Democrat News

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Rep. Drunken Van Orden (MAGA-The Insurrection Inn) did an interview with Meg Ellefson on her podcast. They were talking about the protests by Republicans at Republican town hall meetings. At least I think it was DVO, but it might have been the alcohol talking:

DVO: Well, it’s not just Glenn there over uh… they’re disrupting Fitz’s meetings and uh… they did a whole bunch of Republicans around the country. And I just people have to understand you know I, I uh… well history buff and people in in uh… all people associated with the communist movement and the national socialist movement uh… used to get their way politically is they would do stuff like this. And they were called agitators. So, this is a time tested proven method or very far left and very far right groups to get their way and what I say very far right, I mean actual national socialists. So, here’s what I told everybody, we’ve been getting harassing calls. I just got more death threats last week, me personally. Uh… if anybody’s coming to any of these meetings that we have and they act in an unlawful manner by harassing people or if they’re being disruptive, refusing to leave the venue, we will have them arrested and charged with the Class B misdemeanor. I’m not going to put up with these agitators going disrespect and acting in unlawful manner to their fellow Wisconsinites or my staff, period.

ELLEFSON: FAFO

DVO: All right, well, but we’re not doing it. Republicans are too nice

First off, DVO owes me a new monitor because I had a spit take on the Republicans are too nice line.

Secondly, it’s not surprising that DVO would call out the misdemeanor classification since he’s probably been warned about that when he was screaming at a teenage girl working in a public library because of a PRIDE book display or when he drunk raged at a group of teenaged pages in the Capitol building.

However, the surprising part is that he was whining about the town hall meetings in the first place, especially considering he’s never even held one. He recently skipped a meeting with the Farmer’s Union. And when there was supposed to be a town hall last week, he cancelled it because too many people showed up:

📺 LA CROSSE: Derrick Van Orden hastily moves meeting across town to hide from his own constituents.

“Van Orden’s staff changed the location … which some of those who signed up say their registration was removed and they were not told about the location change.” pic.twitter.com/OZWHUHR7yR

— Joe Oslund (@joe_oslund) March 2, 2025

But there’s more. There’s always more.

DVO was supposed to have another town hall meeting, but abruptly changed the location and rescinded people’s tickets – without even notifying them:

📺 EAU CLAIRE: @derrickvanorden office cancels a meeting with constituents.

“Staffers cancelled after learning more than 100 people were interested in going. They say they only agreed to a meeting of 24.” pic.twitter.com/rvtyrwtK74

— Joe Oslund (@joe_oslund) February 27, 2025

Here’s a pro tip for DVO: First, you gotta at least make an honest attempt at holding a real town hall before you can whine about them.

And as a bonus pro tip: You can’t complain about Nazis when you act like one.

H/T Heartland Signal for the top video

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MAGA scumbag (but consummate liar) Peter Navarro resurfaced on Fox News Wednesday and proclaimed that Mexican drug cartels have taken over Canada.

Navarro, with a straight face, blamed our neighbor to the north for overdose deaths in the US.

It’s Interesting that jailbird Navarro was nowhere to be found throughout Trump’s election and transition. Too crazy for Trump is an accomplishment.

“What I want to say to every world leader who gets up in arms when all we’re asking for is fairness and to have them stop killing our people is, please, listen to us,” Navarro said.

Fairness? WTF is he talking about?

The Trump/Musk administration is changing their tariff tune from economic fairness into a war on drugs. Imposing massive tariffs helps no one. It raises prices to Americans and will not stop the flow of drugs into the country. If we had an easy solution, Nancy Reagan’s “just say no to drugs” would have been successful 40 years ago.

NAVARRO: Canada could do a lot more.

Canada has been taken over, Brett, by Mexican cartels. They bring up these pill presses and printers and the medicines that they fake.

You can’t tell the difference.

Farmer companies can. You need a spectrographer to do it.

Canada is now being considered, ya know, fentanyl gang murderers. This man is as delusional as he’s ever been.

MAGAts come up with bogus talking points that are then fed through Fox News and other MAGA outlets and soon the cult will label all Canadians as murderers

Canada is forcing our people to ingest fentanyl.

Gotcha.

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Four senior members of Yambo’s administration have held secret discussions with some of Kyiv’s top political opponents to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, coincidentally, just as Trump aligns with Putin in seeking to push him out of his job! Via Politico:

The senior Trump allies held talks with Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, a remorselessly ambitious former prime minister, and senior members of the party of Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy’s immediate predecessor as president, according to three Ukrainian parliamentarians and a U.S. Republican foreign policy expert.

