SINCERETALK

A leading voting machine manufacturer recently unveiled multiple threats made against its employees as part of its ongoing defamation lawsuit against Fox News. The Washington Post reported Wednesday on the latest federal court filing by Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages from the leading conservative cable news network. Smartmatic alleged that the company's false claims about its machines being rigged in favor of former President Joe Biden caused significant harm to the company's finances and reputation, and resulted in the company having to lay off hundreds of employees. In its most recent filing, Smartmatic alleged that the company made a choice to "lean into election fraud claims they personally believed were baseless" in response to backlash from its audience after it preemptively put Arizona in Biden's win column before any other major networks. That backlash included President Donald Trump instructing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to ...

CNN Anchor Jake Tapper showed surprise at the hostility Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) had against children’s television today. “The American people are sick of funding institutions who promote values that they find repugnant, and that's what we're doing with NPR and PBS, and that's what we are doing hopefully soon via a rescission bill, We’re going to pull those funds back,” said the Texas representative. “Okay, but Sesame Street? I mean, Daniel the Tiger Wild Kratts,” asked Tapper. “I mean, you have little kids, I know, and I’m sure you and your wife can bring them great educational programing, but a lot of kids might not have access to cable. I didn't when I was little because cable didn't exist. But, I mean, PBS really helps little kids. I'm talking specifically about kids learning how to read through Sesame Street and similar programing.” READ MORE: 'Lock her up!' Trump is determined to arrest democracy — and the women who defend it Gill pointed ...

Talking Points Memo reports President Donald Trump is ‘weak and on the rocks,’ and this is why critical Republican senators are peeling off from the GOP enclave necessary to pass Trump’s controversial reconciliation bill currently roiling the House. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis) announced he won’t be supporting the reconciliation bill devised by House Republicans because the senator demands a minimum $5 trillion in budget cuts to make the bill debt neutral. The House Freedom Caucus, arguably the most cut-happy of Republicans scouring the budget for elimination, is demanding only between $1.5 or $2 trillion in cuts, indicating how far away they are from pleasing Johnson. “This is part of what we mean when we say that public opinion matters,” writes TPM reporter Josh Marshall. “If Trump were at 55% support or even 50% there is zero chance Johnson would be doing this. But they see him as currently weak and on the rocks. So, someone like Johnson is happy to say, ‘You’re weak, so I’ll come...

On April 28, the president issued an executive order titled “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens.” The order on its face is a screed against so-called sanctuary cities. It directs the attorney general to compile a list of sanctuary jurisdictions around the U.S. and, among other things, threatens to withhold federal funding from them. To me, an attorney in a city with a long, proud history of welcoming and protecting people from all over the world, the executive order reads like a temper tantrum. There isn’t a universal definition for a sanctuary city. The term refers to a non-federal jurisdiction — it could be a state, a county, or a city or town — that has laws in place that limit its government’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Communities choose these policies for a variety of reasons: to build trust and cooperation between officials and non-citizens; to maintain discretion of how to allocate limited law enforcement resources for public safety;...

A prominent economist is challenging U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s claims about the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariff war on Americans’ ability to access goods in stores and online. Bessent, a hedge fund manager and Trump donor and fundraiser, was asked on Monday if he’s worried about the possibility of empty shelves. “Not at present,” Bessent told Fox News. “We have some great retailers. I assume they preordered.” Appearing to mock Bessent, Wolfers paraphrased the Treasury Secretary: “If I hurt the American consumer enough, we’ll see how quickly the Chinese want to deescalate.” READ MORE: ‘Great Jobs of the Future’ Are Generations of Family Factory Work Says Commerce Secretary “Well,” Wolfers continued, “I’m not sure which side’s meant to be looking out for us right now,” he told MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “Bessent might be right to say that shelves aren’t going to be empty,” Wolfers explained, “but the reason that would be is, if we have less stuff coming into the c...

