The good:
Rep. James Clyburn (D) of South Carolina said today on Meet the Press
that he supports adding 4 new Justices to the Supreme Court. This would
bring the total to 13. That is a common number people have focused on
since there are 13 judicial circuits. In the distant past, the two
numbers were kept in line. “13 is a pretty good number,” said Clyburn.
“A baker’s dozen would be a good number to have on the Court.” This is a
big deal. The particular number doesn’t really matter. I see adding 4
to get to 13 as sort of the minimum acceptable goal. But the point here
is rapidly (in time for 2029) establishing Court expansion and reform
more broadly as the consensus Democratic position. We don’t know if
Democrats will get a trifecta in 2028. But it’s the first plausible
opportunity to expand the Court. [snip]
The inertial forces against reform are massive. Even among many
elected Democrats who are pretty good on other issues, it’s often a very
heavy lift. It’s only very recently that Court reform has ever moved
into the realm of conceivable for most of them. Change, building that
consensus can only happen as a bottom-up process, making it clear that
accepting the perpetuation of the Corrupt Court as it exists today is an
unacceptable position for a Democrat, certainly at the federal level.
As a bottom-up process, it can only be a public process. You’ll
only know someone is on board when they say it publicly and clearly.
Even then you can’t be totally sure. But once a politician has committed
publicly, it’s much harder to shift. And when you’ve got the great
majority publicly committing, the pressure heightens on those who remain
opposed or silent in inverse proportion to their declining numbers. The
same applies to abolishing the filibuster and a lot else.
As far as I know, Clyburn is the first Democrat in leadership in
either House to announce for Court expansion, and one of the relative
few generally. Jeffries has signaled general support or openness to
reform in recent months. And that’s important too. But it only becomes
hard and real when the details are attached. (our emphasis)
It's imperative that Democrats make every effort to expand the Republicans-in-robes Supreme Court, which long ago ceased to be a court of justice. You can't be a leader of the Democratic Party and not support this basic reform. Ideally a broader reform of the Federal judicial system would take place simultaneously to end the dilatory tactics used by the Malignant Fascist and deep-pocketed corporations to deny justice, among other reforms.
The bad:
The
Trump administration is shuttering two of the three U.S. Department of
Agriculture research projects studying cyclospora, a foodborne parasite
that has sickened thousands of Americans this summer, Politico reported on Sunday.
The
two projects were defunded by [the Republican] Congress earlier this year, while the
third is due to be moved in coming months from Maryland to Iowa as part
of a broader USDA reorganization, according to the report.
Although
the third project remains funded, all scientists working on the
parasite have declined to relocate to Iowa, Politico reported, citing
people familiar with the plans and internal documents.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
"None
of the research has been disrupted, and research will continue without
disruption," a USDA spokesperson said, while pointing to [the Republican] Congress over
the funding cuts.
[The Republican] Congress
did not appropriate funding for the two research projects that were
being undertaken at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside
Washington for the 2026 fiscal year in the Agriculture Appropriations
Act, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement, adding that the
Agricultural Research Service is working with research leaders to ensure
an orderly transition of the programs.
Scientists
researching foodborne parasites, including cyclospora, are retiring
or leaving the USDA's ARS rather than relocating or being reassigned to
other projects, the report said.
Reuters reported
earlier this week that the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention had recorded more than 17,000 confirmed cyclosporiasis cases
across 48 states plus the District of Columbia, making it one of the
largest foodborne illness outbreaks in recent U.S. history.
At least 11,844 additional cases may require further investigation and analysis, the CDC said.
Had to help Reuters out there identifying the
Republican Congress that's helping the Malignant Fascist and his anti-public health sociopaths undermine scientists doing research on foodborne parasites! We and others have used the term "
E.coli conservatives" (h/t
Rick Perlstein) to describe these anti-government, anti-regulation
laissez-faire fascists. They've been a part of Republican politics for decades, and they are at the heart of the MF's regime, making America sick again.
The ugly:
A lawsuit filed this month
alleges that there’s a simple reason some stations in the Freedom Fuel
Network — the chain of discount gas stations promoted by the White House
— have been able to sell gas so cheaply: Some $4 million worth of the
gas is stolen.
KRSM, the business named in the suit, denies this accusation.
Freedom
Fuel stations located around Philadelphia and New Jersey burst into
public view in the run-up to the July Fourth holiday, when President Donald Trump posted praise
for their discounted pump prices, writing “They are doing this because
they love the U.S.A.” The White House later posted a video of drivers
filling up at one of the stations and thanking Trump for the low prices — at the time, $3.47 a gallon in honor of the 47th president, though they’ve since crept up.
Neither
the White House nor the network’s owners would explain exactly how the
stations were able to sell fuel far cheaper than their competitors. The
White House told reporters that Freedom Fuel was simply a private
company lowering its margins for patriotic reasons and declined to
disclose the people behind it — who turned out to be a former New Jersey mayor and NFL special teams coach for the Baltimore Ravens, a GOP donor.
POLITICO’s reporting also linked six of the stations via business records to a New Jersey fuel businessperson named Shamikh Kazmi who, along with his brother Syed Kazmi,
have been involved in several lawsuits. The Freedom Fuel Network’s
website said that despite “misinformation and baseless speculation …
Freedom Fuel Network is proudly lowering prices to benefit our community
and strengthen our local economy.”
But
according to a complaint filed Aug. 19 by Georgia-based fuel supplier
Mansfield Oil Co. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania, Syed Kazmi’s company KRSM acquired over 1 million gallons
of fuel from a Sunoco terminal in Twin Oaks valued at around $4 million
— and never paid for it. KRSM sold some of the fuel, the lawsuit
alleges, to stations within the Freedom Fuel Network, which now claims
to operate 29 locations.
“KRSM
was able to sell such fuel for such low prices and garner such
publicity because it never paid Plaintiffs for such fuel,” reads the
complaint. [snip]
Companies
associated with the Kazmis have previously been subject to other
lawsuits alleging fraudulent activity and theft. For instance, a federal
judge entered judgment in February in favor of a fuel distributor that
alleged in a civil lawsuit that Shamikh Kazmi’s company had taken
roughly $667,000 worth of fuel over 10 days in August 2021 without fully
paying for it. Shamikh Kazmi denied the allegations, but the court
entered a default judgment after what the judge described as the
defendants and their lawyers’ “serial flouting of Court orders and the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure” during the case.
In another suit, 7-Eleven accused Syed Kazmi’s
KRSM in 2022 of stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of
cigarettes, and the judge again found in favor of the plaintiff in 2024.
KRSM disputed 7-Eleven’s allegations of breach of contract, claiming
7-Eleven was the one that breached the contract... (our emphasis)
Of course they'd be aligned with the fraudster-in-chief, the deadbeat who always tried to stiff his contractors (watch out Golden Ballroom guys!)! Game recognizes game, and all that. It's every crook for himself in this Most. Corrupt. Regime. Ever.