The discussions centered on whether Ukraine could hold quick presidential elections. These are being delayed in line with the country’s constitution because Ukraine remains under martial law. Critics of holding elections say they could be chaotic and play into Russia’s hands, with so many potential voters serving on the front lines or living abroad as refugees.

The Trump aides are confident that Zelenskyy would lose any vote due to war fatigue and public frustration over rampant corruption. Indeed, his poll ratings have been in decline for years, although they have picked up in the wake of last week’s Oval Office brawl, when the Ukrainian leader was shown the door after being berated by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The most recent poll shows Zelenskyy still comfortably ahead in the race for the presidency.

The official line from the U.S. administration is that Trump is not interfering in Ukraine’s domestic politics. This week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick denied his boss was “weighing into Ukrainian politics,” adding all that Trump wants is a partner for peace.

Nope, he wouldn’t DREAM of it.

Is it just a coincidence that already-debunked claims of Zelenskyy corruption are popping up all over again in MAGA and Russian propaganda outlets?

Ha, ha! What a kneeslapper! “Partner for peace”! That’s all what Putin wants, amirite?

Dear God, I hate these people.

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In a February article of her Reframing America newsletter, Antonia Scatton wrote, “For sixty years, a billionaire-funded network of corporations, politicians, PACs, news networks, churches, foundations and think tanks have demonized ‘Washington’ and government itself – public attacks that we [on the left] have abjectly failed to counter. For this reason, too many Americans see drastic action as justifiable. Some even see Trump’s willingness to break the law to do it as the actions of a uniquely great leader.”

I’ve “only” been blogging about Fox News and the right-wing for 20 years, but I can attest to that.

Scatton has a number of suggestions to reframe the debate. She offers talking points to be used on social media, a letter to the editor or just talking to your neighbors. The topics include Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, crypto as the real Ponzi scheme, and my favorite: Elon Musk and his DOGE bro billionaires.

Say this, she writes:

Elon Musk is a CORPORATE RAIDER. He bought a MAJORITY SHARE of Donald Trump. This is a HOSTILE TAKEOVER of the U.S. Gov’t. He’s DOWNSIZING the workers and STRIPPING IT FOR PARTS.

Elon Musk is OUTSOURCING BUSINESS to other companies he owns and acquiring PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY and SENSITIVE CONSUMER DATA. He will SADDLE IT WITH DEBT and LEAVE IT BANKRUPT.

I like this one even better: Paint the billionaires as the parasite class. Instead of sharing immigrant Elon Musk’s smear of Americans using their government’s services, we should say again and again who the real parasites are. For example:

The richest corporations and individuals have a moral obligation to pay their fair share for the public resources and services provided by the American people, from which they have gained the lions’ share of the benefit.

Tax cuts for the rich KILL JOBS and DESTABILIZE THE ECONOMY. They already have more money than they can sensibly or productively use.

More money for the already rich and corporations enables mergers, job cuts, outsourcing and AI worker replacement, and fuels speculation that causes market bubbles and crashes! You know what creates jobs? Higher wages, tax cuts for workers, and public investment. This drives demand and creates job growth!

Trump’s tax cuts for the rich blew a giant hole in the revenue side of the federal budget equation. Now he wants to do it again.

Elon Musk is not just an immigrant but a likely illegal immigrant who already makes many BILLIONS from existing contracts with the federal government, as I recently wrote. None of those contracts have been deleted in his DOGE purge. Instead, he just gave himself a new one that could be worth a few more BILLION.

I hate to quote Steve Bannon but he was not wrong when he called Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” last month. “He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,” Bannon also said. Of course, Bannon probably wants to play-act as God with his own misguided vision for the country’s history, values or traditions, but I digress.

The bottom line is that instead of complaining about what Musk does, it’s time emphasize what he is: He’s a parasite extraordinaire (as our own Karoli Kuns put it) sucking the taxpayer-funded blood out of our federal government and our life-saving and life-enhancing services for the sake of enriching himself and his other billionaire bros further.

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Remember the story a few weeks ago where Trump lawyers tried to gin up a criminal investigation and freeze EPA grant funds from the Biden administration? And not one, but two career prosecutors resigned and refused to pursue the case?

Ed Martin, the MAGAt who helped organize the Stop The Steal movement, is now the head of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, and he was the man behind this fake scandal. Many prominent attorneys were so shocked by this attempted frame up, they suggested Martin should be disbarred.

