He’s going to lose the Epstein file vote in the House tomorrow. He knows it. Everybody knows it. That’s why he “flipped” last night, as the mainstream media is reporting it, telling House Republicans that they can essentially vote their conscience.

I know…I know…the idea of “Trump” and “Republicans” and “conscience” in the same sentence is so foreign and out of whack, it feels like we’re having some kind of slimy bad dream.

Nevertheless, there it is: evidence that for the first time since he lost the vote in the election of 2020, Trump is weak. When it comes to his connection to the Abominable Pedophile Man, Jeffrey Epstein, none of his tricks are working. Marjorie Taylor Greene went off the reservation, and Trump issued a lengthy excommunication from MAGA on Truth Social, withdrawing his endorsement and giving her a new nickname, “Wacky Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Remember, Green turns to Brown where there is ROT involved!).” Trump has always been the master of the snappy put-down nickname, so it’s even more evidence of weakness when he feels the need to explain the genesis of what he says he’s going to call Greene from now on.

Trump’s weakness popped out of the closet last week when he lost the vote on the discharge petition. He had threatened the four Republicans who said they would vote for the petition, beginning with Kentucky Congressman Tom Massie, who along with Ro Khanna of California authored the discharge. He called for Massie’s ouster from Congress, threatened to run a primary challenger against him, and even attacked him for his remarriage last week after the death of his wife in June of 2024. “Boy, that was quick!” wrote the thrice-married and multi-philandering Trump on Truth Social, opening the door for Massie’s quick retort on “This Week with Jonathan Karl” yesterday: “Dogs don’t bark at parked cars and we are winning. I am not tired of winning yet,” Massie said Sunday.

Trump and Republicans lost bigly on November 4 in Virginia and New Jersey and in the California vote to allow redistricting. That was another blow to his power. He looked weak. He was weak. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was still refusing to swear in Adelita Grijalva, the 218^th vote for discharge, when the drop of the Epstein emails hit last week. As reporters worked their way through nearly 23,000 emails to and from Epstein, Trump’s name popped up more than anyone had expected. I haven’t seen the latest count, but the last time I checked, CBC was reporting that Trump’s name appears more than 1,500 times in the emails, more than the name of any other person, and there are a lot of names of powerful people in there.

By the end of last week, it was clear. Not only had Trump and Epstein been “best friends” for some 15 years, they stayed in touch even after Epstein was convicted on state charges of soliciting prostitution in Florida, where they lived down the street from each other in Palm Beach.

Rumors and supposition were confirmed in black and white text. Trump was very, very close to a known pedophile. MAGA has been obsessed with pedophile conspiracies for years now. It was inevitable that the email evidence would make Trump look even weaker, and he did.

Now we’re told that perhaps as many as 100 House Republicans will vote tomorrow to force release of the Epstein files by the DOJ. Majority Leader Thune has promised a vote in the Senate, and there are reports that Republican Senators will join their House colleagues and vote for the files to be released. By day’s end, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he would sign the bill to release the files, adding a classic Trumpian caveat: “Sure I would. Let the Senate look at it. Let anyone look at it, but don’t talk about it too much.” He couldn’t stop himself: Epstein is “a Democrat problem. The Democrats were Epstein’s friends, all of them. And it’s a hoax. The whole thing is a hoax.”

When the man opens his mouth, and croaks the word “hoax,” you know he’s in trouble. Repeated meetings between his campaign and Russia in 2016 were a “hoax.” The 2020 election he lost was a “hoax.” The Access Hollywood tape, on which he admitted to grabbing women “by the pussy” was a “hoax.” He even denied the voice on the tape was his. Remember?

What is Trump going to do when he loses the vote tomorrow? He can’t primary 100 House Republicans. He can’t primary however many Republicans vote to release the files in the Senate. There will just be too many of them. To use the word that defined Democrats only a week ago, Trump “caved.” He is now for the thing he said he was against, and of course, as President, he could order their release at any moment, even tonight, before he loses the vote.

Ever since Trump won election last November, the conventional wisdom has been that he “rules” the Republican Party. He has “remade the party in his image,” the pundits like to say. There are even commentators who say that the Republican Party has ceased to exist as we have known it. It’s now the Trump Party. Trump’s rule is so absolute that no Republican has dared to defy him.

Until they didn’t. Only four Republicans voted for the discharge petition. Four. That’s all it took for Trump’s grip on the party to break.

Deny, deny, deny. That’s what Trump is going to do now. First, he’ll have his DOJ come up with a zillion ways to deny the release of hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of Epstein files. Trump has already called for the DOJ to investigate Democrats he says were associates of Epstein. Bondi will say that they can’t release some of the documents “because of ongoing investigations.” Then they’ll come up with redactions of names and places and crimes because they have to “protect the victims.” These are victims who weren’t protected when Epstein was first charged with state crimes in 2007. They weren’t protected from adult men on the Epstein business jet flying to his island in the Caribbean. They weren’t protected by Donald Trump when Trump himself “knew about the girls,” as Epstein admitted in one of the emails. They weren’t protected when adult men were sexually assaulting them as teenagers.

Trump will deny all of it. He has denied that he wrote and drew the nude figure of a female body on his “Christmas card” to Epstein that was revealed a couple of months ago, even after the entire booklet was later produced. (Trump’s billion-dollar lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for its story about his drawing and “poem” is still active.) Trump has denied that he assaulted E. Jean Carroll, even after not one, but two civil juries found that he did, and a judge, from the bench, defined his assault as rape, even though in terms of New York State law, he did not penetrate her vagina with his penis. Trump has denied that he assaulted any of the twenty-five women who came forth in 2016 and told of his sexual harassment and assault over many years.

