Tuesday, September 23, 2025. Chump continues to destroy the economy, Kamala Harris reminds how he swore he'd fix it on day one and she observes how feckless so many business leaders have become, Senator Adam Schiff calls out the bribe-taking Tom Homan, we take a part an article sent to the public e-mail account for us to highlight in order to explain what we won't highlight here (poorly written articles containing one factual error after another) and much more including how Chump is losing his power not just due to his abuses but also to the natural effect of mid-terms turning presidents in their second term into lame ducks.
Let's start with the White House and Karoline Leavitt who was asked about Donald Chump's illegal actions and abuse of office as he went after political enemies. Propaganda Pig Leavitt swiped her head repeatedly and chomped and grunted and squealed as she lied lied lied. Robert McCoy (THE NEW REPUBLIC) explains:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt crumbled Monday when pressed about President Trump’s lawfare against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump last week forced Erik Siebert out of his post as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia for failing to find (read: concoct) evidence of James’s criminality during a five-month-long investigation.
James previously filed a civil case against Trump, in which he was ultimately found liable for business fraud in September 2023. (An appeals court last month tossed a $500 million penalty—but not the verdict.) Now, like several other Trump foes, James faces a thinly veiled retribution campaign, in which she’s accused by the administration of mortgage fraud.
ABC White House correspondent Selina Wang laid these facts before Leavitt at a Monday press conference. Considering that a monthslong investigation into James by Siebert (a Trump appointee) yielded no evidence, she asked, “Is the president saying here it doesn’t matter if there’s a crime, he just wants his political enemies to be charged?”
Leavitt launched into a tirade against James, who, she said, “completely abused her oath of office” and “was actively and openly engaged in lawfare.” The press secretary also falsely claimed that last month’s removal of Trump’s half-billion-dollar civil fraud penalty meant the president was “exonerated” of James’s “witch hunt”—when, in reality, the appeals court upheld the lower court’s verdict that Trump is indeed liable for fraud.
Most likely after that, Propaganda Pig kicked her hind legs in the air and charged at the wooden fence around her pigsty in an attempt to get out of the barn yard.
In the meantime, are you ready for Farmageddon? Donald Chump's destroyed the economy and farmers are seeing it. James Havers (MONEYWISE) reports:
That’s largely because key monthly costs for most Americans - shelter, food, health care, electricity - are outpacing inflation. Rents are up 3.8 percent - the largest increase since 2011 - the Census Bureau reported last week, and roughly half of all renters spend more than the recommended 30 percent of their incomes to cover the cost. Utility prices have spiked, according to the consumer price index, with natural gas and electricity bills rising 13.8 and 6.2 percent, respectively, since last year. And though President Donald Trump promised to lower food costs during the presidential campaign, grocery prices just posted their biggest increase since 2022, due in large part to his tariffs.
Other sectors where inflation is rising faster include homeownership and medical care, while falling gasoline prices help bring down the overall average.
“It’s not that they have a choice. We’re talking about things that people must buy. They have to live somewhere. … They have to heat their homes. They need lights,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
The nation’s top economic statistician was fired. Central bank independence is being undermined. The federal government is buying chunks of private companies and demanding cuts of revenue streams. Presidential power to lob tariffs has been wielded in unprecedented fashion. And federal regulators are threatening media companies over late-night comics.
These events all took place this year, and not in a third-world country, but in the world’s preeminent democracy under President Donald Trump.
Some political scientists see a pattern that suggests American democracy is being undermined in real time. The stakes are massive for the US economy and the business world.
“I have never been this concerned about democracy in the United States,” Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow of governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, told CNN in a phone interview.
CEOs are growing alarmed — even if they’re publicly staying quiet to avoid the wrath of the White House.
Business leaders are “quite alarmed” in private about the state of democracy in the United States, according to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Yale professor known as the “CEO Whisperer” due to his extensive rolodex in the business community.
“We’ve had a serious erosion of the foundations of democracy,” Sonnenfeld, founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, told CNN.
As Kamala noted to Rachel last night, the capitulation to Chump has been surreal, "bending to blackmail and outrageous demands."
Angelina Jolie speaks for many Americans in the video below.
The president posted — and then deleted — a message to Bondi complaining that "nothing is being done" about former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, a day after federal prosecutor Erik Siebert complied with Trump's demand for his resignation for failing to bring mortgage fraud charges against James.
