Democrat News

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Donald Trump played golf and celebrated at his country clubs as the tragedy of the Texas floods unfolded.

On July 7, Fox News reported that 82 people are dead due to the central Texas floods. The horrific stories of the children dying due to the flooding are gut-wrenching.

Trump Playing Golf Again

Many American media outlets criticize Trump’s golfing, but the Irish Star called out the commander-in-chief:

“Trump’s response to the disaster has been slammed as disrespectful and out of touch, with critics online accusing the president of caring more about golfing than the victims in Texas.”

The Irish outlet noted one of the many social media posts blasting Trump:

“Trump is partially responsible for what happened due to his cuts to related government agencies. Even Texas officials are saying it. And instead of visiting Texas, he’s off playing golf. That’s how much he cares. ‘The party’ is not a handful of jerks on Twitter.”

Since many traditional news media have bent the knee to Trump, reporters in tech, entertainment, and even sports are stepping up. According to sports outlet The Spun, Americans want Trump to stop golfing and focus more on helping the victims of the Texas floods.
The Spun reports that one social media message on X summed it up:

“Children are dead in Texas due to flooding, and Trump is at a high-end golf course in NJ…. If this were Biden, the GOP would be going crazy.”

Chef José Andrés and HEB Grocery Arrive Before FEMA?

Social media posts claim Chef José Andrés and HEB grocery stores were boots on the ground in Texas before FEMA. We have not received confirmation of the social posts at this time. But Texas is the state of stellar leaders like Sen. Ted “Cancun” Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbot, so that it would be on brand.

One social post on Threads was brutal, written to Trump and Abbott:

“World Central Kitchen got to Texas before FEMA, before Texas officials, and definitely before either of you. The world is feeding Americans… while your ‘America First’ circus tells the world to fix their own damn problems.
The border you’re obsessed with? That’s where the help came from.”

Who Could Have Seen It Coming?

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration cuts left key positions at the Texas Weather Service offices vacant when the floods hit on July 4th.

Texas Public Radio notes that even in the Hill Country, where flash flooding is common, the rise of the Guadalupe River was unprecedented. The public radio outlet reported the region’s rain and gave context:

“Ten to 12 inches of rain dumped on Kerr County in a matter of hours, producing more water than the daily flow over Niagara Falls.”

Just my opinion, but I predict many Texas Trump voters might not be on the MAGA train after the Texas floods.

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Back in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the “client list” of disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is on her desk. She told Fox News that the public will see a “lot of flight logs, a lot of names… a lot of information. But it’s pretty sick what that man did.” Still, now, the Department of Justice and the FBI say there is no list, Axios reports.

And the agencies also said Epstein didn’t kill himself, and that’s odd since before their roles in the FBI, Kash Patel, and Don Bongino raised questions about Epstein’s death — until Trump picked them for their jobs in the department.

The initial report, which was underwhelming, didn’t go down well with the MAGA crowd. Most folks on the left didn’t buy into it either but weren’t shocked that the list wasn’t released, considering Trump’s long friendship with Epstein, even though Bondi claimed the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” connected to Epstein.

Former co-president Elon Musk, who recently said Trump is on the list, then deleted that tweet posted this at 4 in the morning:

What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again … pic.twitter.com/CO9xJz68Tf

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2025

🤬 pic.twitter.com/Oe9jPGoQRR

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2025

The duplicity is jaw-dropping:

MARCH: Bondi says the FBI has “tens of thousands” of Epstein videos.

APRIL: Patel says they vanished.

JULY: DOJ says no client list. No names. Suicide. Case closed.

They had the tapes. Now they have amnesia.pic.twitter.com/GyR4SFhWlw

— HustleBitch (@HustleBitch_) July 7, 2025

Via Axios:

The DOJ and FBI say in the memo that no “further disclosure” of Epstein-related material would be appropriate or warranted.”

The memo says much of the material relates to child sexual abuse, details of Epstein’s victims, and information that would expose innocent individuals to “allegations of wrongdoing.”

“Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography,” the memo says.

Case closed!

Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and related offenses while all the powerful men who were flown on the Lolita Express won’t be charged. Only that one woman.

Bondi is being ripped to shreds on the Bad App.