Deny, deny, deny. That was the lesson his mentor Roy Cohn taught him. Cohn, who spent his lifetime in the closet, denied that he was gay on his deathbed when he was dying of AIDS, even while requesting that hustlers be brought to him in the hospital. That’s the level of absolute denial Trump has always aspired to and has practiced every day of his natural born life.

No matter what the Epstein files say about Trump when they finally trickle out of the DOJ in reluctant dribs and drabs and leaks, Trump will deny that any of it is true. Girls? What girls? He didn’t do it. He didn’t know about it. Practically the only thing he won’t be able to deny is knowing Jeffrey Epstein because of the photographs of them together. I wouldn’t put that past him, though. He has denied ever knowing E. Jean Carroll, and there is at least one photograph of them together.

What Donald Trump will not be able to deny is losing the House vote tomorrow and the Senate vote when it occurs. He will lose those votes because his connection to Epstein has made him weak. He will deny that he is weak, but that’s the danger all autocrats face in the end. When you have to deny that you’re weak, everybody already knows it, and they will treat you accordingly.

He’s down, he’s not out, but man, is it going to be fun watching him squirm.

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The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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Trigger warning: This article contains deeply misogynistic posts by a piece of shit pedophile.

There are two kinds of pedophiles. I’ve talked about this before. There is the kind who suffers from a sickness they cannot control. They are compelled to do what they do because of mental illness or deep trauma (or both) and, frequently, loathe themselves. I honestly feel bad for them because what could be worse than knowing you’re sick and still not being able to stop yourself from feeling impulses you’re fully aware are vile?

But then there’s the other kind of pedophile. The kind that doesn’t see what they’re doing as wrong. In fact, they think they’re the hero of the story, battling against evil forces conspiring against them.

In reality, they’re degenerates who just want to fuck little girls.

Are they compelled by mental illness or deep trauma? No. They’re motivated by something far more banal: Misogyny.

Allow me to introduce you to one such creature: Robert. He’s very impressed with himself.

He’s a very popular blogger and author, you see. Are you impressed by his 17 million visitors?

By way of comparison, in the two years my newsletter has been in existence, my articles have been read about 4.3 million times. That sounds impressive, but I will be the first to point out that it is not. When my girls point at the number of subscribers I have and tell me I’m famous, I laugh and tell them I barely rank as “mini-famous” and I’ve had an article of mine pop up on the Rachel Maddow Show for 5 seconds of screen time.1

This is not to humble-brag (ok, a teeny tiny bit), but to establish a baseline for how…not impressive Robert is despite his clear belief he is VERY impressive. Beyond highbrow, indeed.

So…why am I picking on Robert? One of my readers pointed him out to me, and in light of the ongoing national conversation about whether or not 15-year-old girls are fuckable or “barely legal,”2 he seems like a perfect example of everything wrong with these twisted assholes. Robert will, of course, disagree. But he wants to fuck children. His opinion is invalid.

Robert, for his part, fancies himself a “progressive.” He hates Trump. He’s pro-democracy! He hates Israel (I’m sure that won’t end up being an issue).3 He’s anti-fascism!

He also hates women. Like, really, truly deeply hates women. And he wants to fuck little girls.

One cannot shake the feeling that these two things are linked. Hmmmmmm…

Let’s start off with a softball. Let’s take a look at how Robert, the progressive, talks about the underage girl Matt Gaetz paid to have sex with. It’s…a lot:

I really need to remind you that Robert fancies himself a progressive. He’s a “good guy.” But women? They’re thieving whores and they’re everywhere! Why Robert felt the need to call this girl a whore/slut 5 different times in a single post escapes me, but I’m sure it was for very high-brow reasons. Beyond high-brow, even!

But hey, this was a marginal case, right? She was 17…she lied about her age…you can go either way here.4 Let’s take a look at Robert’s deep thoughts about child molestation and feminism:

Have you ever noticed according to feminists, females never do anything? All actions they experience are things that happen to them, in many cases against their will, although they cheerfully went along at them at the time. We hear words like Stockholming and grooming but ultimately your life and decisions are your own fault and responsibility. You can’t go around yelling that people are brainwashing you all the time, but this is the feminist position.

Oh boo hoo! I was groomed! I was Stockholmed! It’s not my fault I got myself into so many bad situations.

Sigh. Poor women. Always crying. Boo hoo.

That’s an odd take. I’ve spoken to plenty of feminists and read plenty of stuff they’ve written over the last 15 years and I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything remotely like this. It reads exactly, and I do mean EXACTLY, like the right’s caricature of feminism.

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Here are more deep thoughts from a different article:

This very angry woman got molested at a very early age and is traumatized by it. But I think she enjoys wallowing in her trauma rather then getting better. I’ve noticed this with many women harmed from molestation. They seem to wear their trauma as some sort of a badge, and have no interest in getting better. This way they get to be victims and we know how much women love to be victims.

When one is dealing with a rampant misogynist who does not consider sexual assault to be “assault,” there are a few key tells to look for. They’re not subtle. One, women are always to blame. Two, men are the victims. Three, well, see if you can spot it:

Typically these women fly into wild rages if you tell them that many women were not harmed by getting molested or they liked it or they got over it with time.

“Were not harmed or they liked it or they got over it with time.”

Yeah…rapists and pedophiles will frequently justify their actions as not being harmful. After all, how can it be a crime if there is no victim? If no one was harmed? Hell, what is the slut-whore ENJOYED, huh?! Is it a crime if she liked it?! Well?! WELL?!