See if you can connect these dots in this letter that’s going around in D.C.:

“Hi DC lawyer friends:
Trump/Pam Bondi loyalists are currently making a bid to take over the DC Bar: Her brother is running for President and Alicia Long (who I believe is US Attorney Ed Martin’s chief deputy right now) is running for Treasurer. The bar has a big role in licensing and discipline, so very worth paying attention to, and if, like me, you have never thought about DC Bar elections before, this may be the year to cast your vote/tell a friend. Voting opens April 15, here’s what the website says about it:

The 2025 D.C. Bar general and Communities elections will run from April 15 to June 4.

Voting is exclusively online. Eligible voters (all active D.C. Bar members in good standing as of February 28) will receive an email link to the general election ballot, as well as to the ballots for their D.C. Bar Communities, from Direct Vote (via Survey & Ballot Systems), an independent vendor administering the 2025 D.C. Bar elections.”

Basically, if you know any attorneys in the D.C. Bar, please forward this to them. Let’s stop these evil bastards.

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Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee subcommittee on Social Security yesterday announced three new pieces of legislation aimed at protecting our safety net:

John B. Larson, Richard E. Neal, Danny K. Davis, and Steven Horsford unveiled the Keeping Our Field Offices Open Act, the Protecting Americans’ Social Security Data Act, and a Resolution of Inquiry into Trump’s and Musk’s attempts to destroy these programs.

This would be a great idea. Unfortunately, the legislation won’t make it out of committee without a Republican co-sponsor. And the horrendous Jason Smith is the committee chairman, so unless pigs fly?

Maybe Dems should just stop trying to be so well-behaved.

·

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If you want to make this country great, imagine the strength of a nation whose children have been fought for and know they have been fought for.

Last month, my son reached two years in remission from a rare, malignant cancer that almost took his eye and his life. He is alive, well and enjoying 20/20 vision because of a groundbreaking treatment that was pioneered by National Institutes of Health researchers, among others, and funded by the government grants the Trump administration is blocking and threatening to cut. If the president continues on this course, children diagnosed during and after this administration will needlessly fare worse than those who came before.

My son Jack was diagnosed in 2022 with retinoblastoma, a malignant childhood cancer of the central nervous system that originates and grows in the eye. If left untreated, it typically migrates through the optic nerve to the brain, eventually metastasizing and taking the life of the child.

Because the cancer usually attacks children under the age of 3, its victims are often unable to report the symptoms of a mass blocking their vision until it’s too late to treat with procedures that can salvage the eye. That’s when enucleation — removal of the eye — is required.

This is why pediatricians developed standard screening for retinoblastoma starting at birth. This now-routine preventative care has enabled medical professionals to find and treat most cases without a loss of vision or life. Because of these developments and others, retinoblastoma has a very high survival rate in 21st century America.

Jack’s was one of very few documented diagnoses with retinoblastoma after the age of 8. His oncologist suggested his tumor had been hiding in a dark corner of his retina for years, out of his vision and that of physicians; other doctors thought it had “self-arrested” or presented late and grew rapidly. We discovered it only because it burst from the impact of a belly flop at the neighborhood pool, spewing cancer cells in a constellation of poison floating inside his still-intact eyeball, visible to Jack as spots that didn’t go away.

It took weeks for doctors to nail down the diagnosis. When we walked out of that appointment on a day that was so windy I had to hold onto my dress, I put Jack in the car, turned the radio on for him, closed the passenger door and walked about 30 feet away to scream in the parking lot. “My baby!” I wailed through the phone to my mother.

It was an advanced-stage tumor, complicated by the release of cancer cells inside his eye. They could now attach and grow anywhere within — including the optic nerve, with its direct connection to his brain — if we didn’t act quickly. We might have just days before it was too late.

“We could remove his eye,” our oncologist offered at first, “and even that might not be enough.”

Then he explained that we could try to save his eye with a highly advanced procedure called intra-arterial chemotherapy, or IAC. It involves threading a catheter through the thigh’s femoral artery, behind the heart through the carotid artery and into the skull. An interventional radiologist, guided by MRI, releases the chemotherapy agent directly into the artery feeding the retina. This allows doctors to deliver more aggressive and targeted medicine to the diseased cells and limit damage to the healthy ones.

Our oncologist explained that IAC is still a very new technology but one with extraordinary promise whose benefits far outweighed the risks for Jack.

My son underwent six rounds of intra-arterial chemotherapy and seven rounds of intravitreal chemotherapy, in which the medicine is injected directly into the eye. He went under anesthesia 13 times in six months, required monthly breathing treatments that made him spit gray foam, and lost most of the brow and all the lashes around the affected eye. His list of drugs included ketamine, propofol, hydromorphone, melphalan, fentanyl, topotecan, pentamidine, albuterol, prednisolone and aldosterone. At one point, he needed epinephrine because he nearly went into cardiac arrest. Toward the end of his treatment, he received cryotherapy to kill the base of the tumor and woke up from surgery in so much pain that he gritted his teeth to the point of cracking one.