No Epstein client list? Never going to be any arrests? You are a joke. This ruined any chance of us ever trusting you, and makes me trust Trump a great deal less. Thanks for screwing this up, traitor.

— Val Merdeaux (@FedUpInTheMid) July 7, 2025

Did we delete pages from the Epstein Files that connected Trump and other high ranking officials to Jeffrey Epstein. Where are the records that were on your desk in February? pic.twitter.com/qjEegAdP7x

— Dede Watson (@Dede_Watson) July 7, 2025

From a woman who identifies herself as a “MAGA patriot”:

LIES! https://t.co/jUIE5UKmtw

— Delilah (@Delilahmyne) July 7, 2025

RELEASE THE LIST!! we all know you have it

— American Nationalist (@primegalatic) July 7, 2025

Can we please get live polygraph tests for @FBIDDBongino and @FBIDirectorKash because no matter what they attempt to do to restore the integrity of the @FBI we will never trust them after the Epstein coverup. @AGPamBondi said the list was on her desk, she said there were…

— Tawny (@tawnymarie420) July 7, 2025

Bondi was either lying in February, or she’s lying now.

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What a great plan! Let avian flu run rampant through poultry farms across the U.S. — but experts warn that this bonkers idea could hasten the beginning of a new pandemic. Via Live Science:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, and Brooke Rollins, secretary of Agriculture, have floated the notion that instead of culling birds infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, farmers should let it spread through flocks. The idea is that by doing this, farmers can “identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Kennedy told Fox News on March 11.

Now, a perspective piece authored by a group of virologists, veterinarians and health security experts argues that the plan would not only be ineffective, but could also increase the risk of the virus spilling over into humans and sparking a new pandemic. The researchers published their arguments July 3 in the journal Science.

“Essentially, the longer you allow a virus that has shown to be effective in infecting multiple hosts survive in an environment, the greater the chance you give it to spread, to mutate, and to try its luck at adaptation,” perspective first-author Erin Sorrell, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Live Science. “Worse case scenario, the virus adapts and expands its host range to become transmissible in humans … Now we have a pandemic.”

What is it we’ve been saying for years? Oh yeah. Don’t put people who hate the government in charge of the government!

https://bsky.app/profile/bettycjung.bsky.social/post/3lt6tgnovnk2d

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The TACO King says his administration plans to start sending letters on Monday to US trade partners dictating new tariffs, amid confusion over when the new rates will come into effect. Via the Guardian:

“It could be 12, maybe 15 [letters],” the president told reporters, “and we’ve made deals also, so we’re going to have a combination of letters and some deals have been made.”

With his previously announced 90-day pause on tariffs set to end on 9 July, the president was asked if the new rates would come into effect this week or on 1 August, as some officials had suggested.

“No, there are going to be tariffs, the tariffs, the tariffs are going to be, the tariffs,” the president began uncertainly. “I think we’ll have most countries done by July 9, yeah. Either a letter or a deal.”

Sensing the confusion, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, jumped in to add: “But they go into effect on August 1. Tariffs go into effect August 1, but the president is setting the rates and the deals right now.”

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Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) argued that “people don’t feel” climate change after historic flooding left more than 50 people dead in Texas.

During a Sunday panel discussion on ABC, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile told Christie that Republicans only made short-term gains by killing climate change initiatives with President Donald Trump’s recent spending bill.

“If you define winning by short-changing the American people in terms of pollution and climate change, it’s not winning in the long term,” she explained.

“The one place where I’ll disagree with Donna is, look, on the energy front, the fact of the matter is that people don’t feel, despite some other indications, the climate change issue in the way that Democrats would like them to,” Christie replied. “Now, Donna, I’m not saying there’s not evidence of it, but I’m saying they don’t feel it.”

“You don’t feel it?” Brazile gasped. “I feel it every day. I feel it, whether I’m walking in the streets or I feel it when I watch the news. You feel it.”

“And all these extreme weather events all across America,” she added. “We’re going to see more Katrinas as you’ve seen over the last 10 years. You were a governor during Sandy. You know that these weather events are getting worse.”

Christie, however, was not persuaded.

“I’ll never believe that Sandy was created by climate change,” he snapped.