"There's some speculation that this was meant as a private message to Pam Bondi," Lemire told "Morning Joe." "The White House has not confirmed that, but the writing of it might have been meant as a DM, as opposed to a Truth Social post because Trump then took that post down, tried to clean it up with a subsequent posting.
"But this is, we know President Trump campaigned on the idea of retribution. That was one of his campaign platforms last year, and this is what that appears to look like, and we have seen U.S. attorneys across this country find a lack of evidence, there has not been a charge yet against Letitia James, the New York State attorney general. There have not been charges yet against Sen. Schiff or others."
"We have also seen, though, an effort by this president to remove a U.S. attorney who wouldn't bring charges, and he makes mention of that in this post, too, saying he needs to be replaced with someone perhaps more compliant, and I think this is what Democrats have been warning about for months, that we'd get to this step," Lemire added.
"Will there be follow-through? We'll see in the days ahead, but this is, as one senior Democrat put to me over the weekend, this is a five-alarm fire."
Last night at THE NEW REPUBLIC, Kate Riga and John Light wrote:
Former Trump defense attorney Lindsey Halligan was reportedly sworn in as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Monday after the president forced out her predecessor for failing to turn up wrongdoing with which to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and other public figures he considers his enemies.
Erik Siebert, the previous acting U.S. attorney, resigned Friday after Trump told reporters he wanted him gone.
Halligan has no prosecutorial experience. Most recently, she worked in the White House staff secretary’s office, reportedly tasked with censoring the Smithsonian museums. Previously, per ABC, she handled insurance claims related to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
Trump announced that he’d be appointing her Friday via social media. That post came shortly after one that was styled as (and possibly intended to be) a direct message to AG Pam Bondi, where Trump reamed her out for not pursuing his political enemies (including James) aggressively enough.
The president of the United States is not supposed to misuse the government. He or she is not allowed to, for example, ask the IRS to audit his political enemies. Nixon tried all of that. Those were high crimes and misdemeanors. People were put on enemies lists and harassed at the borders -- US citizens harassed as they came back into the country.
Because Nixon was a crook and not an idiot, he knew to keep it hidden. Chump's a fool suffering from dementia and he is putting it out there for all to see, he is making his own case publicly for why Congress should move to impeach him.
The mid-terms are important because Democrats stand a good chance of regaining one house of Congress, maybe both.
But the mid-terms are important for another reason.
After the mid-terms focus turns to the next presidential election.
Someone who cannot run again -- like Chump -- becomes a lame duck.
There will be less need for Republicans who remain in Congress after the mid-terms to continue their slovenly support of Chump. They'll need to focus on the candidates on their side who want to become the next president.
To do that, a GOP candidate wanting to win the primaries is going to have to distinguish him or her self from Chump. Following the mid-terms, Americans are not going to want to hear JD Vance promising that he will continue Chump's failed policies that have increased prices, his failed policies that have destroyed healthcare, his failed policies that have destroyed education, his failed policies that have . . .
They will have to draw a line between themselves and the current president. They will have to run against 'the establishment.'
That's a reason Chump should fear the mid-terms. Even the feckless will stand up to him after the mid-terms -- or come as close to standing up as they are physically possible.
An e-mail from [unnamed publication] wants to know how to get something noted. Oh, I have to name them sorry. THE NATION magazine. I still have a few friends at the rag. After the way they lied and worked to defeat Kamala -- including the editorial that argued you shouldn't vote for her -- they can go f**k themselves. I've said that to friends there and I've said it here at this site. But let's pretend that it's another outlet. You would e-mail common_ills@yahoo.com and someone would look over it. If they thought it was worthy of note, they'd put it in a folder for me to look at. Sometimes they might put one in that they're unsure of. I'd read and I'd decide.
I was asked to highlight an article at ZNET, garbage written poorly by Bayan Saleh. It's an embarrassment in every way of piece of writing can be and ZNET should honestly pull it.
"Nina Bang: The Marxist Historian Who Opened the Doors of Power to Women" -- sorry Bayan but if, as you write, Nina got her masters in 1894 then there was at least one woman before opening the doors of power or she wouldn't have been able to get the degree. (Some sources note her highest degree was a doctorate and there year the degree was awarded also differs from source to source.)