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) told Deadline: White House anchor Alicia Menendez that Democrats have nothing but “F” grades for President Donald Trump, even as their own poll numbers continue to sink. “There's some new polling from ABC News finding that 69% of Americans say the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of most people in the country. Sixty percent say the same of Trump, 64% the same of the Republican party. I wonder, as Democrats, what do you do to counter those numbers?” Menendez asked Kelly. But the Arizona Senator believed the answer came down to messaging. READ MORE: Busted: MSNBC fact-checker corrects Karoline Leavitt's critical error “I think we've got to come up with a message that resonates better with the American people. We tend to … talk a lot about a lot of different issues, but when it comes down to it … you’ve got to be focused on the things that people really care about, and that's the price of groceries and gas and housing and h...

The internal drama roiling Virginia Republicans deepened over the weekend as John Reid, the party’s embattled nominee for lieutenant governor, accused Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s political action committee of extortion — escalating an already explosive rift just months before November’s elections. In a defiant video posted Sunday afternoon on X, formerly Twitter, Reid alleged that a representative of Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC told his team the organization would purchase damaging opposition research and “the lies and threats against me would suddenly stop” if he agreed to drop out of the race. The allegations come just 48 hours after it became public that Youngkin had personally asked Reid to withdraw over concerns about a social media account linked to explicit content. Reid, a conservative radio host and the first openly gay statewide candidate from either party in Virginia, said he had hoped the controversy would settle, but instead the pressure had intensified. “I had cer...

Even Karl Rove, a longtime GOP consultant who regularly contributes to Fox News, is struggling to justify President Donald Trump's latest policies. During a segment on Fox News' weekend show "Journal Editorial Report," Rove referenced a recent Fox News survey indicating that the president was facing significant disapproval from voters on almost all issues. He particularly highlighted the president's difficulties regarding economic concerns. He said the president is in "bad shape" due to the economic chaos caused by a sweeping set of global tariffs he imposed recently. ALSO READ: 'Hurting American businesses': Trump’s 'tariff agenda' could cause 'painful rupture' among Republicans "When it comes to the economy, he is in very bad shape," Rove said. "Even if he gets his way on certain things like tariffs, that he’s not good in the long run.... There’s some very deep-seated skepticism among ordinary Americans a...

In a Daily Take here on Hartmann Report , I mentioned Russell Kirk and the origins of today’s hard right GOP. A few people replied with, “Who’s that?” and similar questions; others were incredulous that Republicans actually believed the middle class created by FDR’s New Deal was a bad thing. So, here’s the backstory to what I mentioned. I was thirteen years old in 1964 when my dad, a Republican activist, gave me a copy of John Stormer’s book “ None Dare Call It Treason .” The Goldwater campaign had sent it to him, and its claim that the State Department was filled with communists intent on handing America over to the USSR had his friends buzzing. Ironically, Stormer’s book and the movement it ignited within the GOP is largely responsible for that party today standing on the precipice of fully endorsing fascism as an alternative to democracy in the US. And it was started by morbidly rich men (it was all men back then) who wanted to use the threat of a “communist menace” to gut th...

A few words about trust in the government, and I don’t mean the usual words about it. Usually, we mean “conservatives” don’t trust. No matter how well and fairly the government actually performs, they still don’t, and they still don’t, because trust is a red herring. What they don’t really trust is a government out of their control that works for everyone, equally. We don’t need to talk about that anymore. What we need to talk about is the people who normally trust the government, meaning liberals. And we need to talk about the fact that, unlike “conservatives” who distrust the government for phony reasons, liberals have real reasons. The Trump regime is actively trying to hurt the American people. To give you just one example, the FDA announced this week that it would stop requiring drugmakers to use animal testing and instead permit artificial intelligence. I don’t know about you, but I do not want a robot to tell me whether a drug is going to hurt, maim or kill me. I want a hu...

