Iowa Summit Kicks Off With Republican Star Power

You may have heard of this already, where Trump casually promised a quid pro quo to the oil industry that would let them rape and pillage the environment at will. Even for Trump, this was stunning. Via the Washington Post: As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year. Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House.

Now that Rick Scott is job auditioning for American Orange Idol, he's rewriting history by claiming he was the victim of political persecution over his hospital chain, which paid $1.7 billion to resolve Medicare fraud charges. Via Rolling Stone: He added, “I’ve had experience with this. Back in the 90s, I was the lead opponent to Hillarycare,” referring to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.

Amazing, how right wing donors created this almost overnight to take down Obamacare and climate change progress via their precious little Tea Party, and it's disappearing the same way! Ha ha, remember how we were called "rude" for calling them teabaggers? Via Politico: FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump. “We’re dissolved,” said the group’s president, Adam Brandon.

If anyone knows a thing or two about the threat of authoritarianism from Donald Trump, it’s Hillary Clinton. Gleeful chants of “lock her up” were almost as prevalent in the 2016 presidential campaign as the “make American great again” slogan. This campaign year, there seems to be an endless list of people Trump wants to lock up, deport and execute. So, when MSNBC's Joe Scarborough told her about his concern the U.

Above, The Alarm performs, Rescue Me. Will no one rescue us from our failed political press? Press Watch: New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it. Hullabaloo: Six Points Is A “Slim” Lead? Tell Me A Story is gobsmacked. Crazy Eddie's Motie News rounds up the late night shows, which are probably our best mass media source of news. Bonus Track: The Daily Cartoonist reports that Robert Grossman and Steve Brodner have been inducted into Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.

In just a week since its launch, Utah's "snitch line" for a new law restricting transgender people's access to some bathrooms and changing facilities was inundated with around 10,000 "bogus" reports, state Auditor John Dougall revealed Tuesday. Dougall, a Republican running to represent the state's 3rd Congressional District, shared the figure with Utah News Dispatch and released a lengthy statement detailing his office's efforts to comply with House Bill 257, which GOP legislators passed and Gov.