In Bayan's badly written 3rd grade summary, she offers:
Selected Works
Karl Marx: His Life and Work (1918)
What does that say? "Works"? That's plural. Change it to "Selected Work" or note the other book she was an author of (the two-volume) TABLES OF SHIPPING AND GOODS (she also translated another author's book on Karl Marx).
Then you have this:
Although committed to women’s issues, she did not position herself within a liberal feminist discourse. Instead, she considered women’s liberation inseparable from the liberation of society as a whole from economic and political constraints. She rejected a form of feminism that isolated gender struggle from class struggle, believing that such an approach stripped the movement of its revolutionary substance.
No, she wasn't a feminist, she pretty much rejected feminism itself as ENCYCLOPEDIA.COM notes, "Although Bang was one of the first established female political activists, she was not an active feminist; she considered women's social and legal issues part of general political issues and part of the general battle for democratic progress.
"She was among the first women historians to break men’s monopoly over academic history writing."
Really?
She was born in 1866. The first known female historian is usually said to be Anna Comnena who wrote THE ALEXIAD and who was born in 1083. Others who predate Bang include Matilda Josyln Gage, Henrica van Erp, Johanna Naber, Harriet Martineiu, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Wollstonecraft, Luise Gerbing, Mary Bonaventure Browne and, as a feminist, I'm smart enough to know that for every one woman historian I'm aware of there are probably 100 more who are either erased in history or misclassified as something else (Anna Julia Cooper's first book -- a collection of speeches and essays A VOICE FROM THE SOUTH BY A BLACK WOMAN OF THE SOUTH is not considered a history book by some but a book by a black woman forced into slavery and published 27 years after the end of The Civil War about the life she observed is history)l
I don't have much tolerance for nonsense. A lot of stuff that gets submitted via e-mail qualifies as nonsense.
Let's trudge through these three paragraphs from the bad ZNET column:
In 1895, she married Gustav Bang, a historian and prominent politician of the Social Democratic Party. For Nina, marriage was not a traditional framework of male authority but a partnership built on intellectual equality and a shared political project.
Together, they formed a rare Marxist-socialist duo, jointly analyzing the social and political realities of their time and contributing to the development of a radical critical vision for the future of Denmark and the world.
They had no children, but their relationship extended beyond private life into the public sphere, as their home became both an intellectual salon and a hub of political activity. Gustav’s death in 1915 was a personal shock to Nina, but it transformed into a renewed commitment, as though grief became a driving force for her continued defense of the working class and marginalized groups.
They had no children?
That must have come as a surprise to Merete Hansen. Who? Gustav Ban and Nina Bang's daughter Merete Bang Hasen.
I can do this with at least 21 more examples of a piece that should have never been published. As an Iraqi woman who escaped to Denmark, is the author compelled to make up lies? She wasn't the first feminist (she' wasn't a feminist) in Denmark, she wasn't the first to blaze a trail. I have no idea why an Iraqi woman would be so fascinated with this woman and bend over backwards in order to make her appear to be a feminist, a first and so much more. But that's how you can get rejected and ignored by me: Write poorly and make one factual error after another. It's a shame that despite Iraq's rich history of feminism -- and lengthy history -- Bayen Saleh writes such an embarrassing article
Let's wind down with Senator Adam Schiff:
Schiff on Homan: “Who takes 50,000 in cash in a bag, if they’re doing something legitimate?”
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined MSNBC’s Alex Witt Reports to discuss Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ) against his political opponents and the administration’s hypocrisy on DOJ investigations in the wake of a bombshell report detailing the closing of a bribery probe into White House Border Czar Tom Homan.
Schiff slammed Trump for pressuring the Attorney General to bring baseless cases against his critics – including himself, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James – and for filling DOJ and FBI leadership with loyalists who have undermined serious investigations while dismissing corruption among Trump’s allies. Schiff also slammed FBI Director Kash Patel for his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Epstein case and the firing of senior FBI agents who investigated Trump.
View the full interview here.