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Above, Kim Wilde performs, Kids in America. It was a long weekend, how’s everyone doing?

Chuck the Writer: I Am The Man On Fifth Avenue.

The Psy of Life: “A Republic if you can keep it!” Celebrating the Fourth of July by Resisting the Felon Reich.

Annie Asks You: No Freakin’ Kings, Period!

At my place I’m looking out a dirty old window, too.

Bonus Track: Shower Cap summarizes last week as only they can!

Round-up by Tengrain who blogs at Mock, Paper, Scissors. You can follow Tengrain on the Fediverse, or on BlueSky. Send tips, requests, and suggestions to [email protected] (with For MBRU in the subject line).

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Oliver Larkin’s birthday was Friday, July 4th. On Tuesday he launched his primary campaign to represent Florida’s 23rd congressional district— parts of Broward and southern Palm Beach counties. Biden won district by 13.2 points. The controversial current congressman, corporate New Dem Jared Moskowitz, won by less than 5.

Moskowitz wants South Florida voters to believe he’s some kind of moderate problem-solver— a pragmatic Democrat in a progressive district just trying to do right by his constituents. But when we scratch the surface we find a shameless opportunist whose loyalties lie with corporate donors, the military-industrial complex and the Likud and AIPAC’s extremist agenda— not the people of South Florida.

Since arriving in Congress, Moskowitz has  carved out a niche for himself as one of the most reliable enablers of right-wing foreign policy in the Democratic caucus. He’s part of the New Dem Coalition— a corporate-aligned faction bankrolled by big business and billionaires— and he votes like it. He’s backed legislation giving Netanyahu’s far-right government a blank check, parroted GOP talking points about Gaza and antisemitism, and worked hand-in-glove with AIPAC to smear progressives who speak out for Palestinian human rights. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a statement was made by Moskowitz or by Republican fellow extremist Randy Fine.

Blue America thinks we’ve all had enough of this clown. Florida progressives deserve a representative who fights for peace, justice and the working class— not another lackey for corporate lobbies and pro-war billionaires. That’s why we’re proud to endorse Oliver Larkin— a movement candidate who actually represents the values the Democratic Party has always stood for— until the New Dems came along.

Oliver isn’t just the better candidate— he’s the only candidate in this race who actually gives a damn about the people instead of the donor class. While Moskowitz has taken money from weapons manufacturers and AIPAC’s dark-money machine, Larkin refuses corporate PAC money and speaks with moral clarity about the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and housing as a human right. He’s unapologetically pro-labor, pro-peace and pro-justice— exactly the kind of voice we need in a Congress overrun by cowards, cynics and careerists. Where Moskowitz toes the line for corporate lobbyists and Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, Larkin is building a movement rooted in solidarity, not servitude. The choice in this race isn’t between left and right— it’s between conscience and corruption. Read what Oliver has to say below and consider contributing to his campaign here.

I’m Running for Congress in Florida’s 23rd District — Income and wealthy inequality is the great economic fight of our time. In Congress, I’ll introduce legislation to pay Americans a Big Tech Dividend and regulate the industry as a public utility.

-by Oliver Larkin

I’m a 33-year-old progressive from South Florida, running for Congress in my hometown 23rd district. Our country needs more champions for Medicare for All, a $25 living wage and getting money out of politics. We will be building this campaign every day to win those policies.

But we must go further. Oxfam International predicts the acceleration of income and wealth inequality will produce the world’s first five trillionaires within the next decade. That is obscene, immoral, and destructive to our country and the planet’s future.

In an economy of increasing monopolization, the billionaires behind Big Tech have made out like bandits. Today’s social media giants have effectively recreated the public commons as for-profit companies, where they can throttle and manipulate public discourse to serve their own private interests.

This is an income and wealth inequality issue. It is a free speech issue. And it is an issue of hundreds of millions of Americans having Big Tech billionaires steal and sell off our data to corporate advertisers without any of us getting our cut.

Today, three billionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of our country— 165 million Americans. They are Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk— in control of Amazon and the Washington Post, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and Tesla, SpaceX, and X (fka Twitter), respectively. Musk alone spent $275 million buying the last presidential election for Donald Trump.

