... I can’t stress this point enough: You can’t tell what you don’t know. This isn’t an accusation. It’s formal logic. So even if we accept the idea that Trump played a role in Epstein’s downfall, it’s not exonerating. It shows what we’ve long suspected: that Trump had known about Epstein’s operation for years and was fine with it. (That’s assuming for the moment he wasn’t a direct participant — it’s the weekend, I’m being generous.) He only made a call when Epstein was threatening to expose a money laundering scheme.
Wolff said this a few weeks ago, apparently on the basis of recorded interviews from 2018 and 2019. But last night I saw a few articles from that period that strongly hinted at something like this. So I suspect reporters had heard something about this but couldn’t quite nail it down. In other words, I think this has been known as a rumor at least for some time.
So why did Johnson say this?
It’s conceivable, I guess, that he was just riffing and that there’s nothing to it. But that’s a helluva riff. I don’t think you’re just spitballing and land on the idea that the president of the United States was a confidential source who had inside knowledge and started the Epstein investigation. My best guess is that Johnson said this because Epstein was right and Trump did rat him out to the authorities. But as we said, this is not a good story for Trump, so why say it? Again, the best explanation is that it’s in those files the DOJ is sitting on. The White House fears it’s going to come out and so they’re putting the best spin on it they can. Trump was a real life Bruce Wayne type richie, wheeling and dealing by day, helping the authorities take down bad guys in the shadows. With Trump’s most ardent supporters, they might get some traction with that. But again, as noted above, it’s actually super damning. Yeah I knew he was a big time pedophile and we were big pals and partied together all the time and I was fine with it. But then he tried to expose my money laundering scheme so I called my friends at the FBI. I don’t think that’s a great story... (our emphasis)
It's actually a terrible story. But they're trapped in a web of lies, hoping that the conspiracy- addled brains of their most loyal cultists will believe any fantasy they're told. The good news is, a majority of Americans won't, including some not- insignificant segment of those cultists. And somehow, by some hook or crook, by some means, those Epstein files will seep out, with the Malignant Fascist all over them.
White House border czar Tom Homan warned that people funding First Amendment protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "would be prosecuted."
During a Sunday morning interview on Fox News, Homan told host Jason Chaffetz that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had a "historic number of prosecutions" against protesters for "impediment, assault, interference."
"So those protesters that we do see, I mean, some of it might be organic, but does strike me, it seems like a lot of them are being bused in," the Fox News host argued. "You see them at the end of these protests, actually getting back on buses."
"Are these protesters, the bulk of them, are they actually being financed from the outside?" he wondered. "And is that something that Homeland's looking at? Is the financing of how all these so-called organic protests are happening?"
"Absolutely," Homan admitted. "We know a lot of these protesters are being paid. Many have omitted to it. So, yes, there's a whole effort right now in identifying those who are funding these operations, those who fund the weapons that are being used."
"So, yeah, and they'll be held accountable too and held to the highest standards of the law," he added. "They will be prosecuted, too."
It is not illegal to fund constitutionally-protected free speech in the U.S. (our emphasis)
This cretinous thug "Not Human" Homan would be one of the first of the Malignant Fascist's Obergruppenführers to be thrown in irons if we had any say about it. A lot of those arrests the pig man boasts about have been thrown out of court or have had grand juries refuse to go forward with a prosecution -- that's how far out of the American mainstream these foul fascists are (but you already knew that!).
The Federal Trade Commission has abandoned the historic prohibition on noncompete agreements it proposed just a year and a half ago, the result of President Donald Trump’s change in leadership at the antitrust regulator.
The agency said Friday that it was voluntarily dropping its appeals in court cases where employers had challenged the legality of the noncompete ban finalized under former President Joe Biden. While the rule had been temporarily blocked due to the litigation, the agency’s withdrawal of support means it is now effectively dead.
Noncompete clauses forbid workers from taking jobs at competing firms for a certain amount of time after leaving an employer. Critics say the agreements keep wages down and stifle innovation by locking workers into their jobs, preventing them from starting their own businesses or taking their talents to the highest bidder.
The ban on noncompetes was one of the hallmark progressive reforms of the Biden era, championed by former FTC chair Lina Khan, who said outlawing the agreements was about restoring workers’ liberty in the labor market. Khan stepped down as FTC chair upon Trump’s inauguration.
Trump named Andrew Ferguson, who’d opposed the noncompete ban, to be the commission’s new chair, and tried to fire two Democratic commissioners before their terms were up. One of those Democrats, Alvaro Bedoya, resigned, while the other, Rebecca Slaughter, remains on the commission while she challenges Trump’s firing as illegal.
The commission said Friday it had voted 3-1 in favor of abandoning the noncompete rule, with Slaughter, now the lone Democrat, dissenting. [snip]
Not only would the rule nullify some 30 million noncompete contracts, Ferguson said, it would redistribute “nearly a half trillion dollars of wealth within the general economy.”
That, indeed, was an aim of the rule, since the Democratic commissioners had argued employers were illegally suppressing workers’ wages through an anticompetitive practice... (our emphasis)
Though this is an issue that mostly impacts white collar workers, it's emblematic of the anti- worker pro- management corporate fascism that's at the core of the Trump agenda. It's another case of radically tipping the scales against the freedom of workers to move freely in the marketplace.
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