SINCERETALK

Count Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) among the sparse but growing crew of Republicans with the courage to criticize President Donald Trump as he crushes the GOP. Bacon is also among the ranks of Republicans retiring this year , so he finds his courage “on the way out the door” as some critics have accused. Nevertheless, from the safety of his retirement, Bacon is lobbing major pushback against Trump’s controversial slush fund settlement proposal on CNN. “This whole thing smells,” Bacon told CNN. “You have the president is the is the plaintiff, but he's also in charge of the defendants. So he's, in a sense, negotiating with himself. And most people look at that. And that's not impartial. It surely looks partial. So there has to be some kind of arbitrator or some kind of like a judge or something that helps provide an impartial decision on who would get this money.” The announcement of the fund’s creation prompted condemnation among both Democrats and Republicans. On Thursday, Tru...

President Donald Trump is making mistakes as president that, according to his former Homeland Security Chief of Staff, will cost Americans their lives. Miles Taylor, who served during Trump’s first term, told MS NOW on Wednesday that the $1.776 billion slush fund that Trump created for his political supporters and possibly himself is more expensive than the government spends on important national security projects. "It's probably the biggest heist in American history of any kind, of any sort, that tells you a lot about the United States Congress,” Taylor said during an MS NOW appearance on Wednesday. “The Congress that spent most of its legislative time this week talking about the ballroom, trying to get ballroom funds passed instead of inflation and wars, or this heist." Taylor also denounced Trump’s gutting of America’s scientific infrastructure, particularly when it comes to fighting pandemics. “There are record numbers of measles cases in our country right now,” Tay...

President Donald Trump has recently had a series of successes campaigning against Republicans who displease him, with a majority going down to defeat in their primaries. Yet one Republican pollster argues that Trump, while winning these primary battles, may be losing the larger political war in the process. “We all have to say enough,” Republican-leaning pollster Frank Luntz told CNN anchor Boris Sanchez on Wednesday. “You should not be destroyed because you decide to enter politics. People need to be held accountable for what they do or don't do, for what they say or don't say. And I think that we're just pulling ourselves apart. I know I sound like a broken record because I've mentioned this before on your show, but it's all bad. It's all problematic, and it's not okay if the Republicans do it. It's not okay if the Democrats do it. We need to call an end to this.” While acknowledging that ‘politics is a tough business,” Luntz argued that it is un-demo...

President Donald Trump just walked back one of his most controversial immigration proposals — although he is not backing down altogether. Trump is no longer going to sign executive orders directing financial institutions to check customers for proof of citizenship, according to a report from Semafor . Wall Street and other major financial institutions opposed the proposal on the grounds that it would cost them money and be inefficient. Instead Trump’s new executive orders will require Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to guide financial institutions on ways to detect undocumented immigrants who ask for loans and open accounts. Bessent and other federal regulators will also need to change the Bank Secrecy Act to strengthen customer-due-diligence requirements and make it easier for financial institutions to acquire more information about customers’ backgrounds. Additionally, Trump will ask the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to consider modifying rules that clarify deportatio...

In the absence of fundamental change, especially among Democratic leaders, I can't say I have a lot of hope these days. That's in spite of all the polling showing that Donald Trump is the most unpopular president ever. He was unpopular the first time. That he's unpopular the second time should not be surprising. What is surprising is he was elected again despite being unpopular. More surprising is we keep believing unpopularity will doom him. Don't get me wrong. It could be that Trump's policies burn up so much of the American electorate that voters storm the polls in November to put Democrats back in charge of the Congress. But what if they storm the polls and nothing changes? Not because Democratic leaders are squishes, though that's true enough, but because John Robert's US Supreme Court, and now state courts, legalized cheating. We all believe in our bones that you win when you're popular, lose when you're not. But white-power gerrymandering...

Four crew involved in a mid-air collision of military jets at an airshow ejected safely outside ‌Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, the US Navy said. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/DW2CXgG via sinceretalk