New York Times reporters and authors of the new book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, sit down with Jon Stewart to discuss the surprising revelations they uncovered about the Trump administration, like the president being absent from the room when his own team discussed the Epstein files, as well as the motivation behind controversial moves like the tariff policy rollout and the Iran war. They also speak to how Trump controls the terms when reporters reach him on his cell phone and compare his first term to his second, which they describe as a story of hubris, built on gut feelings and belief from his cabinet that he is someone of destiny – because who else can survive four indictments and two assassination attempts to win the presidency a second time?
I will be having surgery soon. I had a long visit with my pain doctor. She had studied my last set of MRIs. She also confered with the pain surgeon who I also see. Seems I have all the bad things a back can have. I have ruptured discs, herniated discs, and torn discs, but they hope that will heal, I have protruding discs, bulging discs. I have arthritis in the length of the spine. I also have a thickening ligament cord. If I want to walk again I have to have a procedure called MILD. The will put me under and then my current pain surgeon will make a 1-inch incision in my back and “shred” the ligament down to the proper size. I simply have no choice, it is this or the wheelchair and ever larger amounts of pain. They are not decreasing my pain medication my MRIs back them up, I have a limited quality of life now and would have none with less pain medication. Ron asked me to ask her the prognosis of where she saw me in the future with my issues. Because of the way my bones are thickening, thinning, and growing wrong, and the trauma of my childhood it will get worse. I will some day lose the ability to stand and walk. Unless things change even surgery to fuse the vertebra will not give me much relief and will cause me more issues. But I still have my computers and the grand people it lets me stay in touch with. Best wishes to all and hugs to those that want them. Scottie
Hello Everyone. One of the things that I’ve struggled with over the years of doing various posts here and elsewhere is that I, quite frankly, am not an expert on anything. This makes me very self-conscious about my posting because I feel like I’m misleading people into making mistakes in their own thoughts and arguments. So, I’m going to try this new approach of calling my posts “conversation starter” with the hope that if I am wrong, or by shock and chance hit the mark a bit, readers can feel free to add opinion or correct me.
Any of us may be wrong by a long stretch or just a little bit, and I think we hold our opinions for fear of being made to look foolish or naïve. I would like to preface this with the reminder that these are my opinions, and much like assholes…., yeah. So… here goes.
One of the current position points for the GOP, and I’ve seen this especially in Indiana, Ohio and Florida, is the idea that property taxes are an unfair burden upon property owners (https://auditor.bcohio.gov/news_detail_T2_R36.php). I’ve heard them use the analogy that it is paramount to buying a meal from the resturant, paying for the meal, and then being required to return yearly to pay more for that original meal purchase. The human mind is going to immediately gravitate to the idea that the removal of a tax is a good thing. This, of course, is the MAGA and GOP mode of operations: appeal to the unthinking and immature mental reflex of their base towards their own ends. What the less wealthy MAGA likely hasn’t done, is recognize that this turns a tax burden upon the less wealthy, again. Here is my thinking:
If a wealthy person buys land, say, measuring 100 acres for his own home. Conceivably, a similar 100 acres would house 300-400 middle-class homes, or more if we consider apartments. In a simple math, because I know it doesn’t quite work this way but give me some latitude here, those two 100-acre portions of land would pay give-or-take the same tax. That means, by my simple measure, one family is paying the same tax as 300-400. Now, that doesn’t really seem very fair, and so the GOP/MAGA support the end of that tax. But, as we all know, the bills never stop. The money for roads, schools, parks, police and fire, etc., has to come from somewhere. A great deal of that comes from property tax. If it doesn’t come from the property tax, where will it come from? I would guess an increase in sales taxes, gas taxes, payroll state taxes. In this case, now the food, gas, entertainment, police and fire and whatever else, is going to be payed by that 3-400 middle-class families at a similar rate as the 1-wealthy family — meaning the tax burden has shifted to the middle-class families. Further, the wealthy person is going to have an even better financial position, which he will likely use to buy more land.