Which brings us to my opponent, Representative Jared Moskowitz. He spent the homestretch of the 2024 campaign bashing progressives. He appeared time after time alongside frontline House Republicans like New York congressman Mike Lawler. When Democrats lost, Moskowitz blamed the left— and became the first Democrat to join Elon Musk’s DOGE Caucus.

The 23rd district’s representative should have known better. Years before Elon was making empty promises for government handouts in Washington, he was doing it here. Musk received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Fort Lauderdale Commission for his Boring Company to build a tunnel from downtown to the beach— only Teslas allowed.

But that’s the thing: Congressman Moskowitz was recently rated by the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University as Florida’s Least Effective Democrat in Congress.

Combined with his affinity for billionaires and the far-right (he’s close friends with Matt Gaetz, and received two political appointments from Ron DeSantis), Moskowitz has put this seat— including Broward County, with the highest Democratic registration in the state— on a razor’s edge of getting flipped by the GOP. It is practically unthinkable.

But the Democratic political establishment has spent the decade I’ve worked to elect a new generation of progressive leaders trying to squash that movement.

I traveled the country as an organizer for Bernie Sanders while Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the DNC chair and congresswoman for our neighboring district, put her thumb on the scale in a Democratic primary. The subsequent collapse in Democratic voter registration and in partisan elections across Florida has been near-total.

For Democrats to win again in red states like Florida, we need members of Congress whose first priority is taking on these far-right billionaire oligarchs head-on, not working with them to fight the left. We need to show the country what fighting for a true progressive agenda looks like.

Musk and other Big Tech billionaires profit massively off of the sale and targeting of our personal browsing data. In Congress, I’ll introduce legislation to regulate Big Tech as a public utility, break corporate monopolies, and deliver every American a Big Tech Dividend from the use and sale of our personal browsing data— not legitimize and help fascist oligarchs like Elon Musk act as middlemen.

It will take a mass movement of progressives nationwide to take on the entrenched South Florida Democratic political establishment and win this race. Including you.

I hope you’ll join me.

Oliver Larkin
Democrat for FL-23

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Rep. Robert Garcia’s relatives, many of Peruvian descent, have been asking him recently if they need to carry identification with them, as federal agents seemingly round up brown people at will.

His answer? Yes, but don’t let fear quell resistance.

“What’s happening right now with the terror of seeing masked men with rifles running into communities and scooping people up, the images that people are seeing on the TV of folks being sent to foreign prisons that have committed no crime, this is a serious moment,” he told me last week, ducking off the House floor where President Trump’s mess of a bill was being debated to speak by phone.

But “we cannot just allow all this to happen and for there to be no accountability for these actions,” Garcia added.

These days, Garcia is all about accountability. The Long Beach representative was recently was chosen by his Democratic congressional peers — after less than three years in office — for the minority party’s top job on the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

For those of you who aren’t government wonks, that’s a prime position for pushing back against Trump. So, as the president would say, it’s A BIG DEAL! Especially for a young guy — because usually the role goes to an old politician with seniority.

That’s left some, myself included, wondering if Garcia, 47, isn’t our insider Zohran Mamdani — the young, charismatic New Yorker whose recent win in the mayoral primary has left Democrats reeling with the reality that voters want fighters, and that patriotism isn’t just what MAGA decides it is.

Garcia has the same kind of energy and confidence that his version of America — one that is unabashedly inclusive, affordable and fair — is what his constituents want, and one he’s expected to fight for.

“I love this country,” Garcia said. “I feel like Trump and his minions don’t understand what real patriotism is.”

If you missed the fantastic profile of Garcia that my colleagues Seema Mehta and Andrea Castillo did not long ago, I’ll give you the highlights. Garcia came to this country from Peru when he was 5, his parents like so many seeking safety and opportunity.

The family overstayed their visas and joined the millions of undocumented Californians working hard, hoping harder and dreaming of a day when America embraced them the way they embraced America.

His mom cleaned houses and worked in a thrift store. Garcia taught himself English reading Superman comics. He excelled in school and by the time he was in college, Ronald Reagan of all people offered him a path to citizenship with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. He grabbed it.

“When I swore an oath to the Constitution, that actually meant something to me,” he said. “I had to fight for citizenship.”