It gets worse:

I have met a lot of women and even a girl or two who got molested and told me that they liked it.

Narrator’s Voice: Robert did not, in fact, meet these women, and no girls ever told him they enjoyed being molested.

Somehow, this absolute piece of shit makes it EVEN WORSE. Same article. It’s like he just decided to go all in on “Is fondling children really that bad?!” with zero self-awareness:

Actually child molestation is not traumatizing when it happens. This is a myth. Trauma only occurs in 10% of the cases. The child mostly thinks it was weird and feels confused. This is because kids don’t know what sex is. And many of them regard it as so insignificant that they simply forget about it! That’s where all the recovered memories are coming from.

The trauma occurs later when they realize what happened and experience guilt and shame.

I’m not a psychologist but this seems like the definition of trauma. You don’t have to understand what is happening or why for the damage to occur. Later, when you are old enough to process the events, you can heal but the damage is there whether you are aware of it or not. I do believe Robert might be a fucking imbecile or suffering from motivated reasoning.

“If I can convince myself that molesting underage girls doesn’t leave any damage, then is it really a crime? If teen girls kind of enjoy being sexually assaulted, then why is that bad? It’s not! And if it is, they’re a theiving whore, anyway! They’re everywhere, you know.”

Here’s the chef’s kiss:

Many adult woman victims of child molestation feel terrible and guilty because they liked it. Hey, sex feels good and little girls have a responsive clitoris and can have orgasms, oddly enough. So they liked it? So what? Who cares? All this woman’s attitude is doing is making victims worse. Way to go idiots.

Got that? Little girls enjoy sex and feel bad about it later. The victim blaming is impressive in its self-justification. Exactly how MANY little girls has this creepy fuck molested?

“If women didn’t get upset about me fucking them as children, it wouldn’t be a crime!”

That’s quite the hot take for a guy who swears he isn’t a pedophile. Oh wait, yes he fucking is:

One feels like that last line about statutory rape laws is more to keep the FBI from searching his computer for the inevitable 500 gigs of CSAM than because he actually believes in it. It’s not like 15-year-old girls having sex with men is inherently harmful, right? It’s historical!

I promise you, if I spent another 15 minutes preusing this creep’s page, I would find multiple references to how it’s biological, too. “Nature intended women to procreate at puberty bla bla fucking bla.”

OK, so we’ve established that Robert is a dangerous misogynist who should not be allowed within one hundred yards of a school. How does a man who fancies himself a “progressive” end up sounding identical to an incel on Reddit?

It’s not that complicated. Somewhere along the line, Robert was rejected by one too many women. Or he found himself and his vaunted intellect pushed aside and ignored by the dreaded feminists. He was a popular blogger once, you know! He could have been like this since high school and people got tired of it. Who knows?

It doesn’t matter what his lame villain origin story is. Like so much of the right, Robert is consumed by a hatred of women. They don’t respect him. They don’t revere him. They certainly don’t FEAR him and that is just intolerable. Those sluts should know their place! And that place is subordinate to Robert!

Now, it’s too late for adult women to be cowed into submission. They’ve been tainted by the evils of feminism. They can think for themselves. What a fucking nightmare! But teens? 15? 16? They’re far easier to subdue and control. I’ve been writing about this for quite some time:

If you can redefine who is a child, then you can redefine who is an adult and then you can trap little girls as sex slaves under your thumb for life. Because that’s really what this is about: Putting women in social and financial chains just like the good ol’ days. Back when they had to settle for any man with a pulse and a job to survive. Back before feminism demanded more than a life of servitude and male gratification. Back before men had to do anything other than show up to land a wife.

So let’s stop calling 14 and 15-year-olds “children” because that’s inconvenient. They’re women, darn it! And they should be allowed to be the sex slave, “life partner” of upstanding men just like Robert.

But they ARE children. I run a D&D campaign for five 15-year-old girls, one of whom is my daughter. We’ve been playing for two years, so I’ve spent hours upon hours with these girls since they were 13. They are completely comfortable around me, having conversations in front of me and with me that they would rather drink bleach before having with their parents.

I love these girls. They’re smart. They’re funny. They’re completely insane and do shit in D&D I never even contemplated when I was playing in high school, lo those many decades ago.

I am telling you this because I can say, definitively, they are not, in any universe, mature enough to date an adult. They are not adults. They are children. Even the ones who have dated/are currently dating are still children. To sit in a room with these girls and consider them as potential romantic partners for an adult, much less a sexual partner, is demented.

Robert asks, more than once, in his rantings, if feminists have ever spoken to a teen girl. It is clear from his creepy, fetishized writing that Robert has not spoken to a teen girl in decades, if ever. If he had, he would know that everything he is saying is not based in reality, but a warped sexual fantasy that exists only in his head.

Fortunately for all of us, Robert is about as well-known as the lecher standing on the corner, leering at little girls, and has about as much influence. He’s not even mini-famous. He’s just a good example of how a burning hatred of women can and will lead you to the darkest of places; a dynamic we are currently seeing played out on the American right as pedophilia consumes it, the natural endpoint of decades of rampant misogyny.

These are sick and broken people, and they need to be stuffed back into the dark hole they crawled out of.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

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The Blue Wave is here! No matter what a handful of scumbag Democrats try to do to dissuade us, it cannot be stopped. There are 350 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

Here is an ugly truth: practically every man, woman, and child in this country has either been a victim of sexual abuse or knows someone who has suffered abuse. That’s the one big reason the Epstein story has such staying power. Everyone knows how prevalent the sexual abuse of children is, and this time, a story has come along that promises to expose that fact by tying the abuse to prominent men in politics, business, and academia.

