britt, katie Sen

DISASTER SOTU REBIT?

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The deep-red state of Alabama is staring down the barrel of having to repay millions of dollars back to the federal government as a result of President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Now, Alabama.com reports Sen. Tommy Tuberville — who approved the bill — is frantically trying to do damage control.

“Sen. Tommy Tuberville is working with the state to ‘reduce the error rate’ in the local SNAP program, a metric that could lead to the state picking up a massive bill for the project in the near future,” reports AL.com. “Tuberville’s office made the statement Tuesday after Alabama food banks urged him and Sen. Katie Britt to support a two-year buffer before the state must begin making cost-sharing payments for its SNAP program.”

After Trump signed his signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law in July 2025, states with SNAP payment error rates greater than 6 percent must pay a share of benefit costs, with the amount depending on how far a state’s error rate exceeds that threshold. Poverty-stricken red states like Alabama and Mississippi are more likely to feel the sting of the loss while crunching their budgets in the next legislative session.

Alabama had a payment error rate of 9.52 percent in the fiscal year 2025 and would be responsible for 10 percent of its SNAP costs, or approximately $174 million.

In August, AL.com reported leaders and partners of Alabama food banks urged Tuberville and Britt to support a two-year waiver that would spare the state’s SNAP program from paying millions in cost-sharing payments until fiscal year 2029, and Tuberville’s office immediately signed on with delaying the worst damage of he and Trump’s budget law.

“Sen. Tuberville’s team is in talks with the state agency that manages the SNAP program to determine what efforts they can make to reduce the error rate,” stand-in Alabama governor’s communications director, Mallory Jaspers told AL.com

Tuberville and most Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate approved slapping states with reimbursement demands to fund the extension of Trump’s tax breaks, which critics say largely go to higher income brackets. But the errors they target rarely result from fraud, according to Michael Ledger, CEO of Feeding the Gulf Coast.

“We are talking about penalties to states because of administrative errors.

Administrative errors are not fraud. Fraud only runs 1 percent to 2 percent,” Ledger told AL.com, adding that Alabama’s Department of Human Resources is laboring to lower the state’s error rate, but it will “take time for results to appear.”

In the meantime, AL.com reports Alabama faces two possible outcomes if the waiver is not approved: the state will fund the cost-sharing payment, or it potentially could lose its SNAP program.

“To pay the cost share, state lawmakers would need to identify $174 million in the fiscal year 2027 budget. If lawmakers cannot or will not allocate the funding, Alabama would have to reduce the number of SNAP participants or opt out of the program entirely,” said AL.com reporter Michael Yielding.

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The GOP's once sure-fire odds to retain their Senate majority in the midterms are looking bleaker every day, but according to a new report from Politico, some in the party are plotting a "coup" that could save them from a complete wipeout: flipping John Fetterman, the increasingly ostracized Democratic senator.

Fetterman was first elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania in 2022, besting the Trump-backed Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and helping Democrats defy the odds and grow their majority in the chamber. Initially styling himself as a working-class progressive champion, he has since made a major shift away from his own party, voicing support for various initiatives and nominees from President Donald Trump and breaking the Democratic minority on several key votes.

Now regularly polling as one of the least popular lawmakers with the Democratic base, Fetterman's days in Congress are considered numbered. That is, unless Republicans can pull off their gamble of trying to convince him to become one of them, as laid out on Monday by Politico.

"It’s a few days after the election this November, and the results have become clear: Democrats have netted the four seats they need to claim a Senate majority," Politico's report read. "But then there’s a disturbance in the force: Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump persuade Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) to switch parties or at least become an independent to ensure Republicans retain power in the chamber. It’s a scenario that’s becoming less fantastical by the day."

Fetterman himself has repeatedly dismissed the notion that he might swap parties, noting his record of voting along Democratic lines 93 percent of the time and admitting that he would make for a "sh——y Republican." Despite that, he has also frequently lamented about feeling poorly treated by his Democratic colleagues, and polls show that he has grown increasingly popular with Republican voters.

According to Politico, Trump has pledged complete support for the Pennsylvania senator if he makes the switch to the GOP, offering a full-throated endorsement and substantial monetary resources from the party's warchest.

"A handful of Senate Republicans are also gently feeling out Fetterman and responding to his concerns over the prospect of defecting from the Democratic Party, multiple high-level GOP officials tell me," Politico's Jonathan Martin explained. "If Fetterman does flip, according to officials who were given anonymity to talk about sensitive matters, it will be thanks in large part to his deepening friendship with a pair of senators and their high-profile spouses: Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and his wife Dina, and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and her husband, Wesley."

