dThe news on Tuesday brought disturbing disclosures and developments that highlight the depth of corruption and depravity of the Trump administration and its supporters in Congress. But before turning to those stories, it is worth noting that there are signs of life among Democrats in the Senate and statehouses.
On Monday, I wrote about the frustration of grassroots activists with our Democratic leaders. See, “Concluding Thoughts in ‘Trump announces new 15% sales tax on US consumers.” The widespread frustration emanates from the “business as usual” attitude adopted by many Democrats in Congress and state houses. However, on Tuesday, Senator Cory Booker and Governor Gavin Newsom exhibited the passion and urgency that grassroots activists have been demanding from their leaders.
Let’s take a look.
On Tuesday, the Senate advanced a bill that would fund police departments in some states. Notably, Trump crafted the bill to “punish” blue states by denying them funds for local police departments. Among the states excluded from the bill’s grant of local funds are California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut—states that did not vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Those five states account for 25% of the US population but will receive 0.00% of the funds for local policing. See US States - Ranking by Population 2025.
Before Trump, using national legislation to “punish” those states that did not vote for the winning presidential candidate would have been unthinkable. But Trump has so normalized his partisan revenge playbook that Democratic Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) are supporting the bill. Indeed, Senator Cortez Masto moved for “unanimous consent” to send the bill to the floor for a final vote—a show of bipartisan support for a bill that punishes five states that did not vote for Trump in 2024.
That is when Senator Cory Booker rose to say the obvious: Democrats cannot be complicit in Trump’s revenge politics. See The Hill, Sen. Cory Booker blows up at Democrats on Senate floor, and NBC News, Democrats clash over police funding in heated debate on Senate floor.
According to The Hill and NBC News, Senator Booker said,
What I am tired of is when the president of the United States of America violates the Constitution, trashes our norms and traditions, and what does the Democratic Party do? Comply? Allow him? Beg for scraps? No, I demand justice!
It’s time for Democrats have a backbone. It’s time for us to fight. It’s time for us to draw lines.
I say we reject this and, in a bipartisan way, that we demand and end this kind of constitutionally unjust carving up of the resources that we approve.
We are standing at a moment where our president is eviscerating the Constitution of the United States of America, and we’re willing to go along with that today. No, no, not on my watch.
This is a call, folks. This is a wake-up call.
I see law firms bending a knee to this president, not caring about the larger principles [of] free speech rights that [say] you can take on any client. Why are you bending the knee?
I see universities that should be bastions of free speech bending to the knee of this president.
I see businesses taking late-night talk show hosts off the air because they dare to insult a president. I see people who want mergers, suddenly think that they have to pay tribute to this president.
What are the very people here elected to defend the Constitution of the United States saying? Oh, well, today, let’s look the other way and pass some resources that won’t go to Connecticut, that won’t go to Illinois, that won’t go to New York, that will go to the states that [the president] likes.
That is complicity with a totalitarian leader. It is time for us to fight and draw the lines.
Off the floor, Senator Booker told reporters,
There’s a lot of us in this caucus that want to f-----g fight, and what’s bothering me right now is we don’t see enough fight in this caucus.
Senator Cortez Masto defended her cooperation with Trump’s bill, saying,
I agree, withholding funding for law enforcement anywhere in the country, across the country, is just not acceptable. But I also agree that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Senator Cortez Masto’s comment is offensive. First, she notes that the bill’s withholding of funds from some states is “just not acceptable.” But there is nothing “wrong” about opposing legislation that disadvantages Americans in states that voted against Trump. And Senator Cortez Masto created a false equivalency between Senator Booker’s principled stand on behalf of all Americans and Trump’s campaign of revenge against states that did not vote for him.
Senator Klobuchar chided Senator Booker for missing a vote on the bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee because, you know, missing a vote and disadvantaging 25% of Americans are equivalent acts, at least in Senator Klobuchar’s mind.
Senator Booker is right. Every word. He needs to make the same speech every day on the floor of the Senate. And other Senators need to rise beside him. Senate Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Constitution. Cooperating with them in anything is constitutional suicide, especially so in a bill that punishes states that did not vote for Trump.