To me and hopefully to everyone this is horrific. But something I have been highlighting here that Israeli is a rouge terrorist government drying to genocide the Palestinian people. It is horrific that a people who experienced such actions would inflict them on others. But this show what can happen when right-wing movements turn into religious domination of the government. The Israel government is now filled with extreme Jewish religious extremists who feel their holy book grants them all the territory around then that is the sovereign territory of other countries. They feel their god gave it to them thousands of years ago so they have the right to take it. Regardless of laws or norms between countries. They want it so it should be theirs. Just like Putin in Ukraine. Israel talked our demented leader into going into war against their enemy which had no benefit for us but we took all the cost and risks. The military equipment and weapons used in the genocide of the Palestinians was paid for by the US taxpayer. Some quotes below. Hugs
The UN commission said in its report, released on Tuesday, that Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed during the war, including after a ceasefire came into effect in October 2025.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair, in a statement accompanying the report.
“This indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional,” it said. It added that it believed children were targeted collectively because the Israeli security forces considered the civilian population as a whole to be associated with Hamas and other armed groups.
Muralidhar said that by targeting children, Israel was undermining the capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.
The inquiry also found that attacks on healthcare and reproductive facilities affected newborns’ survival and the reported increase in miscarriages, and that nearly all children in Gaza were reported to be in need of psychological support.
It said Palestinian children, especially boys, were subjected to systemic mistreatment in detention, including forced stripping, beatings and food deprivation.
He calls Jews “a malevolent force throughout history,” praises Adolf Hitler as “a great man,” and urges Black Americans to “return to Africa.” Despite that history of hateful comments, he has now become the star of a pair of social-media videos for Tennessee Republican candidate for governor Monty Fritts [photo].
Still, Dane Chisholm, 28, of Rogersville, Tenn., is completely unapologetic about his controversial views. “For the soft and fake ‘Conservatives’ who worry about being called homophobic, racist or Nazi … go sit quietly in a corner,” Chisholm wrote in a June 20 post on X. “The real Christian men – who will save this world – are going to start handling things.”
Fritts, who is running an unapologetically Christian nationalist campaign, did not respond to a text from NewsChannel 5 Investigates about the star of his social-media posts.
Read the full article. Watch the unreal video below.
State Rep. Monty Fritts appeared here in January 2026 when he called for executing supporters of trans healthcare, saying that “such killings align with scripture.”
Fritts appeared here in March 2025 when the Tennessee House advanced his bill declaring July 2025 a “month of fasting and prayer for the physically able and spiritually inclined.”
Last year Fritts sponsored a “chemtrails” bill that would criminalize weather control with fines of “$100,000 per violation.”
Fritts appeared here in January 2025 for his bill making it a felony for state officials to adopt pro-migrant policies.
Fritts first appeared here in 2023 when the Tennessee House approved his bill allowing officiants to refuse to conduct same-sex, interfaith, and interracial marriages.
Ok after reading and highlighting this I feel I need a shower. This is the US that trump has caused to surge and become normal. This is the front runner for governor. I put some quotes from the story below. We have to stomp this out and make it unacceptable again while they are still a small minority. But notice how they wrap themselves in as real christians and Christian nationalist. By doing that they get protection as the law states that religon is a protected class in the law and the SCOTUS has ruled that law really only applies to Christians and to pushing the Christian faith. Saddly we need to know what these people are doing and pushing so we can fight back against them and stop this dragging the country into being Nazi Germany of the 1940s. They are openly racist, openly white supremacist, and openly Christian nationalists, and they are especially open about being willing to be violent to accomplish what they want. Hugs
Still, Dane Chisholm, 28, of Rogersville, Tenn., is completely unapologetic about his controversial views.
“For the soft and fake ‘Conservatives’ who worry about being called homophobic, racist or Nazi … go sit quietly in a corner,” Chisholm wrote in a June 20 post on X.
“The real Christian men – who will save this world – are going to start handling things.”
Fritts, who is running an unapologetically Christian nationalist campaign, did not respond to a text from NewsChannel 5 Investigates about the star of his social-media posts.
Dane Chisholm, 28, of Rogersville, Tenn., is completely unapologetic about his controversial views and is showing who he wholeheartedly supports in Tennessee’s gubernatorial race
He calls Jews “a malevolent force throughout history,” praises Adolf Hitler as “a great man,” and urges Black Americans to “return to Africa.”
Despite that history of hateful comments, he has now become the star of a pair of social-media videos for Tennessee Republican candidate for governor Monty Fritts.
Still, Dane Chisholm, 28, of Rogersville, Tenn., is completely unapologetic about his controversial views.
“For the soft and fake ‘Conservatives’ who worry about being called homophobic, racist or Nazi … go sit quietly in a corner,” Chisholm wrote in a June 20 post on X.