At every turn, my family was reminded of our privilege — to live in a country that was scientifically advanced enough to have developed such miracle treatments, to live in a city (Denver) with such good hospitals, to have good health insurance through my husband’s employer. If we had lived without such access to care, in a country lacking our resources or just 15 years earlier, our story would have ended differently. Instead, nine months after his diagnosis, thanks to the advanced research our country has supported socially, academically and financially, my son’s cancer was in remission.

My family recently attended a gathering with other retinoblastoma survivors, from toddlers to adults who had conquered the disease decades earlier. As each survivor entered the conference, it became evident that this was once primarily a disease of blindness: The price of survival was generally a loss of sight and eyes. Some of the older survivors had facial abnormalities from radiation or enucleation. Some had canes or family members to guide them. When we told the group that Jack’s body, vision and dream of becoming a pilot were all still intact, many gasped in awe that the science had advanced so far.

But now the Trump administration’s lack of empathy threatens other children and families facing such horrific diagnoses. Continuing research on intra-arterial chemotherapy and other treatments at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, where Jack was treated, is paid for by programs in the administration’s crosshairs. “These cuts to NIH funding jeopardize the foundation of our life-saving research,” a university spokeswoman told Chalkbeat Colorado. “Reduced research capacity means fewer scientific discoveries, job losses and delayed advancements on therapies and cures that could improve — and save — lives.”

I wonder whether our hospital will be able to continue offering groundbreaking treatments should Jack face a recurrence. And will the newly diagnosed have the same access to care that we did? What greatness can be celebrated when a mother fears she will lose her child’s access to lifesaving treatment?

My son’s recovery was a direct result of the greatness of our country and its past leaders, who had the foresight to pursue progress and excellence in science and refuse to accept losing children without a fight. Because of it, I believe my son will someday fly planes. And I can only hope the next child who faces a dire disease will get the same chance he did.

Dayna Copeland is a writer and teacher in Colorado.

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As the Trump administration continues to slash the federal workforce, the National Park Service — which has lost nearly 10% of its staff to the sweeping cuts — just reported that 2024 set a record high for visits to its parks.

Nearly 332 million people showed up to hike, camp or simply get a breath of fresh air in America’s national parks last year. That’s 6 million more visits than the year before, and a million more than the previous record, set in 2016.

The news comes as park supervisors scramble to figure out how they’ll keep the parks clean and keep visitors safe this summer, given the loss of hundreds of permanent workers. About 1,000 probationary National Park Service employees — generally people in their first two years of service — were fired Feb. 14 along with tens of thousands of other probationary federal employees, part of a multiagency purge orchestrated by Elon Musk’s White House advisory team, which he calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

At the other end of the spectrum, more than 700 park service workers are taking part in the Trump administration’s buyout program, which allows federal employees to resign now but continue receiving their salaries and benefits through September. Such programs generally attract older employees nearing retirement.

“It’s a slap in the face to the hundreds of millions of people who explored our parks last year and want to keep going back,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. “Americans love their national parks; these cuts do not have public support.”

The National Park Service is arguably the most beloved branch of a large and sprawling federal bureaucracy. Even Americans who might get a little lost in the alphabet soup of other agencies — there are more than 400 of them — will probably never forget standing in Yosemite Valley and gawking in silent wonder at a towering waterfall.

The first cuts to the agency the Trump administration announced in January — eliminating the positions of thousands of seasonal workers who collect entrance fees, clean toilets and help with search and rescue operations — sparked a swift and furious backlash.

After a coordinated social media campaign from parks employees and outdoors enthusiasts across the country, the Trump administration restored the seasonal positions and vowed to hire hundreds more temporary employees this year.

But that was a noteworthy exception to the administration’s overarching strategy of seemingly indiscriminate cuts.

In all, the National Park Service has lost some 1,700 permanent employees from a year-round staff of slightly fewer than 20,000.

The losses come on the heels of nearly 15 years without significant funding increases in the park service’s operating budget, Brengel said. “That means many employees do more than one job already, and have been doing so for years,” she said.

California has nine national parks, more than any other state, including renowned sites such as Yosemite, Joshua Tree and Death Valley. Their soaring cliffs and star-studded night skies are the backdrop of millions of family vacations every year. There were more than 4 million visits to Yosemite last year, nearly 3 million to Joshua Tree, and about 1.4 million to Death Valley, according to the park service’s website.