The former MP faces a hefty legal bill but says the NPA should release his properties whose sale could help him raise money to defend himself in court. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/yevxPYS via sinceretalk

Despite the verbal and court battles that this year's budget has provoked, the ANC and the DA agreed on Friday to set up better mechanisms to handle disputes. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/WuNcies via sinceretalk

The father of eight, a teacher and devout Catholic, was bludgeoned to death in February 1990 for refusing to contribute funds for a witch-hunt in the village. from News24 News24/TopStories/rss https://ift.tt/rqztX4P via sinceretalk

One of the top medical journals in the world is now directly condemning President Donald Trump's administration over its continued attacks on the scientific community. In a recent editorial , the Lancet — a highly regarded, peer-reviewed medical journal based in the United Kingdom — tore into the Trump administration over its threatening letters sent to editors of various journals and scientific publications. The Lancet specifically derided a letter that the CHEST medical journal (for medical professionals in the pulmonary field) got earlier this month from Ed Martin, who Trump appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia following his prior career as a Republican activist. "This is an obvious ruse to strike fear into journals and impinge on their right to independent editorial oversight," the editorial read. " The Lancet stands with CHEST and the other medical journals that are being intimidated by the Trump administration." READ ...

Collective bargaining rights for employees at several government agencies is protected, for now. United States District Judge Paul Friedman — an appointee of former President Bill Clinton — issued a two-page order temporarily blocking the Trump administration’s executive order rescinding collective bargaining rights for government union members. The order covers employees at the departments of Justice, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management and other agencies. “Section 2 of the Executive Order, Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs … is unlawful as applied to the defendants who are heads of agencies with employees represented by the plaintiff,” Friedman wrote, while also declaring the anti-union Office of Personnel Management’s Guidance on Executive Order Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Programs unlawfully applied. READ MORE: 'Disgusting': Republicans panic after senator promises to impeach Trump aft...

NOTUS reports The Federal Election Commission (FEC), which enforces campaign finance laws, will lose its power next week when Republican Commissioner Allen Dickerson resigns on April 30. This will leave the six-member FEC without the necessary four-person quorum to legally conduct campaign finance investigations. Trump removed FEC Chairperson Ellen Weintraub , a Democrat, in February despite objections, and Republican FEC Commissioner Sean Cooksey resigned at the end of January. Trump has yet to nominate a replacement. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which vets FEC nominees, said the agency is “losing much of its ability to enforce … rules on transparency and money in politics.” READ MORE: The 'beginning of the end' of the GOP: Mike Johnson is headed for trouble “There is no question that President Trump is dead set on using his time in office to advance his personal interests and those of his billi...

The Daily Beast reports Fox News may be turning against President Donald Trump’s plan to pay new mothers a $5,000 bonus. A Fox Business panel dragged the idea both for its ineffectiveness and for its similarity to “liberal” ideas from Democratic administrations. “This feels like a Biden-Kamala-era stimmy to get people to do what you want them to do,” said co-host Jackie DeAngelis. READ MORE: 'Needs to be stopped': 'Embarrassed' Trump voter explains why supporters have gone silent Vice President JD Vance announced earlier this year that he wanted "more babies in the United States of America." He called on the federal government to incentivize pregnancy and help families afford children. "I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them. And it is the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids, to bring...

The Trump administration reportedly has plans to scrape your private medical data from sources like your doctor, your pharmacy, your insurance company, the lab that processes your bloodwork, your smartwatch, and your fitness apps—to create a “registry” of people with autism. “The National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new effort to study autism,” CBS News reported. “The new data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy’s autism studies to study ‘comprehensive’ patient data with ‘broad coverage’ of the U.S. population for the first time, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said.” CBS also adds that “a new disease registry is being launched to track Americans with autism, which will be integrated into the data. Advocacy groups and experts have called out Kennedy for describing autism as a ‘preventable disease,’ which they say ...

President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs are putting many California businesses, jobs and the state budget at risk. They’re affecting not only long-term relationships with trading partners, but an intricate web of ecosystems and supply chains. This story was originally published by CalMatters . Sign up for their newsletters. The California business owners and groups grappling with the tariffs — wine shop owners, winery founders, farmers — say the precise effects on their industries are unclear so far. They hope there will be an upside. But for those who have a broad view of trade, things look grim. The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, the busiest ports in North America, both saw first-quarter increases in imports, but declines in exports, year over year. Gene Seroka, executive director for the Port of Los Angeles, attributed the higher volume of cargo being moved to “front-loading as a hedge against tariffs” during a recent media briefing. But he sai...