attorney representing Thiers, told NPR News that, after the filing about Hearn, there was no way to keep the rest of the government’s cases afloat. “Anyone who’s read the pleading that was filed in Mr. Hearn’s case would understand exactly why they would have to dismiss against the remainder of those charged,” Dale said. The move to dismiss charges against Hearn sparked major backlash from President Donald Trump, who’d hand-picked Atlantic Industrial Coating for the project and spent weeks blaming vandals for the contractor’s apparently shoddy workmanship. He railed against U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for dropping the Hearn case, saying Monday she “choked.”

Republican Senator Thom Tillis doesn’t think highly of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, but he voted to confirm him anyway.Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, gave a long-winded defense of his support for Blanche on the Senate floor Tuesday, even as he admitted that this Justice Department seems particularly bad.“Everybody has this view that they are as pure as the driven snow and it’s the other side that has a problem. I think we both have a problem, folks. If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration, take a look at the Obama administration,” Tillis said.“The bottom line is, nobody is clean here, and until we start recognizing this behavior as bad, we’re just going to one-up it. Maybe it’s a little bit more intense in this administration than the last one, and that a little bit more intense the prior administration, and so on and so forth, but folks, we’ve got to end this stuff. We do,” Tillis continued. “I’m gonna support Mr. Blanche’s nomination, but what I hope I see out of him is a bending of the curve of this absurdity.”Tillis: "Everybody has this view that they are as pure as the driven snow and it's the other side that has a problem. I think we both have a problem, folks. If you want to talk about weaponization, take a look at the Biden administration, take a look at the Obama administration,… pic.twitter.com/bnBhpjfsBg— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 4, 2026Tillis’s excuse doesn’t hold up very well. Tillis was one of two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee withholding his vote to support Blanche over President Trump’s settlement with the IRS, which created a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and gave Trump and his family immunity from IRS audits.But over the weekend, Tillis, along with Republican Senator John Cornyn, changed his mind following a written statement from the Department of Justice in which Blanche purportedly agreed to end the Anti-Weaponization Fund. However, that memo still left open the preservation of the fund, as well as Trump’s immunity from IRS audits, as Democrats quickly pointed out.Tillis seems to know all of this, based on his statement Tuesday. But even though he’ll be out of the Senate next year, he’s putting politics over principle.

Centrist arguments about who is or isn't "electable" have always been about disciplining the Democratic base rather than actually winning elections. The post The Electability Hustle appeared first on Truthdig.

Over the weekend, right-wing media, including the Post Millennial and the Gateway Pundit, resurfaced a 2023 interview featuring Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, wherein Hong opened up about a hospitalization for a mental breakdown as a teenager and a previous bipolar disorder diagnosis. “Wisconsin Dem candidate for governor Francesca Hong admitted to being diagnosed as […]