It is truly hard to contemplate how huge the incidence of sexual abuse is. We got a glimpse during the “me too” movement, when women were encouraged to raise their hands and say that it happened to them and to name those who were guilty. But it was only a glimpse.

I remember when I first became aware of how many sex criminals are out there. It was in the early 2000’s. We had just moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills above Sunset and Vine when the state of California passed a law making maps available that showed where people who were registered sex offenders lived.

Think of that for a minute. I just wrote the words, “registered sex offenders.” This was a new phenomenon, that those convicted of sex crimes could not only be sentenced to prison, but required to register with the state as a sex offender once out of prison, a label that we were assured at the time would stick with them for life.

You could log onto a website run by the state and type in your zip code, and a map would appear of your area showing the street address of every sex offender in the zip code. You could zoom in to show your specific neighborhood, which I immediately did. We lived just above Franklin Avenue to the west of Beechwood Canyon. There were lots of apartment buildings along Franklin and on the streets leading up into the hills.

The map of sex offenders in our neighborhood was dense with red dots, not only at addresses that were apartment buildings, but further up in the Hollywood Hills where I knew that the apartment buildings thinned out to be replaced by single family homes. I sat there for a time and counted the red dots. There were hundreds in the specific area where I had walked my daughter when she was in a stroller and where I took my son on walks with his scooter. Hundreds. In buildings I had passed and still passed with my kids every day.

Who knew? I certainly didn’t. I’m sure court records were available that showed every conviction of a sex criminal in Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles, but you’d have to go down to the courthouse and search through file cabinets containing paper files of the cases, and the addresses shown would likely be those of the criminals at the time of their conviction, not their addresses after they had served their sentences and were out on parole, and especially not after they had served their time on parole and were free, effectively speaking, of the court system and law enforcement supervision.

I was shocked. There were a dozen or more convicted sex offenders within 200 yards of our house, and within a quarter mile, there were several hundred more. The maps did not specify who the offender had committed a crime against, whether it was an adult male or female or a child. But there it was, up there on the internet, all the evidence anyone needed that sex crime was so rampant that when plotted on a map, and you zoomed out, it turned whole neighborhoods bright red.

The National Institutes of Health have reported that between 15 and 38 percent of adults were sexually abused as children, with women being more likely than men to have suffered abuse. One in four women were abused as children; one in five men suffered childhood abuse. Those are official statistics that come from cases either self-reported or logged by doctors and hospitals. We know, because we are human and we understand other human beings, that people don’t like to admit that they were abused, so the real statistics are very likely much higher than those officially reported. Over the years I have been on this earth, which are quite a few, half the women I have known well enough to talk about such things have told me they were sexually abused by their father, a family member, or an adult official at a school, summer camp, day care or other such facility.

Half.

I’m just one person, and I went decades before the subject was even broached between me and the women I have known.

This is the dirty huge secret behind life in these United States. We are a nation that has tolerated child sexual abuse for the entirety of our history. We have learned that abuse of children has gone on in the Catholic Church for decades, if not hundreds of years. We have learned recently that the same sort of sexual abuse of children, both boys and girls, has been tolerated by organized Protestant churches for what has likely been the same amount of time. Catholic dioceses across the country and at least one national organization, the Boy Scouts, have had to declare bankruptcy to deal with the massive number of judgements for tolerating and covering up abuse over the years. The Boy Scouts is still in court fighting the release of files that would expose abuse during years not covered by settlements in cases against the organization. One case against the Boy Scouts revealed the existence of a “perversion file” of names of volunteers banned from service by the organization. The same lawsuit forced the release of 20,000 pages of files on more than 1,200 cases of child sexual abuse that covered just one 20-year period, 1965 to 1985. The Catholic Church seems to announce another new settlement with victims almost daily.

It sometimes seems that every day, another case of childhood sexual abuse by a church leader is exposed. Last October, the leader of one of this country’s largest mega-churches, Gateway Church in Texas, pleaded guilty to abusing a 12-year-old girl in Oklahoma in the 1980’s. He was given a 10-year sentence, but required to serve only six months in jail. He was also required to pay $250,000 in “restitution” and was required to register as a sex offender.

The sick reality is that almost weekly, you can read of a slap-on-the-wrist sentence handed out to a man who has abused a child somewhere in America. Everyone who reads such a story knows what happened. The guy who was sentenced went to school with the judge or played golf with him at a country club they both belonged to, or served on the board of a local corporation together.

The key words here are “everyone knows what happened.”

People are sick of knowing what happened when rules and norms and laws are bent in favor of powerful people, usually men, who have sexually abused children. The same leniency has happened again and again and again. What has been the result? The statistics outlined above that show one in four women have been sexually abused as children. That statistic hasn’t changed in years. It remains the same, because the men who are the offenders have either gotten away with it, or when caught, have been treated so leniently that they keep offending.

Look at what the Catholic Church did when a priest was reported to have abused a child. They moved the offending priest to another parish in another state, or they sent him for “rehabilitation” at some facility run by the church that was set up specifically to treat priests who sexually abused children.

It’s a closed loop, whether it is within the Catholic Church or the Baptist Church or the Boy Scouts. Make a list. Slap him – it’s always a “him” – on the wrist and cover it up.

