DNC Autopsy Missed 41,000 Dead People
Democratic Party report on 2024 leaves party still unsure on why it lost and whether breaking the law to help Israel might not have helped
May 22: DNC report on 2024 election omits Gaza, Israel, and substantiveness … Senate GOP rebels against Trump on pretty much everything except all the criminal shit they’re fine with … New Trump Fed chair also expected to not do what Trump wants … Broadview 6 who protested ICE are free and the prosecutors may be in hot water …
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Excuse me, but I was told autopsies include examinations of dead bodies. May I speak to the manager?
One year after the horrific Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, when Americans were about to go to the polls in 2024, Israel’s horrific counterattack on Gaza had killed more than 41,000 people.
Under then-Pres. Joe Biden — look it up, it’s true! — the U.S. was violating its own laws about arming crimes against humanity, specifically the laws that say not to. Did this illegal accessory-to-massacre policy hurt Democrats at the polls, albeit less than it hurt Gazans in Gaza?
Well, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) report on 2024, the party’s election autopsy, released Thursday, was commissioned to answer questions exactly like that and didn’t.
Now, smarty-pants me, when I saw on Thursday that the DNC autopsy … naughtopsy? … was released publicly (because someone leaked it to CNN), I quickly Ctrl-Fed it for any mention of Gaza, Israel, or Palestinians. Newsfuckers, there was naught.
Then I less-quickly dug up the February TFN that included a report that the autopsy authors told Palestinian advocates that they had found the party’s position on Gaza and Israel and the latter’s decimation of the former to be a “net negative” for the party. Well, people even more smarty-pants than me did the same thing even quicklier, goldarn it.
Axios reported Thursday that, yep, autopsy researchers concluded that Gaza hurt the party, albeit less than the party hurt Gaza. So not only was the erasure of Gaza erased from U.S. policy, the policy erasure of Gaza’s erasure was erased from the autopsy on the impact of U.S. policy, which we now know because we have the report that DNC Chair Ken Martin said he would release and then said he wouldn’t release and then did release after someone else released it to CNN.
According to The Intercept, the report doesn’t mention “Israel,” “Palestine,” “Arab American,” or “Muslim.”
And according to my own Ctrl-F(uck)ing, it also doesn’t mention “Christian.” As in, the party accommodating Christian nationalism.
And people wonder why TFN’s position is that you should donate to candidates and causes, not Democratic committees! (I’m kidding, I’m kidding; no one wonders that.)
PS Martin and the DNC are blaming the political operative who did the report for doing it badly and not even finishing doing it badly. Bold move by Martin, since it’s tough to scapegoat someone when you were in charge of picking someone good so you wouldn’t need to scapegoat them.
The Floodgates Are Open and Not Just Because Trump Defunded Floodgates
Newsfuckers, my big TFN fear this morning is that I’ve forgotten one of the many ways the Senate Republicans have said eff you to you-know-who in just the past 24 hours.
Senate Republicans are outraged over Pres. Donald Trump pushing out colleagues for disloyalty the way they’re not outraged at Trump kidnapping and murdering people, destroying the environment, starving hundreds of thousands of people of food and medicine, transferring billions of dollars from America’s neediest to America’s greediest, or even destroying the East Wing of the White House the way Osama bin Laden wanted to.
They’re taking it out on Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off his Jan. 6 temp workers.
Punchbowl News reports that Senate Republicans were “incredibly hostile” with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a meeting Thursday.
How angry were Senate Republicans? Not storm-the-Capitol-and-rape-Democrats hostile, but mighty steamed!
Reportedly, some of them suggested revisions to the slush fund such as “not allowing people convicted of violence against cops to be eligible for a payout.” Ooh! Blanche must have blanched at that!
Well, here’s what I have to say about that: Fuck that.
I get the focus on the people who assaulted cops. I spoke with one of those cops, Michael Fanone, last year. Those cops were individual human beings who were put in a terrible situation defending our democracy.
But that’s the point. They were there because democracy is worth defending (plus good salary + benefits). Democracy is so esteemed by our government and its leaders that it’s worth the sacrifice of human life.