If you live in Nevada or Minnesota (or California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois or Connecticut), you might want to let Senators Cortez Masto (202-224-3542) and Amy Klobuchar (202-224-3244) know how feel about a bill that threw 25% of Americans under the bus because their state voted against Donald Trump in 2024.
To similar effect are remarks by California Governor Gavin Newsom given during an interview by Brian Tyler Cohen. During the interview, Cohen asked Governor Newsom about the effort by Texas to redraw its congressional districts in advance of the 2026 midterms. Texas Republicans hope that gerrymandering Texas congressional districts ahead of the midterm will generate five more Republican seats in Congress in 2026
Governor Newsom gives a two-minute answer about whether he is committed to trying to counter Texas’s effort with a similar effort in California. His answer is inspirational and speaks broadly to the mindset that Democrats should adopt in response to Republicans’ efforts to cheat in 2026.
I strongly recommend that you watch Newsom’s two-minute answer. (I have cued the YouTube video to the appropriate starting point.) See Brian Tyler Cohen on YouTube, Gavin Newsom hits Trump on Epstein, Texas gerrymander.
I am hopeful that Democratic leaders are beginning to hear our frustrations over their passive approach to a five-alarm emergency for our democracy.
Senate confirms Emil Bove
The Senate confirmed Emil Bove to a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Bove was singularly unfit for the position. In six months in the DOJ, he supported the pardon of January 6 insurrectionists, attempted to craft a corrupt dismissal of charges against NY Mayor Eric Adams, oversaw the illegal deportation of immigrants to the CECOT prison in El Salvador, and allegedly told associates that the DOJ might have to tell district court judges to “go f*** themselves.”
When confronted with evidence from whistleblowers during his confirmation hearings, Bove claimed that he could not recall making the statement, a strong indication that he did make the statement but refused to testify truthfully about it.
Republicans rushed through the confirmation to suppress evidence from whistleblowers. Indeed, on Tuesday we learned that the DOJ “lost” a report from a whistleblower that corroborated Bove’s comments about disregarding rulings by district court judges. See Whistleblower Aid, Whistleblower Evidence on Emil Bove Languishes at the DOJ for Months.
Bove encountered widespread opposition from the legal profession, especially former DOJ attorneys who were horrified by Bove’s politicization of the DOJ during his six months as a senior official in the DOJ. See NYTimes, Senate, Rejecting Whistle-Blower Alarms, Confirms Bove to Appeals Court.
The worst part of Bove’s confirmation is that Democrats could have filled the vacant seat on the Third Circuit in 2023, when they had the votes in the Senate to confirm Adeel Mangi, who would have been the first ever Muslim American to sit on a US court of appeals. But Republicans launched a hateful, false, Islamophobic campaign against Mangi.
Despite the baseless nature of the attacks, several Democrats—including Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto—said they would not support Mangi. President Biden withdrew Mangi’s nomination. See Balls & Strikes, Emil Bove Confirmed: How Senate Democrats’ Cowardice Made It Possible.
The seat then remained vacant as Republicans stalled all Democratic judicial nominations. Senator Chuck Schumer then made a deal for the confirmation of a handful of district court judges in exchange for leaving the seat on the Third Circuit vacant. That seat is now occupied by Emil Bove—thanks in no small part to Senators Cortez Masto and Chuck Schumer!
The sad episode of losing the nomination of a fine candidate like Adeel Mangi to the likes of Emil Bove makes Senator Booker’s point: Democrats cannot accommodate Republicans, ever! We have ample evidence that such misguided efforts at faux bipartisanship will eventually be weaponized against Democrats!
CBS report raises concerns that Pam Bondi lied about videotape of Epstein’s jail cell.
A report by CBS raised the possibility that Attorney General Pam Bondi lied about the surveillance videotape of Jeffrey Epstein’s jail cell that was released to the public. In a written memo and public statements, Bondi claimed that the DOJ released the entire “raw footage” of the surveillance of Epstein’s jail cell on the night he allegedly committed suicide.