The problem the system has had with the Epstein case is that he got away with it so long, and he involved so many prominent men, and they abused such a large number of underage girls, that they can’t cover it up anymore. He got caught in Florida and received an incredibly light punishment from the state and was allowed to go free in a deal with federal prosecutors. Then he got caught by the Southern District in New York, and he was charged and jailed, and he either committed suicide or he was murdered, far more likely given the history of child sexual abuse involving powerful men.

Because criminal investigations produce records of searches and interviews and monetary transactions and other forms of evidence, there is much that has been covered up, and much to be revealed, should the House vote next week to force the release of Department of Justice files on Epstein and his crimes. Because we have electronic communication such as text messages, email, and other kinds of information sharing, there is other evidence that is coming from the Epstein estate by Congressional subpoena. Because there are victims of Epstein’s crimes who are still alive, there is much, much more information that may come out, because they are willing to talk, and there are news outlets willing to give them airtime and space for their voices to be heard.

The dirty big secret that is keeping Donald Trump and other powerful men awake at night is that this time, the story is not going away, and the reason it’s not going away is that nearly everyone has enough knowledge of childhood sexual abuse in their own lives and in the lives of family members and people they know that practically the entire country, including MAGA people and members of Congress themselves know that the stories surrounding Epstein and Trump and other powerful men are true.

That’s the danger to Trump and others. This story is too big and too familiar to cover up. The same thing has happened to too many people. When you see statistics revealing that 70 percent of Americans want the Epstein files to be released, you’re looking at a statistic that contains the huge percentage of Americans who have themselves suffered sexual abuse as children.

It was reported that the name, Donald Trump, appears more times than any other name in the emails and text messages that were released the other day in the 23,000-page drop. He is afraid of the Epstein files because he knows that his name and very likely his image is in them just as frequently, if not more.

It is not known if Trump will survive the release of the Epstein files when it happens, but it is likely that taking a shower in his own lies will not wash the dirt off him this time. The Republican Party will be dirtied right along with him. It is not hard at all to say that Donald Trump’s long friendship with and personal business connections to the known pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is the crime of the century.

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A Call to the Supreme Court Justices

I remember walking into the welfare office in Detroit with my mother, clutching her hand, embarrassed as we re-certified her food stamps. The line was long, quiet, but tense. I spotted someone I knew from the neighborhood and whispered, “Do you know that guy?” My mother looked at me and said, “Do you know what he’s doing here? The same thing we are trying to get help.” That moment stayed with me as a lesson in humility, survival, and the quiet dignity of people struggling to make it through hard times.

Years later, I was a single father, homeless, struggling to keep my daughter fed. Addiction had been a part of my life. Some nights we slept in shelters, others on borrowed floors, and sometimes just in the back of a bus. I skipped my own meals so she could eat. Every SNAP benefit we received was a lifeline. Food stamps weren’t a handout; they were survival.

“Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.” – Psalm 41:1 KJV

“Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” – Proverbs 21:13 KJV

Helping the poor isn’t charity — it’s a moral duty. When SNAP benefits are paused, millions of children, working parents, and homeless Americans go hungry.

The 2025 government shutdown threatened SNAP payments for 42 million Americans, including 13 million children. Families across the country were suddenly unsure whether they could put food on the table for Thanksgiving. The Trump administration initially announced that SNAP benefits would not be available in November. After two judges ruled that benefits could not be skipped entirely, the administration said it would use an emergency reserve fund of $4.6 billion to provide partial payments. In a Supreme Court filing, the administration argued that “there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover those funds” that have already been distributed.

But partial payments were not enough. A Rhode Island judge ruled that the emergency reserve fund could not fully meet families’ needs and ordered additional funds be used to ensure full monthly payments. The administration immediately appealed, asking a higher court to suspend the ruling requiring it to spend more than the funds available in the contingency fund. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, acting as Circuit Justice, issued a temporary hold late Friday, pausing the additional payments once again.

“There is only one thing worse than going to bed hungry, and that’s waking up on an empty stomach.”

Supreme Court Justices are sworn to “administer justice without respect to persons, and to do equal right to the poor and to the rich.” That oath is not symbolic; it carries real consequences for millions of Americans waiting for a meal. SNAP is not a political bargaining chip; it is a lifeline.

Recently, I’ve seen the panic firsthand. Grocery stores and corner markets were packed, lines stretching down aisles as families rushed to buy essentials. Even small reductions in benefits ripple through local economies. Corner stores, farmers, delivery drivers, and local service providers all feel the impact. Food banks reported record demand. Families were terrified the benefits they received might be clawed back.

Communities are stepping up like never before. Churches, volunteers, and neighbors are giving more than ever. Inspired by this, I started #LetsAllFeedEachOther, a call for neighbors to help neighbors, especially during the holiday season. SNAP benefits aren’t just food; they circulate through communities, supporting small businesses, farmers, distributors, and even local service employees. When benefits are paused or threatened, these local economies take a hit.

With Thanksgiving approaching, SNAP benefits are more than numbers; they are hope. They let families gather, share a meal, and breathe for at least one day. One day, you’re at church picking up a box of donated food; the next, you’re at a state office praying your EBT card still works. This isn’t just poverty, it’s policy failure.

Families deserve to sit at the table without fear. Children deserve to go to bed full. Parents deserve to provide. Communities deserve stability. SNAP benefits create an economic foundation, sustaining jobs and livelihoods across the country. Pausing them steals hope, nourishment, and dignity.

Some may say, “It’s just politics,” but this is about human survival. Families and children cannot wait while courts and administrations debate funding formulas. Hunger is immediate. The consequences of withholding benefits are widespread: local stores lose revenue, farmers receive fewer orders, delivery networks reduce hours, and employees across these sectors face uncertainty. Even multinational corporations feel the ripples when consumer spending drops.