Despite his public protestation, Martin claimed that Fetterman is less hostile towards the idea in private.

"When one senior Republican recently brought up the idea of becoming an independent to Fetterman, he absorbed the suggestion and didn’t embrace or reject the overture, according to a GOP official familiar with the conversation," Martin added.

Aside from the fact that he still sincerely holds many liberal values, Fetterman is reportedly also hesitant about the prospect due to Trump's caustic treatment of Republicans who break with him on key issues, something the senator is likely to do often.

"If Republicans can’t tolerate even Tillis, Fetterman suggested, how would they accept somebody who supports abortion rights, gay rights, legalizing marijuana and is pro-labor? (He flies the pride flag outside his Senate office.) Senate Republicans have reminded the Pennsylvanian that there are members of their conference who are more moderate on each of those issues," Martin wrote.

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'There are limits': Billions at stake as farmers hit on all sides by Trump policies

TRUMP MUSK DOGE FUCKS FARMERS 2 BILLION/YR 2 25

Played for suckers: Kansas farmer blasts Trump voters in scathing editorial

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'I feel so stupid': These 'horrified' Trump voters are having serious buyer’s remorse

'Act of God': Trump-supporting farmers reel from funding cuts

ALABAMA TOP 2 JOBS BRITT ASK WAIVERS

praised by trump on ivf fr of so recover from fail? 9 24?

thom an 10 24

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— Republican attorneys general go to court to demand more pregnant 15-year-olds. This story sounds too bizarre to be true, but Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, Kansas Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Idaho Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador have filed a lawsuit in federal court — presumably aiming for an eventual hearing before the Supreme Court — claiming that their states are being harmed, population-wise, by the availability of abortion drugs that can be shipped into their states by mail.

They want shipping Mifepristone outlawed nationwide. The proof of the harm, they say, is that they are not seeing enough pregnant teenagers. The lawsuit is explicit (page 190): “Defendants’ efforts enabling the remote dispensing of abortion drugs has caused abortions for women in Plaintiff States and decreased births in Plaintiff States. This is a sovereign injury to the State in itself. … When data is examined in a way that reflects sensitivity to expected birth rates, these estimates strikingly ‘do not show evidence of an increase in births to teenagers aged 15-19,’ even in states with long driving distances despite the fact that ‘women aged 15-19 … are more responsive to driving distances to abortion facilities than older women.’”

They then claim that this “proof” that availability of mailed abortion pills are causing the drop in pregnancies among girls 15-19 years old is an “injury” to their states because it lowers their potential population. This is getting wild, but wait until the Supreme Court authorizes Red states to begin monitoring the menstrual periods of fertile girls and women; Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt has already introduced federal legislation requiring companies selling devices that track ovulation to report their results to state agencies or a federal database, including police agencies nationwide, so pregnancies can be caught and tracked. Republicans won’t be happy until every girl in America grows up the way Amy Coney Barrett did in her People of Praise Catholic cult where she was referred to as a “Handmaiden.”

— And now, to the delight of Republican lawmakers and police the US government has bought a tool that can track you by your cellphone to abortion clinics anywhere in the country. Locate X is a product from Babel Street which our government has been using since the Trump administration; it’s capable of tracking every cellphone in the country with remarkable location accuracy. The folks at 404 Media did a trial run of it focused on tracking people to and from abortion clinics, and the process was startlingly easy. When Ted Cruz, JD Vance, and the rest of the GOP forced-birth crowd again gain control of the federal government, get ready. They’re chomping at the bit…

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— Scientists have developed lab-grown meat that is healthier, easier on the planet, and, when manufactured at scale, cheaper than beef, pork, or chicken. The animal ag industry freaked out and threw a bunch of cash at Republican members of Congress, who are now trying to outlaw the product before the companies developing it can get to scale. Even the buggywhip makers back in the day didn’t think the way to protect their industry was to buy off politicians (of course that was before five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery).

— Climate change is devastating our planet and fine particle emissions from trucks cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and illnesses from heart disease, COPD, asthma, and cancer every year. To solve the problem, the EPA put forward new truck emission standards that will phase in between 2027 and 2032. This week, twenty-seven Republican-controlled states whose politicians take money from the fossil fuel industry sued to block the rules and protect the profits of the trucking and petroleum industries.

— Title IX of the federal code, which forbids gender-based discrimination in education, is being extended by the Department of Education to protect members of the queer community. Rightwing Christian groups, which provide billions of dollars and millions of votes to Republicans, pinged state-level politicians, so now Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Oklahoma have filed suit before hand-picked rightwing judges to allow schools to legally trash LGBTQ+ students.

