A few months ago, I set up a fund for 38 seats that could decide this election. Because you all are so amazing, we raised over $2000 for EACH of those seats. We raised over $80,000 for 38 tight House races.
Since we started that effort, with numbers shifting left (and more primaries happening) we have 22 more candidates for Congress who could keep the House blue! Let's support those new 22!
Remember, we lose the House Kevin McCarthy takes over the gavel and holds wall to wall hearings on Hunter Biden and passes zero good bills.
So lets fight for this group that includes Katie Porter’s seat! We need way more Porters and way fewer Boeberts. This fund will get us there.
I’d love nothing more than for us to also raise $2000 for each of these candidates. We are over half way there!!
Can you donate?
C’mon, it’ll make you feel good. You can donate here:
Now onto the good news!
Democrats are doing great things
Biden wants to end hunger in the U.S. in eight years
President Joe Biden will headline the White House conference on hunger, nutrition and health on Sept. 28, unveiling his plan to make good on a pledge to end hunger and diet-related diseases by 2030.
The conference, planned for the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, will feature panels and working group sessions involving hundreds of advocates, educators, health care professionals, lawmakers, cabinet officials and everyday Americans.
Doug Emhoff – the husband of Vice President Harris –will also speak at the conference, the White House says. Other featured speakers include Chef Jose Andres, known for his work feeding people after disasters, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
It will be the first conference on hunger, nutrition and health since 1969. That Nixon-era conference led to the creation of the big programs underpinning U.S. hunger response, like food stamps and child nutrition assistance.
Food, hunger and nutrition advocates are closely watching for the release of the new White House strategy, which many hope will be as transformational for food and health as the first conference's plan.
Biden announces $1.5B in funding to battle opioid overdoses, support recovery
President Biden on Friday announced that his administration would distribute $1.5 billion to states and territories, including tribal lands, to fund responses to opioid overdoses and support recovery.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will disseminate the funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response and Tribal Opioid Response grant programs as part of National Recovery Month.
Biden signs bill eliminating civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims
President Biden on Friday signed a bill that will eliminate the statute of limitations for people who were sexually abused as minors to file civil claims.
The Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act was passed by the House by voice vote on Tuesday after passing the Senate by unanimous consent in March.
Biden administration to cover Puerto Rico’s Fiona recovery costs for the next month
President Joe Biden announced Thursday that the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs of Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Fiona for the next month.
The move would expand the federal role just a day after Biden issued a major disaster declaration on Wednesday for Puerto Rico, unlocking additional federal assistance as island residents navigate the aftermath of Fiona. That declaration had made federal funds available to Puerto Rico on a cost-sharing basis for debris removal, emergency protective measures and other services.
U.S. Congress reaches a milestone in Indigenous representation
Rep. Mary Peltola's election to the U.S. House of Representatives made history in several ways.
With her recent swearing-in, it became official for the first time in more than 230 years: A Native American, an Alaska Native and a Native Hawaiian are all members of the House — fully representing the United States' Indigenous people for the first time, according to Rep. Kaiali'i Kahele of Hawaii. Now, there are six Indigenous Americans who are representatives in the House.
Senate Ratifies Pact to Curb a Broad Category of Potent Greenhouse Gases
The Senate voted on Wednesday to approve an international climate treaty for the first time in 30 years, agreeing in a rare bipartisan deal to phase out of the use of planet-warming industrial chemicals commonly found in refrigerators and air-conditioners.
By a vote of 69 to 27 the United States joined the 2016 Kigali Amendment, along with 137 other nations that have agreed to sharply reduce the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. The chemicals are potent greenhouse gases, warming the planet with 1,000 times the heat-trapping strength of carbon dioxide.
TFG is in trouble
- If he loses his ability to do business in New York for five years, as James seeks, his financial empire would be essentially kaput. He might lose the right to control multiple properties, including Trump Tower and Trump National Golf Club Westchester. He might retain properties elsewhere, but if James’s allegations are correct, they would be worth far less than he has claimed. For example, the complaint alleges that Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, “was valued as high as $739 million based on the false premise that it was unrestricted property and could be developed and sold for residential use ... In reality, the club generated annual revenues of less than $25 million and should have been valued at closer to $75 million.”
- Bragg may feel compelled to reconsider his lack of interest in the case against Trump’s business, as James boldly urges him to do.
- Trump’s already enormous legal bills may become unmanageable, even for someone adept at squeezing gullible supporters for cash. That could make it difficult for Trump to formally declare his candidacy for president, since he wouldn’t be able to rely on self-funding his campaign.
In sum, Trump’s entire claim to fame as a financial “genius” may soon lie in ruins. His fortune, political power and ability to garner attention might slip away. And if so, he would finally have faced accountability for his actions.
Trump’s lawyers just gave away the game, exposing his Achilles’ heel
Throughout the Mar-a-Lago saga, it has been a running joke: Donald Trump and his media propagandists kept insisting he had declassified the documents he hoarded, supposedly proving his innocence. Yet his lawyers kept refusing to fully embrace this view, suggesting that as a legal argument, it’s rather worthless.