How the Pause Finally Happened

After weeks of fear and uncertainty, here’s what changed:

• The government shutdown ended.
• Congress passed a funding bill fully financing SNAP through the fiscal year.
• With the shutdown over, the administration told the Supreme Court the emergency was resolved.
• The Court’s temporary hold became moot.
• Full SNAP payments were restored nationwide.

It wasn’t a heroic ruling — It was the reopening of the government that finally took the paws off our Thanksgiving turkey.

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The post Thank You for Taking Your (Pause) Off Our Thanksgiving Turkey appeared first on DCReport.org.

The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer-funded campaign.

On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.”

Noem has hailed the more than $200 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a crucial tool to stem illegal immigration. Her agency invoked the “national emergency” at the border as it awarded contracts for the campaign, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process designed to prevent waste and corruption.

The Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret, records and interviews show: a Republican consulting firm with longstanding personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.

No firm has closer ties to Noem’s political operation than the Strategy Group. It played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign. Corey Lewandowski, her top adviser at DHS, has worked extensively with the firm. And the company’s CEO is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin.

The Strategy Group’s ad work is the first known example of money flowing from Noem’s agency to businesses controlled by her allies and friends.

Government contracting experts said the depth of the ties between DHS leadership and the Strategy Group suggested major potential violations of ethics rules.

“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that the Strategy Group’s role should prompt investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee.

“Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer,” Tiefer added.

Federal regulations forbid conflicts of interest in contracting and require that the process be conducted “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.”

“It’s worthy of an investigation to ferret out how these decisions were made, and whether they were made legally and without bias,” said Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.

The revelations come as the amount of money at Noem’s disposal has skyrocketed. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill granted DHS more than $150 billion, and Noem has given herself an unusual degree of control over how that money is spent. This summer, she began requiring that she personally approve any payment over $100,000.

Asked about the Strategy Group’s work for DHS, McLaughlin, the agency spokesperson, said in an interview, “We don’t have visibility into why they were chosen.”

“I don’t know who they’re a subcontractor with, but I don’t work with them because I have a conflict of interest and I fully recused myself,” she said. “My marriage is one thing and work is another. I don’t combine them.” Her husband, Strategy Group CEO Ben Yoho, didn’t respond to questions.

In a written statement, DHS said, “DHS has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors.” They added that the Strategy Group does not have a direct contract with the agency, saying “DHS cannot and does not determine, control, or weigh in on who contractors hire.”

Contracting experts said that agencies can and do sometimes require that subcontractors be approved by officials. It’s not clear how much the Strategy Group has been paid.

This is not the first time that the Strategy Group has gotten public money through a Noem contract. As governor of South Dakota in 2023, her administration set off a scandal by hiring the Ohio-based company to do a different ad campaign, paying it $8.5 million in state funds. While the state said the contract was done by the book, a former Noem administration official told ProPublica that Noem quietly intervened to ensure the Strategy Group got the deal. ProPublica granted some people anonymity to discuss the deals because of their sensitivity.

The firm also paid up to $25,000 to one of Noem’s closest advisers in South Dakota, previously unreported records show. (The adviser, 28-year-old Madison Sheahan, now serves at DHS as the second-in-command of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sheahan didn’t respond to questions about why she was paid.)

The DHS ad that the company filmed at Mount Rushmore has aired during “Fox & Friends” in recent days. Executives from the Strategy Group traveled to the shoot and hired subcontractors to fill out the film crew, according to records and a person involved in the campaign. The ad’s aesthetic sits somewhere between a political campaign ad and a Jeep commercial as Noem tells would-be immigrants to “come here the right way.”

“From the cowboys who tamed the West to the titans who built our cities,” Noem says, as images of Trump Tower in Chicago and Trump raising his fist after the assassination attempt last year flash on the screen, “America has always rewarded vision and grit.” Noem continues: “You cross the border illegally, we’ll find you.”

The ad is the latest in a campaign that Noem debuted in February, just a few weeks after she took charge of DHS. “Any delay in providing these critical communications to the public will increase the spread of misinformation, especially misinformation by smugglers,” the agency wrote, explaining why it was skipping the competitive bidding process normally required for government contracts. The initial ads featured Noem thanking Trump for securing the border.

The contracts total $220 million so far, leading the DHS ad budget to triple in the most recent fiscal year, according to Bloomberg. The lion’s share of ad contracts is typically used to buy TV airtime or spots on social media. Advertising firms make money by taking an often-hefty commission. Federal records show the contracts have gone to two firms. One is a Republican ad company in Louisiana called People Who Think, which has been awarded $77 million.

But the majority of the money — $143 million — has gone to a mysterious LLC in Delaware. The company was created just days before it was awarded the deal.

Little is known about the Delaware company, which is called Safe America Media and lists its address as the Virginia home of a veteran Republican operative, Michael McElwain. McElwain has long had his own advertising company (separate from the Delaware one), but there’s little evidence that firm could handle a nine-figure federal contract on its own: It reported just five employees when it received COVID-19 relief money a few years ago.

How, where and to whom Safe America Media doled out the $143 million is unknown. Any subcontractors hired to do work on the DHS ads are not disclosed in federal contracting databases.

The office funding the ad contracts is listed as the DHS Office of Public Affairs, which is run by McLaughlin, contract records show. McLaughlin married Yoho, the Strategy Group CEO, earlier this year.