News of last year’s record visits was posted on the agency’s website, but with none of the usual celebratory fanfare. Instead, it was more of a cautious whisper, indicative of the general mood in the federal workforce these days.

“You hear so many rumors, especially here in D.C., about people getting fired for doing any little thing that seems contrary to the Trump administration’s agenda,” Brengel said. “Everybody’s just scared.”

National Park Service officials did not respond to a request for comment.

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A staple of Donald Trump’s rally repertoire for years has been his claim that, under him, the United States is respected again in the world. Like so much that he says, the president’s boast has been demonstrably wrong since his first term, according to repeated global surveys.

But give Trump some benefit of the doubt: He must have meant respected in the anti-democratic world, the one led by the actual dictators he so admires, not least Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Even within that sorry circle, including the tyrants of China and North Korea, it’s unclear that Trump is respected so much as he’s appreciated as a useful idiot, giving new meaning to that Cold War term for easily manipulated fools.

That Trump would so publicly embrace their world and forfeit his nation’s 80-year leadership of the free world is what made his shameful showdown in the Oval Office on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Putin’s nemesis, so historic in all the wrong ways.

If only the nearby bust of Winston Churchill could have talked.

He’d no doubt have demanded that Trump remove him from the room rather than witness a U.S. president giving the back of his hand to an ally resisting an invader, with Vice President JD Vance piling on. Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t try to extract from Churchill half of Britain’s coal wealth in return for American assistance in World War II, much as Trump is seeking Ukraine’s mineral treasure. Nor did FDR mock Churchill’s wartime “siren suit” onesie that the prime minister wore on U.S. visits, as Trump’s crowd did the dressed-down Zelensky.

The fallout from the Friday debacle could be calamitous. In his first term, Trump shook U.S. allies with his disdain for international alliances and his flirtation with fascists. But after his 2020 defeat and President Biden’s repair of America’s global ties, especially in support of Ukraine, allies could — and did — hope that Trump had been an aberration. But that hope is all but gone with Trump restored to power, the despair exacerbated by the performance of the young vice president who represents the Trumpian future of the Republican Party.

Perhaps Trump wasn’t all that proud of the clash with Zelensky, despite the over-the-top praise from sycophantic Cabinet members, near verbatim, that he’d stood up for America. He didn’t mention the spat in his 99-minute address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress. He did note that he’d gotten a letter that day from Zelensky expressing Ukraine’s willingness to negotiate peace and to sign a minerals deal.

Trump hit on a lot of other notes from the “America first” playlist that vex democratic allies. Although French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer each corrected Trump last week during their separate visits to the White House, the truth-immune Trump still told Congress and a national TV audience that the United States has spent about $350 billion to aid Ukraine — “like taking candy from a baby” — while Europe has provided only $100 billion. In fact, the United States has spent about one-third of the amount that Trump claims, and Europe more.

He said of the Panama Canal, “We’re taking it back.” As for Greenland, a self-governing territory of North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally Denmark, Trump proclaimed, “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” Republicans erupted in laughter, because, you know, hearing a supposed leader of the free world threatening a sovereign nation’s land is so funny. Trump bragged about withdrawing the United States (again) from the 196-nation Paris climate pact — he falsely claimed it was costing trillions of dollars that other countries don’t pay — as well as from “the corrupt [not] World Health Organization.”

For U.S. allies, none of that talk was as shocking as the convulsion that Trump and his lackeys delivered throughout February — a new world order that included restoring U.S. relations with Putin, even siding with Russia against a pro-Ukraine vote at the United Nations; scolding Europe and all but endorsing Germany’s neo-Nazi party, and then humiliating Zelensky in the Oval Office.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, immediately wrote on social media words that I, as an American, never expected to read: “Today it became clear that the free world needs a new leader.” Just as unbelievable: The pinch-me glee of Igor Korotchenko, a well-known Russian military analyst, who exulted on X that he never thought he’d applaud a U.S. president, until Trump tossed out Zelensky “like a garbage alley cat.” Russian analysts predicted Putin would take Trump’s favor as a license to grab more land in advance of any peace deal.

Over the weekend, to offset Trump’s affront, 18 European allies embraced Zelensky, literally, at an emergency meeting in London of a new “coalition of the willing” to secure a peace agreement less advantageous to Russia than what Trump has in mind. Starmer said the United Kingdom would back Ukraine “for as long as it takes” — echoing then-President Biden’s now-dead words about the United States.

Trump’s tariffs against neighbors Canada and Mexico this week are icing on a rancid cake. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the action Tuesday with rare venom: “The United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend. At the same time, they’re talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense.”

You can’t. Respected in the world again? Another Trump lie.

@jackiekcalmes