Impeach 3 Oversite Invest
estb 4 26 iran wAR F BOMB THREATS; rename add oversight investigations aka accountability
hegs
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'He can test it': Trump's Pentagon chief threatened with congressional reckoning
an 10 26
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threat dems who investigate MUSK 10 26
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an 10 26
Wednesday, a new poll by Politico revealed that “impeachment is back on the menu.” With President Donald Trump’s approval hitting historic lows and scandals rocking his administration, a majority of voters – including a surprisingly high percentage of Republicans – want him impeached. And barring that, they want several of his officials on the chopping block.
“Half of Americans support impeaching Trump and more than two-thirds expect Democrats to try if they flip the House — even though they have doubts about whether doing so would materially weaken the president,” writes Politico. “In total, 54 percent of Americans — including 81 percent of voters who plan to support Democrats in the midterms and a quarter of Republican midterm voters — say Trump has committed impeachable offenses, the poll found. More than 41 percent of respondents said Trump had used the presidency to benefit himself or his family financially, and a third said Democrats should prioritize investigating how he’s enriched himself, while another third said they should focus on probing his immigration crackdown.”
Majorities on both sides of the aisle, however, think that an impeachment in the House would do little to check the president. What is striking, however, is the sizeable number of Republicans who want to see Trump impeached. Even if they think it will have little impact on him, that one of four midterm GOP voters approve has major implications for the November elections. While the poll found that Democratic voters are split on whether their candidates should talk about impeachment in their midterm campaigns, these numbers suggest that a surprising number of people across the political spectrum could back that message. While most voters agree that Trump’s impeachment might not deliver the change they hope, Democrats are eager to oust his Cabinet secretaries. Democratic midterm voters say they want to see the House impeach HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (65 percent), Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (63 percent), VP JD Vance (58 percent) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (49 percent).
It is notable that the polls were conducted between October 16-19, just before an explosion of bipartisan outrage erupted over Trump’s recent concessions to Russia and suggestions that his administration may have actively hindered the Ukrainian war effort. Fox News was already sounding impeachment alarm bells before the Russia scandals, and now that accusations that the administration may have acted illegally have leapt up – even among conservatives – experts have raised the possibility. What’s more, recent reports revealed that Pentagon insiders are ready to “spill their guts” in proceedings against Hegseth that have been pushed by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). As one “well-connected” source told the Telegraph, “There’s going to be a lot of people that are going to very quietly go to the chair of the armed [services] committee and are going to spill their guts, provide them with everything they can and leak everything they can. It’ll be horrendous. It’ll be consistent embarrassment."
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an 10 26
On Thursday, the Trump administration’s attempt to dodge blame for the disruption of Ukraine’s Starlink capabilities appeared to blow up. What’s more, the call came from inside the house, as it was Vice President JD Vance who accidentally exposed the whole thing. While President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials have attempted to direct responsibility for the throttling of Ukraine’s Starshield speeds at the company rather than the government, Starlink CEO Elon Musk has pushed back, asserting that the military branch of the system is operated by the Pentagon. When asked about this by Fox News, Vance appeared to back up Musk’s account.
“Fundamentally, Elon Musk runs a private corporation, and I think it's completely understandable that he doesn't want to get in the middle of what is a war between two state actors without the United States government effectively directing him on what to do,” said Vance. “So I don't think this is about Elon. I think it's fundamentally, what is America's policy in Ukraine to Russia going to be?" And as Reuters National Security Correspondent Erin Banco emphasizes, “As Vance notes here, Starshield is a contract held between DOD and SpaceX. Contractually, SpaceX can't do anything without decision from USG.”
In other words, if Vance is right, then the Trump administration has actively degraded a U.S. ally’s military capacity while aiding one of the United States’ greatest adversaries. As many commentators have suggested, Trump has increasingly aligned with Russia through both word and action. Critics have argued that Trump's order dropping sanctions to buy Russian diesel not only breaks U.S. law, but hands President Vladimir Putin a financial lifeline while doing little to ease skyrocketing diesel prices.