In its statement, DHS said the agency does its contracting “by the book” and the process is run by career officials. “It is very sad that Pro Publica would seek to defame these public servants,” DHS added.

Asked about why the agency chose Safe America Media, DHS said, “The results speak for themselves: the most secure border in American history and over 2 million illegal aliens exiting the United States.” McElwain and People Who Think didn’t respond to questions.

Yoho was still in college when he first served as campaign manager for a U.S. congressman. Now, at 38 years old, he’s a national player in the cutthroat industry of political advertising. Federal election records show tens of millions in payments to his firm during the 2024 election cycle, coming from dozens of Republican congressional candidates. And Noem has proved a particularly lucrative client.

Lewandowski brought Yoho into Noem’s inner circle back in South Dakota, according to two people familiar with the matter, putting the young consultant in charge of the ad side of her 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign. Noem had a more than $5 million advertising budget for the race, records show. After she won in a landslide, Yoho, who has called Noem a friend, came to South Dakota to attend her inauguration ceremony. He sat off to the side of the stage, next to Lewandowski. (Lewandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

By then, Yoho’s next big project with Noem was already in the works. In late 2022, Noem was quietly preparing to launch another sprawling ad campaign — only this time, the money would come from state coffers. The stated goal was to encourage workers to move to South Dakota. The upcoming contract opportunity wasn’t public yet, but Yoho was already involved in planning the campaign, according to records first reported by Sioux Falls Live.

Then on Jan. 12, 2023, Yoho’s company registered to do business in South Dakota under the name Go West Media. The next day, the contract opportunity went live.

Seven companies submitted proposals for the project. Then the pressure from above set in, according to a former Noem administration official involved in the process.

The former official said a top Noem aide told them the governor would be angry if Yoho’s company didn’t win the contract. “He was very direct: ‘She wants to do it,’” they said. Contemporaneous text messages reviewed by ProPublica corroborate that senior Noem administration officials pushed for Yoho to get the contract. Eventually, he did. (In its statement, DHS denied that Noem influenced the process.)

Noem starred in Yoho’s ads herself, dressing up as a dentist, a plumber and a state trooper as she touted her state’s growing economy. Exactly how much Yoho and the Strategy Group made off the $8.5 million deal is unclear. Some of the money was used to purchase spots on Fox News, including one during a Republican presidential debate. Some of the money appears to have gone back to South Dakota — into the bank account of another of Noem’s top advisers.

Sheahan, now the second-in-command at ICE, was paid up to $25,000 by Go West in 2023 for “consulting,” according to a financial disclosure document Sheahan later filed. At the time, Sheahan was serving as both the operations director for Noem as governor and the political director for Noem’s campaign work, according to a copy of her 2023 resume obtained by ProPublica. Her responsibilities included coordinating “daily logistics and operations” for Noem and her team, the resume said. She also managed the “relationship with high level donors” to American Resolve, Noem’s network of outside political groups.

As his firm received millions from the South Dakota state government, Yoho separately continued to work for Noem in other capacities. He worked under Lewandowski on the publicity campaign for Noem’s 2024 memoir, according to a person familiar with the matter. (The book became famous for including an anecdote about Noem shooting her dog.)

The Strategy Group also received a stream of payments for social media consulting and media production work over the last few years from Noem’s American Resolve PAC. Federal election records show the PAC made its last payment to Yoho’s company this February, a couple weeks after Noem took her post as the head of DHS.

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The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

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There’s a cataclysmic event in both World of Warcraft (online computer game) and the Forgotten Realms (tabletop RPG) known as “The Sundering.” Eons ago, dark forces tore the world apart and shattered entire continents, forever changing the landscape. The damage was irreparable, and the fallout took generations to recover from.

Fun! In a game setting, at least. Less so in the real world. Actually, that’s not true. I, for one, am having a GREAT time watching the early stages of a real-life MAGA Sundering over these perverted shitheels:

Despite truckloads of bribes, threats of violence, and probably offers of Pam Bondi performing oral sex daily for a year, the regime was unable to prevent four House Republicans from voting with every Democrat to demand the release of the Epstein files.

The regime is furious that the Epstein story won’t go away and MAGAland is openly revolting against the cover-up:

Now that the discharge petition has gone through, the vote in the House will happen, allegedly, next week. Trump has already threatened House Republicans and expect to hear more reporting on the regime calling representatives and demanding loyalty…or else.

After the bill passes, because every Democrat will vote for it and only four Republicans need to, presumably at the very least the same four on the discharge petition,1 it will go to the Senate. There, it will be filibustered anonymously2 so it will need 67 votes. That means 20 Republicans will have to vote with all 47 in the Democratic Caucus. I have to believe even that piece of dog shit John Fetterman won’t vote against this.3

Will the Senate GOP throw themselves on that grenade for Trump? Will they protect a pedophile? Some certainly will. But enough to keep the filibuster in place? I don’t know. That’s a public vote and they’ll have to answer why they’re protecting the pedophiles in the Epstein files. And it won’t be us asking. It will be their own MAGA voters.

And this, ultimately, is the problem. The Republican base has been trained to view pedophilia as worthy of murder above and beyond the normal revulsion most of us feel towards child rapists. The idea was that this hatred would be wielded as a cudgel against the left. After all, we were all part of a global pedophile ring bla bla fucking bla. Buuuuuuut, for once, it turns out that the tinfoil hat crew was right. Just not about WHO was in the global cabal of pedos. Whoops.

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Right-wing influencers and the GOP have spent YEARS whipping the base into a frenzy of rage over pedophiles. The Epstein files are their Holy Grail. Everyone has to be exposed and destroyed. Pedophiles must pay!