The videotape released by the FBI and DOJ contained a one-minute gap (at least), which Bondi claimed was an artifact of the antiquated videotaping system. She said that all tapes of the area surrounding Epstein’s jail cell had a similar short gap each evening.
A blockbuster report by CBS News casts substantial doubt on the truthfulness of Pam Bondi’s statement. See CBS News, There was no “missing minute” in the original Epstein jail video, government source says.
As explained by CBS News,
When the Justice Department and FBI released nearly 11 hours of footage earlier this month, the time code on the screen jumped forward one minute just before midnight, prompting questions about the one-minute gap. The video shows part of the area near the cell where Epstein was being held the night he died in what the medical examiner ruled a suicide.
A government source familiar with the investigation says the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice inspector general are all in possession of a copy of the video that does not cut from just before 11:59 p.m. to midnight on the night Epstein died by suicide in his cell. [¶]
Experts in surveillance video, including video forensic professionals, told CBS News that a nightly reset would have been unusual and was not something they encountered in most video systems.
CBS’s article also explains that although the DOJ represented that it was releasing the “raw” video,
One thing that is clear, forensic experts say, is that the version of the recording released by the FBI was edited and not raw, as the government stated.
In short, the DOJ did not release the raw video as promised and has a copy of the video that does not have a one-minute gap at midnight.
We should not allege cover-ups and conspiracies simply because we do not have all of the relevant facts. But CBS’s story gives rise to a strong inference that Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, the DOJ, and the FBI are lying to the American people.
Our elected officials must not accept half-truths and evasive answers regarding a matter that may implicate the president, especially when it appears that Trump is preparing a pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell. See Talking Points Memo, Don’t Be Surprised When Trump Pardons Ghislaine Maxwell, and Other Epstein News
Trump executive order regarding AI will make responses less accurate and biased.
The US government is quickly becoming one of the largest users of AI. In a series of executive orders, the Trump administration has required that ChatGPT and other AI models conform to the Trump administration’s views regarding DEI. In addition, those executive orders require that energy used to power AI training exclude renewable energy sources. See Public Notice, Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump.
As explained in the Public Notice article,
One of Trump’s orders says that only “dispatchable baseload energy” — that is, anything but wind, solar, and hydro power — can qualify to power data centers on federal land.
The executive order also bans references to “DEI” in AI licensed to the federal government. Because AI creators would prefer to create only one version of an AI model, the government mandates will likely control AI models used by consumers.
Again, as explained by Public Notice,
In order to stamp out “pervasive and destructive” DEI ideology, the order insists that AI models must be free of “incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism.” . . . . [The order] also insists that “LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI.”
We have seen where the prior efforts to avoid “wokeness” have taken AI models. Twitter’s GROG AI model took to calling itself “MechaHitler” within hours of being “tweaked” to avoid “woke” answers. See NPR (7/9/2025), Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, started calling itself ‘MechaHitler’.
While AI models can be helpful in many situations, users should understand that in the near future, it is highly likely that all AI models licensed to the government will be programmed to minimize or i
gnore any facts that suggest non-white Americans have contributed to the success of our country. Trump has ensured that outcome by imposing such criteria on the government version of AI models, which may drive private sector AI models to follow suit.
Concluding Thoughts
The Democratic Party is experiencing growing pains. Institutional inertia is slowly giving way to the passion and urgency of the grassroots movement. Change is hard, especially when people have invested their professional lives in a system that values hierarchy and seniority over innovation and daring. Feelings will be hurt and territorial boundaries will be crossed.
So be it. We have no choice. We are facing an emergency in an asymmetrical battle for the future of democracy. The old rules no longer apply. We must be bold, resourceful, and resilient. Above all, we must never give up. Our opponents are those who seek to undermine the Constitution, not the members of our own party. But we must be frank and unflinching in telling our elected officials that they must lead us or allow others to do so.
I am feeling more hopeful this evening because two elected Democrats have taken off their gloves to speak the truth in short, plain words that the American people understand.
Talk to you tomorrow!
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