Cruelty is Back Happy Friday. There are 634 days until the midterm elections. A dangerous man gets confirmed, a jobs report that might be real and the cruelty is back. Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Youngman Feb 7 Be advised: This newsletter uses profanity. But Trump uses rubes, and that shit is way worse. Note: We’ve got a real shocker for you today, Sexy Patriots. Set your faces to stunned. Because you’re not gonna believe it but that guy who was doing the Hitler salute a couple weeks ago and earlier this week called for “white South African” immigrants had a guy who was working for him who’s a racist. Crazy, right? The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com A staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge has links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics Thu, 06 Feb 2025 20:44:05 GMT View on Bluesky Goodness! How did that racist shit get in the racist shit club?! How did he slip past all those other racists?! How could Elon Leon miss this guy at his cross burnings?! Yeah, if it seems like we’re being sarcastic, that’s only because we are laying on the sarcasm pretty goddamn thick. Finding a racist in this crowd is like finding fucking water in the ocean. But there’s a lesson of hope here. We don’t know why this racist little fuck was different than all the other racist little fucks and got the shunning he so richly deserves. And frankly we don’t care. Because at the end of the day this is one less racist little fuck messing around with our shit and that’s a win. And that in and of itself is a reminder that we ain’t dead yet and we can still notch victories over these sick sonsofbitches even if we have to watch them go down one racist little fuck at a time. So yeah that’s one down and about eleventy kajillion to go, but the journey of a thousand miles and all that shit. Keep your heads up, SPs. Stay in the fight. Fuck the racist little fucks. Y’all have a blessed day. Note two: Need more hope? Then read this interview with Sen. Brian Schatz who actually gets it. More: New Yorker Note three: It’s a damn miracle! John Fettermanchin is gonna vote against Tulski Gabbard and RFK Brainworm. It’s really the bare minimum, but we apparently can’t even take that for granted these days. Thanks for not sucking for once this week. More: MSN Note four: Gosh. It sure is a mystery why one of Pam Bondi’s first moves was disbanding a task force that goes after Russian oligarchs. Guess our government works for them now. More: AP Note five: Oh. Trump must be shitting ketchup this morning. Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social The new cover of TIME. Fri, 07 Feb 2025 14:10:20 GMT View on Bluesky Note six: The NCAA really embraced bigotry against trans people fast as hell. We can’t believe the dysfunctional organization that spent decades getting rich off the labor of Black kids would be so shitty. More: AP Note seven: USAID is gonna go from about 10,000 employees to less than 300. Children will die because of this. So where are all those objective tv journos who were openly sobbing about the Afghanistan withdrawal? More: Reuters Note eight: We’re told that Elon Leon is destroying the federal government because we have to cut our spending. The reality? Trump’s tax cuts for Leon will add $5 fucking trillion to the debt. More: CRFB Note nine: Politico is fighting for its life after Elon Leon and Trump made them an enemy yesterday. As we mentioned in the Thursday TBS, we find it pretty hilarious even though we probably shouldn’t. More: The Hill Note 10: We’re starting to think our convicted felon president is full of shit with that whole law and order thing. And those Q people are full of shit about everything. Robert Downen @robertdownen.bsky.social NEW: A Houston man and Jan. 6 defendant has been arrested for a child sex crime -- two weeks after he was pardoned by Trump and released from a six-year prison stint for assaulting police with bear spray and a metal whip. Thu, 06 Feb 2025 23:03:13 GMT View on Bluesky Note 11: So this is pretty fucked up. The New York Times is reporting that the CDC posted — and then deleted — data on how the bird flu might be able to spread to cats and then people. It seems pretty obvious that Trump’s plan for the next pandemic is just try to keep it a secret. More: NY Times Note 12: Update to the opening note — Leon is going all in to try and save his racist little fuck staffer. He’s even attacking the WSJ reporter who broke the story, calling her “disgusting and cruel” and calling for her to be fired. Sorry to get your hopes up. Note 13: Thank you to Judge Amy Berman Jackson for making sure that Michael Fanone’s heroism is etched in the record. And fuck Trump for pardoning the scum who almost killed him. More: Empty Wheel Note 14: We’re not gonna give deranged attention whore Kanye West what he so desperately craves except to say sure, nazi fuck, keep asking Trump to pardon Diddy. We want the whole world to know Trump is cool with that evil shit. More: Deadline Note 15: LOL! This is how you do it! Ellen L. Weintraub @ellenlweintraub.bsky.social Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC. There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it. I've been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon. Thu, 06 Feb 2025 23:41:05 GMT View on Bluesky Note 16: We sure do love President Zelensky. We especially love how he called out Tucker Carlson for “licking [Putin’s] ass.” Well said, sir. More: The Independent Note 17: Everything is totally fucked, and there’s really no sugarcoating that. But a lot of what we’re seeing is just hype. Trump wants us demoralized. Just remember that the lawsuits have already started, and a lot of this dumb shit is going nowhere. More: NBC Note 18: The National Cryptologic Museum literally covered up pictures of women and people of color in its Hall of Honor. After being shamed for this racist bullshit, they folded. Keep. Fighting. Back. More: NPR Note 19: For today’s Happy Ending, well, we were kinda struggling to find something. And then we saw Rep. Maxwell Frost tweeting from the Department of Education, where he and other members of Congress are trying to get in and just had federal cops sicced on them. The resistance isn’t going anywhere, y’all. The fight is just starting. Note 20: And on that much-needed note, let’s go do some news! We sure hope y’all have a great weekend. And if you watch the Super Bowl, remember to avoid the orange. Love y’all! Uh-oh So there are a lot of obvious scumbags who should never be allowed to serve in government but have been nominated by Trump all the same. You know their names because they’re politics famous, like RFK and Tulski. But Russell Vought might be the most dangerous of them all, and he was confirmed yesterday. Democrats did everything they could to stop Vought, the author of Project 2025, someone who told the Senate recently that the 2020 election was “rigged” and someone who said he wants the federal workforce to be “traumatized.” Vought is about to cause a lot of pain and destruction, and we hope people like Susan Collins are ready to eat it. More: AP Real or no real? Well we got a jobs report this morning, and it came in below expectations. But that ain’t the real problem. The real problem is that we have no idea if this shit is even real anymore. Government data is suspect these days. That said, in Joe Biden’s last month in office, the economy ostensibly added 143,000 jobs last month, bringing the unemployment rate down to 4 percent. From now on, expect jobs reports that say Trump created a kabillion jobs and the unemployment rate is 0.0 percent forever. More: NBC Evil In all the chaos and bullshit, it can be easy to forget sometimes just how fucking evil the people we’re up against really are. But the Trump administration is making a deal to house immigrants in fucking shipping containers, and DOJ told the Center for Missing and Exploited Children that it had to stop helping trans kids. Like we said — pure fucking evil. Like how damaged of a human being do you have to be to even come up with this way to attack trans kids who are missing? These are some truly sick fucks we’re up against. Hat-tip to indie journalist Marisa Kabas for yet another important scoop. More: Semafor, Verge Today’s clips How Trump Saved Elon: The USAID Starlink Probe Cover Up Adam Parkhomenko · 2:41 AM Donald Trump’s dramatic and vile dismantling of USAID came as USAID’s inspector general was conducting an investigation involving Musk’s company, Starlink. In three steps, Trump’s administration killed the investigation that was sure to embarrass Elon’s company. Read full story President Donald Trump’s calls for the United States to “take over” and “develop” the Gaza Strip have handed jihadist terrorist groups a rallying cry to recruit and inspire attacks against Americans at home and abroad, security experts and former intelligence officials say. More: NBC Democratic attorneys general in several states vowed Thursday to file a lawsuit to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing federal payment systems containing Americans’ sensitive personal information. More: HuffPost Under pressure from President Donald Trump and a loyalist at the FCC, CBS News publicly released transcripts and raw video footage as part of an investigation into allegations of “news distortion” over its 2024 election interview with Kamala Harris. More: Mediaite The Alt Media with Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Youngman is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.