Now Trump’s trickery has run aground in spectacularly revealing fashion: In a new filing, Trump’s lawyers effectively admit they don’t want to address whether he declassified documents, while seeming to acknowledge he could face indictment.
This episode reveals the perils of lawyering by Fox News: If you tailor arguments to a forum where damning facts are never admitted as evidence and Trump’s defenses never face real scrutiny, eventually you’ll hit a wall of legal reality.
The Dearie hearing was worse than a train wreck for Trump
For those flabbergasted and dismayed by Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s absurd ruling granting former president Donald Trump a special master’s review of the sensitive documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago, Tuesday’s hearing before the special master himself, Judge Raymond J. Dearie, came as a breath of fresh air — and a reminder that not every judge is an unabashed partisan.
When Trump’s counsel protested that he didn’t want to give away his litigation strategy by saying whether Trump declassified the documents at issue, Dearie said that was his choice. However, he also said his “view is [that] you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
Trump’s counsel tried to protest the no-nonsense schedule Dearie set out. Dearie was unimpressed, saying he intended to do his best to meet the deadlines he set out. Any rumors that the special master is “slow” making decisions were put to rest.
most of all, it was a strong day for the rule of law. And that, at a time the MAGA movement is seeking to unravel our democracy, is worth savoring.
New York’s lawsuit against Trump is yet further proof that he’s a loser
In yet another indication of Donald Trump’s descent into loser-dom, New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday announced a lawsuit against the defeated former president, three of his children, his company and two longtime Trump Organization executives.
Since this is a civil suit, James need only prove her case by a preponderance of the evidence. Trump’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times during a court-ordered deposition with James last month can also be used against him. The suit effectively points a dagger at the entire Trump operation, putting at risk the thing that he holds most dear: his wealth. James has also made a referral to the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. attorney of the Southern District of New York.
It’s almost hard to remember that a few months ago, Trump’s biggest legal problem seemed to be a federal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Since then, the House Jan. 6 select committee (due to reconvene on Sept. 28) turned out one blockbuster hearing after another on his actions surrounding the attack; the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the election shifted into overdrive; and Fani T. Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., started dragging Trump associates before a grand jury regarding the pressure campaign against election officials in the state.
National security risk review of material Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago resumes after appeals court ruling
Intelligence officials have resumed their national security risk review of top-secret documents that were seized at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, according to a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The resumption, which has not been previously reported, comes after a federal appeals court delivered the Justice Department a decisive win, unanimously blocking elements of a lower-court ruling that forced federal prosecutors to seek a pause in the highly anticipated intelligence review.
Trump’s strategy in the classified documents case is quickly crumbling
No judge would put it this crudely, but the court system is effectively telling Donald Trump to put up or shut up about his wild claims and outlandish defenses over his hoarding of classified information at his Florida resort.
The case has taken a turn against the former President and towards the Justice Department in recent days, suggesting that the classic Trumpian legal strategy of delay, denial and distraction is not working as well as usual.
In a sign of the how quickly Trump’s position may be eroding in this particular drama, several Republican senators took the unusual step of criticizing his handling of the documents on Thursday, despite his firm hold over their party.
Special Master Demands Trump Prove Claims FBI Planted Evidence At Mar-A-Lago
The special master appointed to review White House documents seized at Mar-A-Lago asked former President Donald Trump’s attorneys Thursday to detail any documents the Justice Department may have falsely claimed to have retrieved there, requiring Trump to back up claims he’s repeatedly made on social media that the FBI “planted” evidence in a court of law.
Bad News for the rest of those clowns
New evidence shows GOP’s Trump problem may be getting worse
Republicans are growing more concerned that President Trump could be a drag — and not a help — in tight midterm races that will determine the majorities in the House and Senate.
Trump remains overwhelmingly popular among Republican voters, but he’s just as unpopular with Democrats, and there is a growing body of evidence that he is losing more support from independent swing voters as he grapples with a slew of investigations.
A new NBC News poll released Sunday found just 34 percent of registered voters said they have a positive view of Trump, compared to 54 percent who said they have a negative view of him. That’s the lowest Trump has polled in NBC’s survey since April 2021.
Migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard file class action lawsuit against DeSantis
The undocumented migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard last week filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida officials.
Driving the news: The migrants allege in the complaint that they were given misleading information promising cash assistance, employment services and housing assistance, which they called "bold-faced lies."
Lawyers for the migrants have asked the Massachusetts attorney general and the federal government to open criminal investigations in response to the transports
Dr. Oz’s Fundraising Emails Spell Panic in Pennsylvania
If Pennsylvania senatorial hopeful and former TV doctor Mehmet Oz wants his supporters to know one thing, it’s that he’s a bad fundraiser who has always been losing to his opponent.
At least, that’s the overwhelming message in the more than 100 fundraising texts and emails the Oz campaign has delivered just in the last month.