Key Excerpts:
On Trump pushing Attorney General Bondi to pursue baseless charges:
He made it very clear that he was firing the U.S. Attorney of Virginia for not bringing a meritless mortgage fraud case against Letitia James, and he’s basically out in the opening pressuring his Attorney General, sending a message to other U.S. attorneys out there that if they don’t do his will, they don’t do his bidding and bring meritless cases against his enemies, they could be fired. And this is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Nixon had his enemies list, but it wasn’t so exhaustive and blatant as this, where he was ordering, in front of the whole country, the Justice Department to go after his enemies. In my case, for impeaching him, leading his first impeachment, for serving on the January 6 Committee. And what he wants to try to do is not just go after me and Letitia James or Lisa Cook, but rather send a message that anyone who stands up to him on anything, anyone who has the audacity to call out his corruption will be a target, and they will go after you. It’s an effort to try to silence and intimidate people, but I refuse to be silenced or intimidated.
On weaponization of the Justice Department:
I served for almost six years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I venerated my experience in that department, all the hard-working men and women who are doing, I think really, really important work on serious cases. But this just casts a shadow over all of it. We’ve seen top leadership at the department devastated. We’ve seen three top people, Trump criminal defense lawyers, appointed to the top positions of the Justice Department. They’re running things. When you see, for example, Todd Blanche personally intervene in the Epstein case, someone Blanche who acknowledged that he has a continuing duty to his client as Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, then it’s the interest of the American people that suffer. You’re seeing the same devastation at the FBI, where senior FBI agents are being fired or pushed out, so the nonpartisan leadership at the top is being pushed out. It’s gone. And instead, you have this now fully weaponized department to go after the president’s enemies. And in the case of Tom Homan, to run interference against investigations that are a serious and warrant investigation. So, you have both the dismissal of charges against the president’s allies like Eric Adams, the dismissal of investigations against Tom Homan and pressure to bring meritless investigations against the president’s enemies.
On the investigation into Tom Homan:
These people should have never been confirmed for these positions. And there’s only a limit to what Democrats can do, given that we don’t have the votes in the Senate to defeat them. We need some Republicans of good conscience to turn down the arcade juniors that are going to endanger the public health of the people exists. They’re going to endanger the national security and to call for the resignation of people like Tom Homan. I mean, how can you have a top if. Enforcement official, the border czar, like Tom Homan, who took $50,000 from undercover agents in a bag, in a bag with the apparently, reportedly the promise of helping deliver federal contracts when he was going to take a position in the Trump administration. How can you have that person in leadership? He should be gone. And I hope my Republican colleagues will join me and others in demanding that the videotape of him taking the bag, literally holding the bag, be shown to the public. We also, I think, got to hear the audio conversations of him making those promises in a change for that 50,000 in cold cash. I mean, who does that? Who takes 50,000 in cash in a bag, if they’re doing something legitimate?
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And also from Senator Schiff's office, let's note this on the same topic:
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement in response to reports that the Trump administration intervened to close an investigation into former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and current White House Border Czar, Tom Homan, despite evidence of Homan collecting bribes in exchange for facilitating future government contracts.
The investigation reportedly included video of Homan accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents last fall.
“Nothing demonstrates the Trump administration’s culture of corruption like closing an ongoing investigation into one of the President’s close associates despite clear evidence of a conspiracy to commit bribery captured on camera.
“The Justice Department, FBI, and White House must be held to account. Congress must demand that the administration immediately preserve all evidence related to this investigation and immediately release the video of Homan. The public should be able to watch the conduct of a high-ranking law enforcement official for itself.
“From this report, it appears that the investigation into Homan was known to Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other key administration officials, including then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. It is critical that we understand who knew about this probe, who specifically ordered its end and under what circumstances, and whether it influenced the Trump Administration’s decision to place Homan in a position that avoided Senate confirmation and accountability to Congress.
“The American people also deserve a clear accounting of Homan’s influence on federal contracting decisions. Homan has repeatedly touted this administration’s aggressive plans for expanding immigrant detention centers, including for families with young children. If he was willing to accept at least $50,000 from an undercover FBI agent, any contracts that Homan approved or advocated for must be scrutinized by independent watchdogs and Congress.”
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The following sites updated:
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Break Day2 hours ago
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This Greenland Is Red3 hours ago
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The Crooked Court10 hours ago
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The continued attacks on trans people10 hours ago
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Some good news10 hours ago
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Carlos Vives: Tiny Desk Concert11 hours ago
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America First14 hours ago