Trump has blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the ongoing war — which was launched by Russia — while his special envoy has drawn bipartisan outrage for calling Putin a “humanitarian.” Meanwhile, Putin has floated the idea that Russia, the U.S., and China hold a summit to discuss the war — without Ukraine’s participation — a move Fox News says would be a “serious mistake.” According to Fox national security analyst Rebeccah Heinrichs, “The Russians view the United States as its number one adversary, and they're trying to get the United States to back down and not support Zelensky.”
A growing number of lawmakers are calling for investigations into the Starlink matter, while seven Republican senators have signed a letter telling Musk to remove Ukraine’s restrictions. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has declared the sabotage of Ukraine an act of “treason,” suggesting it warrants the seizure of Starlink.
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When President Donald Trump came into office, he was quick to demand that anyone who touched investigations into him be purged from the U.S. government. That has included Justice Department lawyers and FBI investigators. Even lower-level researchers didn't escape punishment.
Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor has an idea: Make them the new investigators of the coming Trump probes.
Taylor was previously the infamous leaker who revealed bombshell developments in the first Trump administration that made him fear for the country's future.
If angry voters turn out for the Nov. 3 election, Democrats are expected to take back the House. That could trigger investigations spanning government and corporate America's relationship with the Trump administration.
Over the weekend, Rolling Stone reported that Democrats are already preparing.
"Speaker [Mike] Johnson (R-La.) even told a gathering of conservatives earlier this year that “impeachment isn’t even the real concern.” Instead, he warned that "half of them in the room would be targeted. Accordingly, Johnson pledged he’d take care of his GOP colleagues, and his office is reportedly running oversight briefings for nervous Republicans, PowerPoint included."
"I’m glad they’re running scared. They should be," Taylor teased.
One of the biggest concerns, he pointed out, is that a subpoena is only as useful as the person who knows how to use it. Currently, no investigators can handle such sprawling probes. That's why Taylor thinks the place to start is hiring dozens of long-time investigators with experience in high-profile cases and the personal scrutiny that can come with them.
"The old adage that 'no one is above the law' assumes that there’s always someone looking," Taylor said. "But if you blindfold the people whose job it is to keep their eyes peeled, then the adage becomes a cruel joke, right?"
Taylor has been at work on a documentary he's calling "Corruptionland," which will be released online next week. Among those he's spoken with are many of these former prosecutors and agents who specifically worked with the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ and FBI investigators with experience in Washington corruption cases.
"They were pushed out for doing their jobs, and almost every one of them told me some version of the same thing: if there were a serious, well-run effort to hold this administration accountable, they’d step back into the fight tomorrow," said Taylor. "Congress should take them up on it. If the opposition wins the House or the Senate, the new committee chairs should hire these investigators and put them to work. Right away."
Taylor thinks Trump's effort to block anyone from investigating him is about to "backfire," and it should start with those who know about it from the inside.
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an 10 26
On Monday, Fox News and its Republican guests warned their fellow conservatives that the impeachment of President Donald Trump could be right around the corner. With just over two weeks to the midterms, the GOP has rallied around the message that if the Democrats win majorities in the House and Senate, it could mean the end of Trump’s historically unpopular agenda.
According to Fox News host Chad Pergam, Republicans are “leery” of what Democrats have in store should they secure the major victories polls have suggested are on the way. He spoke with MAGA-oriented Senator Jon Husted (R-OH), who is running an extremely tight race against former Senator Sherrod Brown, with most polls showing that the latter has a lead of between 1 and 6 points. In Husted’s estimation, the Ohio race “will determine whether Republicans stay in the Senate majority or not.” Pergam went on to share a clip of Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), who ran and was elected as a Democrat in 2019 before switching to GOP in 2020, though the Fox segment still identifies him as the latter. According to Van Drew, criticisms of the administration come down to “Trump Derangement,” and he warns that his former Democratic colleagues are “gonna slow them down and try to stop the government. It's gonna be mayhem.”
If Van Drew is right, then Trump Derangement Syndrome is catching, as polls show the president, his policies, and his corruption are historically unpopular – findings borne out by surveys conducted by Fox News itself. In a poll released last week, Fox found that Trump’s approval has plunged to 36 percent – the lowest he’s ever charted on the network – while other polls have placed him even lower. And Trump’s plunging numbers aren’t driven by Democratic disapproval, who have always rated the president poorly, but by Independents and Republicans who are increasingly turned off by his disastrous policies and self-serving agenda. As the Fox poll revealed, for the first time ever, Americans rate government corruption as their top concern, surpassing even the economy. On that note, the Fox survey found that 74 percent of voters view Trump’s economy negatively, while a mere 18 percent say their lives are better now than they were two years ago.