And yet Republicans Thursday pushed to exclude only those people who assaulted the cops — not the entire mob who attacked the democracy that those cops were defending. And lord fuck a frog, some Democrats are saying this, too.
I hope my mic is on, because, ahem: Every Jan. 6er who entered the Capitol Building without a tour pass on a lanyard was guilty of attacking not just individual cops but the entire country. Attacking all of us. To steal our right to vote. To murder our representatives and the principles to which we consider life itself subordinate. Live free or die. Et fucking cetera, motherfuckers.
Republicans and Democrats alike should fight to somehow punish every single pardoned Jan. 6er who didn’t already do their time. Hit them with civil lawsuits. Give them shows on CBS and then cancel them. Whatever it takes.
That said, Senate Republicans were so rough on Blanche and the executive branche that apparently Blanche may now qualify for the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
And they’re so over Trump that on Thursday they decided to blow up the June 1 deadline they had agreed on with Trump for passing $72 billion in still-more immigration-enforcement money. (They knew Democrats would stink up the vote by forcing votes on the slush fund and other stuff.)
So the Republicans literally left town for the Memorial Day weekend, which for them has already started and lasts a week.
And it’s not just the slush fund, Semafor reports. It’s the $1 billion in ballroom bucks, too.
Now we’re hearing new voices in the Trump-doubting chorus. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said Republicans came out of the Blanche meeting “no less upset,” calling the fund “Unexplainable.” (Senator, with all due respect — i.e. none — the fund is transparently explainable.)
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), a Christian Trump loyalist, defended some of the Senate rebels. “[T]hey also represent their state,” Lankford said, as if GOP senators have more than one constituent! How dare you, sir?
Even Trump, addressing whether he’s lost the Senate, said Thursday, “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Well, at least he still has the House…
NO, HE DOESN’T HAVE THE HOUSE House Republicans on Thursday pulled a vote on a resolution to force Trump (somehow) to pull troops from the Iran theater until he gets the constitutionally required war authorization from Congress.
How come? Because Republicans thought Trump might lose, the New York Times reports.
It’ll probably come back in June, when Congress comes back. And some Republicans who support it think it’ll pass. So don’t be surprised if Trump declares victory in Iran despite having achieved the opposite of his kaleidoscope of Iran goals.
TUCKER CARLSON DOESN’T SEE DEMOCRATS Former Fox host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday upped his criticisms of Trump, saying MAGA has effectively been killed. And, of course, blaming Israel.
“The last year has diminished American power at a rate some of us thought was unimaginable,” Carlson said, according to HuffPost. But dig the next sentence: “We couldn’t have foreseen, less than a year and a half ago ... the damage that this administration, led by that president, for whom we campaigned and liked personally, could do to this country.”
I’m sorry: “We”?
If Carlson’s royal “we” couldn’t have foreseen it, maybe he shouldn’t have dismissed the us half of the country that was two, three-, and foreseeing it. Hell, some were Project 2025seeing it!
It’s not enough to say that the America-hating left was actually right about the threat to America. These new never-Trumpers need to grapple publicly with why they fucked up and didn’t listen to the left.
Reality Also Saying Eff You to Trump
For years now, Pres. Donald Trump has been pissed at the Federal Reserve, the semi-autonomous central bank that sets interest rates because someone’s gotta decide exactly how much money private banks can extort from you the way The Bible says is even more abominational than pee-pee touching pee-pee.
Trump came back into office determined to make his own appointee, Chair Jerome Powell, lower interest rates. Powell wouldn’t do it, due to fears all that cash sloshing around (except among poor people) would spike demand for crap, spurring crap-makers to hike crap prices.
So Trump replaced Powell with Kevin Warsh, who’s being sworn in today at the White House.
But today, thanks to Trump raising prices with Iran War III-½, investors reportedly expect Warsh to raise interest rates.
On Tuesday, Trump said, “I’m going to let him do what he wants to do.” Loser.
World’s Biggest Nerds Team Up to Bully World’s Biggest Bully
This week, the biggest nerds in the world ganged up on the biggest bully in the world, their pounding noogies and relentless wedgies ultimately forcing Pres. Donald Trump to drop his plan to regulate their artificial “Artificial Intelligence.”
It was blatant theft … of the unproduced script for Revenge of the Nerds VI.