Garcia went into public service and was elected mayor of Long Beach, the city’s youngest, first openly gay and first Latino mayor. Then he jumped to Congress in 2022, becoming president of his freshman Democratic class.

He is the American dream. But also the American nightmare to some on the far right, who may never forgive him for once being undocumented and doing the worst thing an undocumented person can do — succeed.

“I am who I am,” he said. “I’m a U.S. citizen. I have just as much right to be here and to serve as he does, and I’m not scared of Donald Trump.”

Garcia’s rapid rise in Congress shows he’s not just a brawler, but one with finesse. Garcia beat out Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch, 70, for the job on the Oversight Committee. And before that, Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, 76, bowed out, lacking support. He also bested Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, 44, who has made a name for herself as a clever pugilist.

“It was clear by the numbers that my style of leadership is not exactly what [Democrats] were looking for, and so I didn’t think that it was fair for me to push forward and try to rebuke that,” Crockett told Politico after dropping her bid.

Garcia was able to combine his willingness to spar with the boring necessity of being a good manager, something he learned from running Long Beach. The committee role Garcia has now opened up when Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly died of cancer in May.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, long considered the youthful firebrand of the Democratic Party, sought the job earlier this year but was rebuffed in favor of Connolly, with his years of clout. But that was before Mamdani, and the internal blowup within the party over age and attitude.

Ocasio-Cortez decided not to pursue the role a second time, but Garcia said she was one of the first people he spoke with when he decided to try his own luck.

“It’s been clear to me that the party should welcome generational change,” he said, echoing a now-familiar line. “There’s a groundswell out there of folks that want new ideas, that want us to be aggressive against Trump.”

With Democrats in the minority in both houses of Congress, there isn’t too much Garcia or any Democrat can do to stop the Trump agenda. But it’s important to make noise, set markers for future action and speak truth, Garcia said — and lay the groundwork for a time when Democrats do have a majority.

“The first thing is, we’ve got to be serious about having an anti-corruption agenda that includes taking a look at all of the horrific ways that [Trump’s] enriching himself and his family,” Garcia said.

The fancy dinner for investors of his cryptocurrency, the Qatari jet, his new perfume. The examples of Trump profiting off the presidency are numerous.

Garcia calls it “enormous grift” and “huge steps backward for our democracy.”

And then there is fellow Californian Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration offensive.

If Democrats are ever back in power, and Oversight Committee Democrats can issue subpoenas and conduct investigations, “rest assured that Stephen Miller needs to be answering questions,” Garcia said. “Elon Musk needs to be asked questions in front of the Oversight Committee. So that agenda is going to be critical.”

But also, it’s not all about Trump.

“We have to also have a forward-looking agenda of, how do we make government work better?” he said. “It’s a bigger question about what kind of country, not only that we want to live in right now, but what kind of country we can actually build in the future.”

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After I broke my kneecap in a car accident 2023, I began listening to audiobooks on theoretical physics while rehabbing. The fascinating journey led me from trying to understand Einstein’s famous E = mc² equation to now listening to Michio Kaku explain how the impossible of today might be the possible in the future.

A co-founder of String theory, in this video Kaku “delivers a glimpse of where science will take us in the next hundred years, as warp drives, teleportation, inter-dimensional wormholes, and even time travel converge with our scientific understanding of physical reality.”

I love this stuff.

Open thread and beam me down, Scotty!

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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) lashed out at Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) after he noted that cuts to agencies like the National Weather Service could leave communities unprepared for catastrophic events.

In a Sunday morning interview, Castro reflected on recent flooding in Texas that left more than 70 people dead.

“When you have flash flooding, you know there’s a risk that you won’t have the personnel to make that, do that analysis, do the predictions, and in the best way, and it could lead to tragedy,” the Democratic lawmaker told CNN. “So I don’t want to sit here and say conclusively that that was the case, but I do think that it should be investigated, and having, you know, not having enough personnel is never helpful.”

Blackburn responded to Castro in a Sunday afternoon appearance on Fox News.

“Those are issues that will be addressed by DHS and NOAA and other components as they move forward,” Blackburn insisted. “Now is not the day for that type of conversation.”

“I would encourage the congressman to be wrapping his arms and his heart and his prayers around these families and to stand with them at this point,” she added.