— The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) promulgated a new rule limiting credit card late fees to $8 each, protecting America’s most vulnerable families. The banks pulled the GOP’s chain and Republican senators Tim Scott, John Thune, John Barrasso, Jerry Moran, John Boozman, Steve Daines, Mike Rounds, Thom Tillis, Marsha Blackburn, Kevin Cramer, Mike Braun, Bill Hagerty, and Katie Britt introduced legislation to reverse the policy and allow banks to again screw low-income people.

— In 2003, George W. Bush signed legislation to privatize Medicare through the so-called Medicare Advantage scam, which last year overcharged our government more than $140 billion while denying millions of claims from Americans unfortunate enough to have signed up for it. Republicans on the take from the insurance industry are now pushing a plan to gut or even shut down real Medicare, leaving all seniors to the tender mercies of this predatory industry.

— Ultra-processed foods are accused of causing obesity, diabetes, cancer, and host of other illnesses both physical and mental: American children, who consume as much as two-thirds of their calories from these products, are experiencing an epidemic of obesity and diseases associated with it. With Republican politicians running interference for them, the processed food industry has now succeeded in getting their ultra-processed “food” products placed in thousands of school lunch programs, paid for with our tax dollars. As The Washington Post noted a few months ago, “Republicans have continued to fight stricter standards” and, “Some Republicans are now threatening to block the USDA from further limiting sodium and reducing added sugar in milk…”

alternet 2 24 no lnx

How do you explain a MAGA woman?

Sen. Katie Britt with Vice President Kamala Harris in January 2023 (Creative Commons)

D. Earl Stephens

March 15, 2024

As a white, American man I can explain Republicans’ repulsive MAGA men pretty easily: Basically, they know they are inferior, and are lashing out because they are being left behind by an evolving world led increasingly by women and people of color.

Rather than owning this and working on themselves to become better people, they have done exactly what you’d expect a bunch of lowlifes to do: blame somebody else for their shortcomings. Inadequate losers like this might even go as far as blaming everything and anything but themselves for losing an election by more than seven million votes.

Inadequate losers like this might even resort to violence and stomp law enforcement officers to death, while sending lawmakers from both political parties running for their lives through the halls of our nation’s Capitol …

Inadequate losers like this might even defend these incredibly lawless, reckless acts instead of condemning them.

READ: Remembering Trump and Kushner's deadly, evil plan

So, yeah, explaining MAGA “men” in this country comes pretty easily to me.

How then do you explain MAGA women?

This one has confounded me for years because there is nothing that would suggest any woman should be subjected to being in the general vicinity of any of these low-grade MAGA “men” much less support them.

Thankfully, they don’t proliferate in the same robust numbers as their male cohorts, but still there are millions of ‘em, and as a dad of two daughters I find it deeply, deeply disturbing.

What could possibly recommend a woman to follow a Republican Party that increasingly has absolutely no respect for them?

After all, the unquestioned leader of this party — which in my view is quickly devolving into a cult — is a convicted rapist, brags of grabbing women because he can, has disparaged them in truly disgusting ways, calling them names like “horseface” “fat” “slobs” “pigs” “nasty” … and used to stroll into the dressing rooms of the Miss USA Pageants he owned to “inspect” teenage girls. His words: “You know they’re standing there with no clothes, and you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”

This is the kind of repulsive dirt you’d figure a mom would warn her teenage daughter to stay as far away from as possible.

So how can ANY woman support this?

I’m typing loudly about this one today because of what transpired last Thursday night and then bled into the weekend.

In the wake of Joe Biden’s sensational State of the Union address, Alabama Senator Katie Britt (pictured) showed up on the scene to deliver one of the most bizarre, dangerous rebuttals in American history.

It truly needs to be seen to be believed, and if I ran the Democratic Party I would have made sure everybody had in fact seen it by now. It is long past time America understands just how twisted, toxic and dangerous Christian Nationalism has become, and how it can literally rot a person’s mind.

Britt spent the better part of 20 minutes spewing greasy schmaltz from the confines of her empty, spotless kitchen. That’s right: HER KITCHEN. Because where else would you expect a serious woman to be working in the Year 2024?

And look, if her weird, creepy delivery from inside her kitchen was the only thing of note, it would have at least served the delicious purpose of making Biden look even better than already did after his fiery speech ... but there was also something very un-Christian-like and serious happening as she stood grinning among all her appliances: She was lying.

And not just lying a little, she was lying a lot, which is also the absolute hallmark of these anti-American Christian Nationalists.

Britt breathlessly spun a tale about our southern border, because nothing says Republican like scaring the shit out of people about other people hoping for something better.