Previously, in Revenge of the Nerds V: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who straddles both worlds, has been worried about the potential of “AI” to destroy jobs. Not your job, mind you: The C-suite jobs that’ll be destroyed if “AI” is used to hack everything, including financial systems. So Bessent has been pushing for “AI” rules.
As a bully, Trump hates rules. But he also bores easily and Bessent grew boring so Trump agreed to announce some rules Thursday. Which brings us to said nerds and their aforementioned revenge VI.
The gang of nerds that attacked Trump on Wednesday and Thursday included: Money-losing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, passé-Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, and South Africa’s venture capitalist David Sacks who used to be Trump’s AI czar.
They were scared — like nerds! — that even voluntary rules could lead to the government requiring approval before nerds could release new “AI” monsters upon a very-suspecting public. Heaven forbid rich nerds not be allowed to just spew their shit on us at will. When has that ever gone wrong?
Beset by their nasal whining and brutal interpersonal awkwardness, Trump gave in.
He called off the executive order and Thursday’s planned announcement even after other, smaller nerds were already flying to Washington for it. Trump “explained” that he thought the new rules — which. were. voluntary. — could have stymied the growth of “AI,” which all of America (including Stymie, RIP) wants stymied.
Trump seems to think “AI” is good for the economy, even though it could hack the economy to death and even though when working properly it serves primarily to undermine human critical-thinking skills and replace human workers with digital workers whose work is digital slop.
Revenge of the Nerds VI is the first installment in the franchise to cross over with The Terminator universe.
REMINDER The prophecies about the dooms regulation might cause always turn out to be less worse than the dooms deregulation does cause.
New Deal regulation? The middle class and the world’s greatest economy.
Bipartisan (:::shudder:::) Wall Street deregulation in the name of modernization and competitiveness? The global mortgage crisis that de-modernized home ownership and increased competitiveness over sidewalk space for new homes consisting of blankets and stolen shopping carts.
Trump Hits Hegseth with Transitive Property of Losing
With Senate Republicans and reality teaming up to thwart Pres. Donald Trump at every turn, the most powerful man in the world on Thursday sought just one avenue where he could exert some power over somebody. Somebody pliable, somebody weak of mind…
You may have seen that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week canceled a deployment of more than 4,000 U.S. troops to Poland. Reportedly, it was part of a larger, strategic plan to reduce America’s military presence in Europe so that Europe would become more militaristic on its own because that always works out.
Trump called Hegseth to ask him WTF. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Trump asked Hegseth in a recent phone call why the troop deployment to Poland was canceled. Trump told Hegseth that the U.S. shouldn’t treat Poland poorly, given it is an American ally with close ties to the White House.”
On Thursday, Trump posted, “I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland.”
ICE Protesters Freed amid Stunning Revelations about Prosecutorial Evil
Last October, a grand jury indicted six protesters, including then-congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, for being mean to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicle in Broadview, IL, a Chicago suburb.
They became known as the Broadview Six, not to be confused with the Chicago Seven or Ocean’s Eleven, except that they, too, got away with it.
A federal judge Thursday dropped the charges against them — with prejudice, which the Trump administration usually likes but in this case means the charges cannot be refiled.
That’s not all. The judge came thisclose to convicting the prosecutors for virtually unprecedented corruption and evil.
U.S. Attorney General Andrew Boutros admitted his prosecutors misled the judge but didn’t mean to.
Judge April Perry suggested she might sanction prosecutors.
A prosecutor committed “vouching,” telling grand jurors to trust them, not the evidence.
A prosecutor had forbidden communications with a grand juror outside the grand jury room.
A prosecutor dismissed grand jurors who didn’t buy the prosecutors’ grand bullshit.
The case was initially rejected by the grand jury.
Prosecutors allowed the judge to continue believing wrongly that redactions in the grand jury transcript were just “IT issues.” (If only someone would regulate AI!)
For weeks, defense attorneys tried to get a look at what happened in the grand jury room. Finally, Perry agreed to read the transcript. She got one from the prosecutors. Redacted.
When Perry demanded an unredacted version, prosecutors abandoned the indictment. Perry said, fine, then she didn’t need to see the full transcript.