In the face of such numbers, Fox News has turned up the volume on its alarm for Republicans. As longtime Fox financial analyst Stuart Varney explained last week, “Fox Power rankings suggest the House is very likely to go Democrat. The Senate is a toss-up. The latest Fox poll shows 54 percent prefer Democrat candidates, 45 percent Republicans, and the lead by the Democrats is widening. Worse, voters are very unhappy with inflation – increasingly unhappy. 77 percent disapprove of his policy, only 22 percent think he's doing an OK job. That's a massive gap.” In light of voters’ profound rejection of Trump’s second term and the likely GOP midterm beating to come, said Pergam on Monday, “Voters should expect two years of investigations and even impeachment if Democrats prevail.”
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AN 7 26
A progressive US senator on Monday welcomed a federal judge’s ruling that found President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service was an illegal act of self-dealing, while calling for the Republican to be impeached for a third time.
Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, “acted in bad faith and for an improper purpose by ‘collusively filing a lawsuit with claims subject to multiple dispositive defenses solely to provide cover for a collusive settlement,’” US District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Kathleen Williams—who was appointed by former President Barack Obama—wrote in her 56-page ruling.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called Williams’ order “a scalding, blistering judicial opinion calling out Trump’s sham litigation, striking down his corrupt IRS immunity, and holding his sycophant lawyers to account.”
“That’s a good start,” the senator said. “Impeachment is next.”
Finding that “sanctions are appropriate here,” Williams referred Trump’s personal attorney Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar for “its consideration, review, and determination as to whether any disciplinary action is appropriate in light of the findings and rulings made in this order.”
Williams also banned another one of the president’s personal lawyers, Daniel Epstein—who is not related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted child sex criminal and former close friend of Trump—from seeking admission to practice law in the Southern District of Florida for one year.
The judge further found that acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche’s “apparent capacity to speak for both plaintiffs and defendants, sign a ‘settlement’ document on behalf of all parties to this action, and then repudiate part of that agreement, demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case.”
In January, Trump and his sons sued the Internal Revenue Service and US Treasury Department for $10 billion over the leak of the president’s tax returns by a former IRS contractor. Trump’s own Department of Justice (DOJ) then settled the case in May by agreeing to exempt the plaintiffs from future IRS audits and create a roughly $1.776 billion settlement slush fund for people claiming they were unfairly targeted by the government.
Beneficiaries of the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” were expected to include January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrectionists, roughly 1,500 of whom were pardoned by Trump and dozens of whom have since been charged or convicted for serious crimes, including child sex crimes, rape, grand larceny, burglary, home invasion, gun violations, death threats against public officials, and fatal DUI incidents.
Blanche has signaled that the DOJ will no longer pursue the creation of the slush fund.
Williams wrote in her ruling that “certainly, a court should not be a forum for a party that cynically views a lawsuit as a vehicle to achieve a predetermined outcome: ‘I’m suing myself.”
“President Trump did not pursue his claims until he once again occupied the White House and had appointed his former lawyer, and the former lawyer of persons who are putative beneficiaries of the ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund,c’ to prominent positions in the DOJ,” she continued. “These officials then negotiated on behalf of the United States, with his current lawyers, including his former White House counsel, to reach a ‘settlement.’ It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the parties.”
“Even the fund amount—$1.776 billion—speaks of a ‘branding’ effort rather than a deliberate and thoughtful calculation of damages,” the judge added.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team responded to Monday’s order in a statement asserting that “the IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to The New York Times, ProPublica, and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people.”
“President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable,” the statement added.
Defenders of the rule of law welcomed Monday’s ruling, with Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, co-presidents of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, taking a swipe at Trump’s “brilliant idea of suing the government he runs and resolving the lawsuit with the creation of an illegal and unconstitutional nearly $1.8 billion slush fund, paid for at taxpayer expense and likely to be distributed to January 6 insurrectionists, among others, as well with as an immunity deal protecting Trump and his family from IRS investigation.”
“Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was a willing participant in this fraud on the court and the American people,” the pair added. “If the Senate needed an additional reason not to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general, it just got it.”
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an 4 26
Speaking at a January 6 retreat for House Republicans, Trump stated, “You gotta win the midterms ‘cause, if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
This was beforeTrump’s agents murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, before the Justice Department released more Epstein files, before Trump’s disastrous war in Iran,before Trump threatened death to the entire Iranian civilization, before a gallon of gas hit $4 or more, beforeother prices also began rising because of the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, and before additional price hikes associated with Trump’s tariffs had kicked in.
It was also before Trump’s polls slid to record lows, before the MAGA faithful began complaining that Trump had betrayed his promise to avoid foreign entanglements, and before a slew of special elections in which Democratic candidates have won Republican districts (and even when they didn’t win, lost by far smaller margins than Trump won by in 2024).
Until recently I thought impeaching Trump and convicting him in the Senate was a pipe dream. I was concerned that even talkof impeachment at this stage might distract attention from the affordability crisis brought on by Trump and could even fortify Republican charges of Democratic “extremism.”
No longer.
The president of the United States is stark-raving mad. He’s a clear and present danger to America and the world. The American public is beginning to see it.
We’ve got to do whatever we legally can to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment would be useful if Trump’s Cabinet and key advisers had any integrity, but they don’t. They’re ambitious, unprincipled traitors.
Which leaves impeachment.
You may be skeptical. After all, he’s already been impeached twice, to no avail. How can the third time be the charm?
Because it seems likely that Democrats will retake control of the House and the Senate in this fall’s midterm elections (unless Trump prevents free and fair elections).
And because it’s also possible that there will be enough votes in the Senate starting next January to convict Trump of impeachable offenses and send him packing.
I understand how difficult this may seem. Both times Trump was impeached in the House, he was saved by the Constitution’s requirement that two-thirds of the Senate (67 senators, assuming all 100 are present) convict in order to remove a president.
The highest Senate vote count against Trump came in 2021, and it was 10 votes short of the constitutional requirement. Fifty-seven senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict him of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in U.S. Senate history, but it still fell well short of the 67 votes needed to convict Trump.
So why do I think it’s possible now? Because public sentiment has swung further against Trump now than it was in 2021. And it’s likely to swing even further against him, because he’s going out of his mind at a rapid rate.
The way to accomplish this is to defeat enough incumbent Republican senators who are up for reelection in 2026 to create a Democratic majority in that chamber, totaling some 54 votes, and pressure at least 13 Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to vote to convict him.
That’s not impossible. In the upcoming midterms it’s likely that Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins will be replaced by a Democrat (either Janet Mills or Graham Platner). I also assume that former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper will replace Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who’s retiring.
And I’d like to believe that the good people of Ohio will see the light and reelect Sherrod Brown over Jon Husted, the dullard who was appointed to fill the remainder of JD Vance’s term.
James Talarico could take the Texas Republican Senate seat now occupied by John Cornyn. In Alaska, I’d put odds on Mary Peltola defeating incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. In Nebraska, assume that Dan Osborn prevails over incumbent Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. And so on.
Republican senators last elected in 2022 who will be on the ballot in November 2028 include some who are vulnerable because they’re in swing states, such as North Carolina’s Ted Budd and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson; or are in states that could be competitive, such as Indiana’s Todd Young; or are vulnerable to internal party shifts, such as Louisiana’s John Kennedy and South Carolina’s Tim Scott.
Those vulnerabilities mean that their constituents could push them to vote to convict Trump in an impeachment, or else threaten to vote against themin 2028.
So it’s possible to get the 67 Senate votes, my friends. And it’s absolutely necessary that we try.
The vast No Kings demonstrations should be considered a prelude to targeting enough Republican Senate incumbents and open races to flip the Senate this fall, and pressuring Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to do their constitutional duty.
Now is the time to show the size and intensity of America’s commitment to removing Trump from office, for the good of us all.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.*}:
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an 4 26 Conservative Bill Kristol urges push for 'Mad King' Trump impeachment - Alternet.org
PINGREE CHRIS MURPHY AND ---?
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