This border tale was hair-raising, and terrifying, but Britt bravely went forward with it from the safety of her kitchen.

Britt told the world how she had met a woman at the border who said that she had been raped thousands of times in a sex trafficking operation run by cartels, starting at age 12. It was horrible, but at least she was showing concern — however ironically —for a woman being abused by men …

“We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it,” she gushed. “President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace.”

Nobody gave Britt’s harrowing story much thought, because there was no way in hell the message could have been any worse than the ridiculous messenger.

Except it somehow was. Thanks to the work of an independent journalist Jonathan Katz, we learned a day later that Britt’s story was complete bull.

Oh, the young woman was allegedly raped alright, but it happened during the George W. Bush administration some 20 years ago, and these awful things didn’t happen on the border, they happened IN Mexico far from the border.

Well, all this caused quite a stir, and as of this typing Britt still has not apologized, because that, too, is a calling card of MAGA. Never apologize.

Before moving on to yet stranger things, let’s ask why it took an independent journalist to lay all this out on TikTok, instead of all those stellar journalists in our mainstream media, who were probably too busy conducting some political poll, instead.

The people in the mainstream media need to get their collective heads out of their asses but quick. There’s an ongoing, relentless attack on our Democracy and the truth that could use their considerable attention.

Anyway, by the time the weekend rolled around MAGA Republicans were in full damage control.

So they thought is was a dandy idea to trot out another woman, Nancy Mace, to appear on George Stephanopoulos’ Sunday news show, This Week, on ABC to try to shift attention away from the careening Britt.

Mace is a MAGA Republican congresswoman from South Carolina — it’s ALWAYS South Carolina or Alabama with these phonies — who has presumably been ordered by Trump to parlay her good looks into TV attack dog and a place alongside him at the head table at Mar-a-Lago where he can pat her on the head and say, “That’s a good girl, Nancy.”

Mace is a super-curious case because she actually had the audacity to be critical of Trump’s attack on America January 6, 2021, even going so far as suggesting he should never hold office again. Well, that got Trump’s attention but quick and he went on a verbal-abuse tour, calling Mace among other things, “nasty.”

Mace then did something remarkable in Republican circles, she carried on, and won her congressional race in South Carolina, despite Trump’s relentless verbal abuse.

So what did she do to celebrate her freedom from the orange, two-ton menace? She decided to get back in her corner like a good little girl, and once again leashed herself to Trump.

You can’t make this stuff up. What self-respecting woman does this?

Well Mace was in fine form Sunday, and when Stephanopoulos asked how she could support a man who provably has absolutely zero respect for women, Mace didn’t blink, and alleged this: “As a rape victim who’s been shamed for years now because of her rape, you’re trying to shame me again.”

This is called deflecting. She didn’t even bother trying to deal with a question that has only one correct answer.

The clip will show Stephanopoulos obviously wasn’t shaming Mace, but everybody with a heart can acknowledge how terrible rape is. Unless, I guess, if it’s Trump who’s doing the raping …

Because just like that Mace threw his rape victim, E. Jean Carroll, in front of her careening bus. Mace accused Carroll of harming other victims of rape because of Carroll’s comments about how she planned to spend the tens of million she was awarded in her case against Trump.

If anybody has the right to crow about her hard-fought victory over her sickly abuser it is Carroll, and if anybody should be able to understand that, you’d think it would be another woman who was raped for crying out loud.

The classy Carroll didn’t take the bait, and typed this on social media to Mace following the bizarre interview: “I salute all survivors for their strength, endurance, and holding on to their sanity.”

Since that interview, Mace has been declaring victory across every social media platform on Earth and has continued to batter Stephanopoulos for “shaming” her.

She never bothered to answer the question about Trump, because, I guess, of her sickening subservience to the pathetic man.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s how you explain a MAGA woman ...

NOW READ: The days of trickle-down economics are over

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.

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Biden was forceful, aggressive and focused during his State of the Union address on Thursday night, March 7, tackling everything from abortion rights and Obamacare to military aide for Ukraine. Biden never mentioned likely GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump by name during his speech, only referring to him as "my predecessor." Yet he made a strong case for rejecting MAGA policies in the November election.

Biden's SOTU was followed by a rebuttal from Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama). Democrats, not surprisingly, have been attacking Britt's speech as a weak response to a fiery, on-target address. But the criticism is not only coming from members of Biden's party.

The Daily Beast's Jake Lahut, in an article published the next morning, stresses that Britt's speech was so bad that even Republicans are slamming it.