Reprogramming that level of vitriol will be impossible. Here’s Megyn Kelly trying anyway:

It’s really REALLY important to understand a few things here:

1. 15 is not “barely legal.” It’s fucking illegal. There is no place in the United States where a grown man can legally have sex with a 15-year-old girl unless a judge and child marriage are involved. And even then? It’s still fucking rape. I don’t give a shit if they’re “married.”

2. This is, quite literally, the argument pedophiles in the manosphere make in their ongoing attempt to move the Overton window on sex with children. Age is just a number mannnnnnn.

3. Megyn Kelly is making this argument because she knows Donald Trump raped little girls. If Trump were not in the Epstein files and video of Bill Clinton raping a 15-year-old girl were, Kelly would spend the next ten years demanding he be burned at the stake. She still might. But not Trump because the little girl HE raped…what?, looked old enough to be legal? Please enjoy your eternity in hell, you wretched stain on the soul of humanity.

I promise you, you’re going to see more of this. The Republican Party is already infested with pedophiles and sexual deviants. I have been writing about this for YEARS. The fringe is consumed by subhuman things, desperate to make sex with children legitimate. And if you weren’t already aware of it, the fringe of the right never stays the fringe for long.

Republicans find all kinds of excuses. It’s biblical. It’s historical. It’s biological. It’s freedom. My personal favorite is that it prevents abortion. That one is really fucking twisted. Raping little girls is good because it protects the unborn. Good fucking lord. The depravity of the “pro-life” Christian has no bottom.

But MAGAland sees the Epstein files as a central piece of their identity. Exposing pedophiles is foundational to everything they believe. To walk away from that to protect even Donald Trump is to accept that they are the very thing they have been waging war on for almost a decade. Some can do that because Trump has been sent by god himself to deliver us from yadayadayada.

Many will not be able to make this pivot.

Not out of principle or humanity or decency. MAGA has none of these. But the programming is embedded, and that kind of reversal takes time. It took years to turn the Republican base from Reagan’s party of anti-Russia into the mob of Putin-loving morons they are today. This is a far more dramatic flip and far harder to justify.

Not for nothing, all of MAGA still swears they despise communism while openly groveling at the feet of a Russian oligarch whose singular goal is to reestablish the Soviet Union. But there is no squaring the circle here. You cannot bravely stand against pedophiles, willing to hold public executions and burn it all down to expose the elite cabal of child rapists (the stated purpose of QAnon) while carving out a special exception for Donald Trump, who was the best friend of the very man who fed children to that elite cabal you’ve been hunting. Oh, and here’s all that proof Trump was an integral part of that cabal you’ve dedicated your life to destroying.

I don’t think there’s a word for that level of cognitive dissonance. This is the party that just spent the last year loudly denouncing antisemitism and is now at war with itself because Republicans JUST discovered the Republican Party is lousy with literal Nazis. Whatever is a girl to do?!

This is why Trump and his regime of filthpigs have been fighting tooth and nail to hide the Epstein files. It’s not that it’s embarrassing for Trump. Trump cannot BE embarrassed. It’s not that he would be exposed to legal jeopardy. Trump has been granted complete immunity for all crimes by the most corrupt Supreme Court in history, and if you don’t think that includes sex crimes, you’re deluding yourself.

Trump and his cadre of bootlicking traitors know that a very VERY large portion of his supporters will reject him on the spot if they see him raping a 14-year-old girl. No amount of spin from Fox News will bring them back into the fold because, unlike Trump, they CAN be shamed. Every MAGA hat, every Trump flag, every fawning MAGA t-shirt becomes a sign saying, “I support a pedophile.”

How large will this revolt be? 20%? 30%? 50%? It’s hard to say, but it will be a killing blow. This all comes back to the midterms and the 2028 election. Republican voters vote for Trump, not for Republicans. This is why the GOP did not win in 2024, Trump did, no matter what the legacy press says. This is why they just got stomped into the mud last week. This is why Republicans live in mortal fear of the midterms. This is why they’re frantically trying to figure out how to run Trump on the top of the ticket in 2028.

No Trump, no MAGA voters.

But none of their machinations will amount to a pile of spit if Trump is exposed as the filthy pedophile we all know he is. If “just” 25% of the GOP’s base refuses to vote for a party led by a child-raping cretin, they lose everything, everywhere. No amount of election rigging will save them. Remember, the single most important ingredient for a rigged election in an ailing/failing democracy is plausibility. If 25% of your voters stay home and all of ours show up, it is no longer plausible you weren’t slaughtered up and down the ballot in every nook and cranny of the country.

And if the stolen election is not plausible, bad things happen after that. All of them directed at the regime. I keep saying this, and I will continue saying it. This is a country with over 400 million guns whose most treasured founding mythology is killing tyrants. Only a suicidal idiot wants to be on the “tyrant” end of that equation.

So here we are. At the “height” of his power, Trump has never been weaker or more vulnerable. Like any trapped animal, he’s going to lash out violently because that’s all he knows how to do. None of it will stop what’s coming. The Epstein files will come out one way or another. The public will see pictures and/or video of Trump being a sleazy, depraved rapist and screaming “fake news! AI-generated!” every minute of every day on Twitter won’t work.

The Sundering is here, and the damage is just getting started. Wear a hard hat and safety goggles, but also stock up on that popcorn…

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The Blue Wave is here! No matter what a handful of scumbag Democrats try to do to dissuade us, it cannot be stopped. There are 353 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.