The Oz campaign has sent 23 fundraising emails since last Monday alone. Every one of them has bad news, saying directly or on a linked donations page that Oz is either missing fundraising goals, trailing Democratic opponent John Fetterman in dollars raised, or losing in the polls.
An email sent Monday—titled, “It would be humiliating”—says that “with just hours until my Daily Deadline, Democrats are STILL MASSIVELY outraising Republicans,” and “Right now, Democrats are FLATTENING Republicans in Senate races across the country.”
“I’m running out of time,” it concluded.
How GOP Governor Candidates Are ‘Blowing It’ in the Midwest
They’re trailing in the polls, not raising much money, running bare-bones campaign operations, and garnering gripes from exasperated compatriots in their home states.
They are also, in theory, supposed to be some of the Republican Party’s best bets anywhere in the country to flip governors’ offices this fall.
With weeks to go until Election Day, the Republican candidates for governor in three Midwestern battlegrounds—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota—are floundering in their challenges to Democratic incumbents.
Jury Rules Against Project Veritas in Lawsuit
A jury in a federal civil case on Thursday found that Project Veritas, a conservative group known for its deceptive tactics, had violated wiretapping laws and fraudulently misrepresented itself as part of a lengthy sting operation against Democratic political consultants.
The jury awarded the consulting firm, Democracy Partners, $120,000. The decision amounted to a sharp rebuke of the practices that Project Veritas and its founder, James O’Keefe, have relied on. During the trial, lawyers for Project Veritas portrayed the operation as news gathering and its employees as journalists following the facts.
Bad News for Russia
Reports of Putin’s problems are mounting
As world leaders gathered at the United Nations in New York and condemned him, Russian President Vladimir Putin was back home, scrambling to refill his depleted war machine.
In Ukraine, Russian-occupied areas began voting Friday in referendums on joining Russia. Western governments dismissed the votes, which are illegal under international law, as shams, but there are fears Putin will use them as a pretext to further escalate the war.
Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, was notably absent on Thursday as the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a blistering soliloquy to the UN Security Council, documenting what he referred to as Russia’s war crimes since February.
“If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends,” Blinken said, pledging the US would maintain its growing support for Ukraine.
Don’t let Putin bluff us. Russia is losing.
Before we panic over Putin’s reckless threats, let’s remember that we have nearly as many nuclear weapons as Russia and that this is hardly the first time that Putin has threatened to go nuclear. At the very beginning of the war, on Feb. 24, he said that any country that interfered with his invasion would suffer consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history.” Well, the West has supplied Ukraine with weapons that have killed or wounded at least 70,000 Russian soldiers, and Putin still has not made any nuclear move. Nor has he gone nuclear over Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. He is not suicidal or crazy.
Putin’s actions are the sign of a desperate dictator who knows his reckless military gambit is in danger of defeat. He knows, too, that Russian rulers of the past — Czar Nicholas II with World War I, Nikita Khrushchev with the Cuban missile crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev with Afghanistan — have not survived defeat, and he must fear the consequences for his own criminal rule. We must take Putin’s threats seriously, but we cannot allow him to bluff or intimidate us into backing off our support for Ukraine’s freedom fighters. Now, more than ever, it is necessary for Ukrainian forces to have all the equipment they need to take back lost territory before Russia can bring greater resources to bear.
Desperate Putin will twist, not stick
Russia is losing its war against Ukraine. It is not defeated yet. But it is heading in that direction and President Vladimir Putin has fewer and fewer cards to play.
The combination of recent battlefield defeats and Western resolve – in particular, a realization that Europe can just about get through the winter on its reserves without Russia’s usual energy supply volumes, and Western politicians not wanting to U-turn and admit defeat – has dealt Russia a one-two punch.
Its supposed military strength and its status as an energy superpower to whom Europeans were addicted had been widely, and it turns out wrongly, assumed to be Russia’s strongest assets.
But the more defeats inflicted upon him, the more his military commanders will lose confidence in him – to the extent they have not already. This would be the best outcome – a change of regime from within, not by the hand of the West or even its policies. And it is not beyond reach. This war will bring down Putin.
Implications for Democracy
As Russia staggers, countries that were formerly in its orbit are realigning with the movement toward liberal democracy. The president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, wrote an op-ed declaring, “There is simply no viable alternative to globalization, interdependence and the international rules-based order.” So, he said, “we are doubling down on the liberal, international, open policies that have driven such a dramatic increase in standards of living around the world.” He promised to decentralize and distribute power throughout Kazakhstan, strengthen parliament and local authorities, encourage political parties, and limit presidential terms, all to “move toward a new…model of a presidential republic with a stronger parliament and a more accountable government.”
On the lighter side
Looking to Keep The House Blue?
Donate to the 22 candidates who have emerged since we set up our last fundraising effort. You can donate here:
What else can you do?
And don’t lose hope. Together, we can do this!
I am so lucky and so proud to be in this with all of you ✊🏼✊🏾✊🏽🧡💚💛💜✊🏾✊🏽✊🏻