"The freshman senator is considered a rising star in the party," Lahut explains. "But her speech’s intense tone — with an over-the-top dramatic cadence that was delivered in a kitchen — left political operatives and observers struggling to make sense of it. In particular, some Republicans watched the high-profile speech with a grimace."...

judd

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andrew Ross Sorkin speaks with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried during the New York Times DealBook Summit on November 30, 2022 (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, burst onto the political scene and cast himself as the financial savior of the Democratic Party. In May, SBF said he was prepared to spend up to $1 billion to help Democrats win in 2022 and 2024.

Like many of SBF's claims, that turned out to be bluster. Public campaign finance filings show that SBF spent just $41 million in the 2022 midterm elections. Much of that was spent propping up unsuccessful Democratic primary candidates, including $11 million to Carrick Flynn, who lost a Congressional primary in Oregon. Still, SBF made substantial donations to Democratic Super PACs, including $6 million to the House Majority PAC, the Super PAC affiliated with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The spending made SBF one of the top two donors to Democrats in the 2022 cycle. (Billionaire George Soros technically spent more, but most of it was donated to Soros' own PAC and not distributed.)

When FTX collapsed and declared bankruptcy, the media portrayed it as a serious blow to Democrats.

Even based on public campaign finance reports, this was an oversimplification. SBF donated to Republicans favorable to crypto, including Senator-elect Katie Britt (R-AL), Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). SBF also donated to the National Republican Campaign Committee, which supports the election of Republicans to the House. Further, another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, publicly donated about $23 million in the midterms, and almost all of it went to Republicans.

FTX itself donated to a slew of Republican Super PACs just before the election, including $1 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), $750,000 to Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), and 150,000 to the American Patriots PAC. These donations would have almost certainly required the approval of SBF, the company's then-CEO.

Now, SBF has admitted that his image as a top supporter of Democratic candidates was a ruse. After FTX's bankruptcy, in a phone interview with crypto content creator Tiffany Fong, SBF said that he gave just as much money to Republicans in the 2022 cycle. SBF just made sure that those donations were secret.

I donated about the same amount to both parties this year. That is not generally known because, despite Citizens United being literally the highest-profile Supreme Court case of the decade and the thing everyone talks about when they talk about campaign finance, for some reason, in practice, no one can possibly fathom the idea that someone in practice actually gave dark. All my Republican donations were dark. And the reason was not for regulatory reasons. It's just reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to a Republican. They are all secretly liberal and didn't want to have that fight. So I made all the Republican ones dark.

If SBF is telling the truth, it would make him one of the Republicans' top donors.Since much of SBF's spending on behalf of Democrats went to failed Democratic primary candidates, it's possible that SBF spent significantly more helping Republicans than Democrats in the general election.

SBF blames "reporters" for his deception, but he chose to hold himself out as someone who was willing to spend $1 billion to elect Democrats. That generated an enormous amount of media coverage and raised the profile of FTX. All the while, he was engaged in the much more mundane task of buying influence from both parties. How did SBF do it?

The top Super PAC for Republican Senate candidates was Mitch McConnell's SLF. But the largest donor, by far, to the SLF is One Nation. Through September 30, 2022, One Nation donated $53.5 million to the SLF. Like the SLF, One Nation is run by Steven Law, a former Chief of Staff to McConnell. But unlike the SLF, One Nation is organized as a 501(c)4 non-profit organization and can keep its donors secret. One Nation can collect unlimited donations from people like SBF, keep their identities secret, and then pass the money on to the SLF. The top Super PAC for Republican House candidates, CLF, also has an affiliated non-profit, the American Action Network, that operates the same way.

The truth about SBF's political spending is an example of his duplicity. But, more importantly, it illustrates how the public has no idea who is actually funding candidates in the United States. The largest sums of money spent on elections come from anonymous donors. Making disclosure effectively optional allows unscrupulous individuals like SBF to manipulate public perception.

The DISCLOSE Act is one solution to this problem. It would require "organizations spending money in elections – including super PACs and 501(c)(4) dark money groups – to promptly disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle." If the DISCLOSE Act was law, SBF's donations to all candidates would be public. The bill would also "crack down on the use of shell corporations to hide the identity of the donor by requiring companies spending money in elections to disclose their true owners."

The Senate brought the DISCLOSE Act up for a vote in September. All Democratic members voted for it, and all Republican members opposed it. Since the bill required 60 votes to pass, it failed.

"The American people are fed up with dark money influence campaigns that rig their government against them and stymie their priorities," Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sponsored the legislation, said. "The DISCLOSE Act would shine a light on special interest spending to neutralize its toxic effect, giving Americans’ voices a chance to be heard. Republicans heeded the wishes of dark money donors today, but the fight to pass this bill isn’t over."