Defense attorneys responded, and I’m paraphrasing: “But!”
So Perry got the full transcript, the evildoing by prosecutors blew her mind, and now she appears to be weighing sanctions against what used to be one of the most respected U.S. attorneys’ offices in the nation.
RECOMMENDED WALLOWING If you’d like to roll around in the disemboweled viscera of Pres. Donald Trump’s corrupt prosecutors, TFN recommends this thread.
TIRED OF LOSING YET? Democracy Docket reports that other Trump prosecutors are suffering similarly Trumpian self-inflicted losses on another democracy front.
Judges in Maine and Wisconsin on Thursday, in cases about the Justice Department (DOJ) demanding access to state voter rolls, both ruled that the DOJ should get the fuck outta here.
Eight out of 31 DOJ lawsuits seeking voter rolls have now concluded, and Trump has won zero of them.
Mathematicians have long understood the mathematical relationship between eight and zero. Eight is eight more than zero but also infinite times more than zero.
Democracy Docket, which fights and tracks these cases, created a helpful graphic to illustrate these abstract mathematical concepts:
The DOJ says it wants to look for signs of voter fraud, because they’re impossible to find elsewhere. One judge Thursday said, yeah, the law doesn’t list looking for signs of voter fraud you can’t find elsewhere as a reason for accessing voter rolls so get the fuck outta here.
Is Kennedy Slow-Assassinating Obamacare?
It’s hard to focus simultaneously on two disastrous health-care debacles, but if The Fucking News can’t do a newsfucking twosome, who can?
Health (sic) and Human Services (sic) Secretary Robert Fuckup Kennedy, Jr., just fired two leaders of the task force that decides which people-killing problems insurance companies have to help you not get killed by if you’re participating in Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act.
Kennedy said the task force has been “lackadaisical,” implying excessive lollygagging and tomfoolery. To his credit, he also said the task force should have recommended that early Alzheimer’s screenings be included in Obamacare health plans.
On the other hand, one of the bounced doctors claims the administration has been squashing task force recommendations, saying, “The administration came after children’s immunizations, and now it’s coming after our mammograms and our other cancer screenings.”
University of Arizona Professor Emerita Elizabeth Jacobs, an epidemiologist and founding member of Defend Public Health, has written of “stealth” attempts to kill Obamacare and warned Thursday that Kennedy is “taking backdoor routes to cut preventive healthcare.”
Typically, Kennedy uses backdoor routes for deliveries of fresh roadkill. But seizing control of the Obamacare-recommending panel could be a way of killing Obamacare with a methodical stealth attack. Just to give a classic med-school example, rather than shooting the ACA in the belly up close during the California primaries, it’s as if the administration is using a sniper rifle from a sixth-story window in the School Book Depository building.
One Quickie
Pres. Donald Trump has hit a new low. In the polls, that is. The American Research Group says his job approval is now 31%. That’s lower than both terms but equal to the IQs of 31% of poll respondents. Renowned unpopular-president expert Karl Rove said Trump’s poll numbers are “dangerously low” when, in fact, they are dangerously high.
TCB
MEMORIAL DAY There will be no TFN on Memorial Day, which I didn’t even realize was Monday until Wednesday, which is why I’m only writing this Thursday to go out on Friday, today. Please take some time to do nothing and to connect with people who inspire you. I’m gonna try to but will probably end up working on four-ish, count ‘em-ish, stories coming soon-ish on my original-reporting Substack.
You can support the JL Substack by becoming a paid subscriber there, or right here at TFN, where I always make sure to promote share news of all my original reporting…
SUPPORTING TFN Every weekday, TFN is here for you, free for everyone, thanks to the Newsfuckers who upgrade to paid subscriptions. If you decide to join them today, and help keep TFN going, free for everyone, thank you. E pluribus fuckem.
Go get ‘em, kids! Memorial Day isn’t how we honor America’s war dead. Fighting for what they fought for is.
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Today’s gift: “Lord fuck a frog.” What a beautiful way to express total exasperation! That one goes directly into my quiver.
Renowned unpopular-president expert Karl Rove said Trump’s poll numbers are “dangerously low” when, in fact, they are dangerously high.”