“The real Christian men – who will save this world – are going to start handling things.”
Fritts, who is running an unapologetically Christian nationalist campaign, did not respond to a text from NewsChannel 5 Investigates about the star of his social-media posts.
Reached by phone, Chisholm insisted he was not paid for the videos; instead, he said he produced them as part of Fritts’ team of volunteer campaign workers.
“Do I think my words are going to hurt Monty? No,” Chisholm added. “I’m sure there are surface-level thinkers and voters who were probably going to vote the other way anyway. But the idea that an individual separate from him has ‘controversial takes,’ I can’t imagine that goes very far.”
Chisholm appears in the two social-media videos, interviewing voters on the streets of Knoxville in one and chatting with Young Republicans after a forum in another.
View one of the Fritts campaign videos below:
In the videos, Chisholm wears an America First cap with the initials “NJF” – for America First founder Nicholas J. Fuentes – on the back.
Fuentes is the white-nationalist, antisemitic figure whose followers are known as Groypers. Despite the Jewish genocide, Fuentes has called Hitler “cool” and argued that “what Hitler represents is if white people didn’t give a f–k.”
On X, Dane Chisholm describes himself as a Christian who “fearlessly speak[s] the truth.”
And Monty Fritts, the candidate for governor, follows him.
“There’s lots of clues that we’ve been lied to tremendously about who Hitler was,” Chisholm said in a video posted on Easter comparing the Nazi leader to Jesus.
In another post, he wrote: “Hitler was a great man. We’ve been lied to, we know it.”
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Dane Chisholm video and post about Adolf Hitler
He has argued that Hitler’s actions “were justified by the necessity of security or defense of his people, to which Jews were internationally plotting to destroy.”
In other posts, he has argued:
COVID was part of a Jewish plot,
“The jews [sic] did kill Jesus Christ, and they have been a malevolentforce throughout history,” and
“Jews only lie when they breathe.”
In a reply to another X account, Chisholm demanded: “shut up jew rat.”
And while he was cordial to a group of young African-American men in one of the videos for Monty Fritts, News Channel 5 Investigates found a post where Chisholm referred to Black people with a shortened version of the n-word and called them “f–king monkeys”
“Don’t forget,” he added, “this racial-tension s— show is only a created distraction by the Jewish ran [sic] and owned press and socials to distract you from their jew [sic] crimes and subversion.”
X/@DeepDiverDane
Dane Chisholm post about Black people and Jews
In a recent interview, Fritts sought to distance himself from some Christian nationalists who have praised Hitler as a much-needed Christian prince.
“You’ll never hear from me that Adolf Hitler was a good guy,” Fritts said. “You’ll never hear that from me. I think he got what he deserved.”
This controversy follows Fritts’ appearance back in December on a podcast hosted by Stew Peters, who has been described by the ADL as “a far-right conspiracy theorist, Christian nationalist and prolific antisemite.”
During that show, Peters acknowledged that Fritts might be opening himself up to criticism.
“You’ll have to understand that I’m toxic. You’ll probably get a hit piece written about you just for appearing on my show,” he added.
Peters has called for what he calls the “final solution” to deport all Jews from America.
Still, when pressed about that appearance, Fritts insisted he had not made a mistake by engaging with the man known for his hatred of Jews.
“You and I aren’t gonna agree on everything, Phil – we don’t have to,” the candidate said. “That’s the beauty about being in America and in Tennessee, is we can have divergent opinions on stuff and still have respect for one another.”
Demonstrators hold a sign saying “PROTECT MINORITY VOTING RIGHTS” outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in 2025.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund
By declining to take up a lower court ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act.
The court announced Monday that it will not review an Arkansas-based lawsuit, leaving in place a 2025 appeals panel ruling that ends a long-used tool for protecting minority voters from discrimination under the landmark law in seven mainly Midwestern states.
That ruling found that in the states covered by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — private individuals and groups do not have the right to sue to enforce what’s known as Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which generally allows voters with a disability or inability to read or write to get help with voting from a person of their choice.
The Supreme Court’s move comes almost two months after its conservative supermajority issued a major ruling that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, setting off a groundswell in redistricting across the country.
In May, shortly after that undermining of Section 2 protections against racial discrimination in redistricting, the high court decided not to weigh in on what the legal world calls a “private right of action,” sending back to lower courts two cases brought by Black voters in Mississippi and Native American voters in North Dakota.
For decades, enforcement of these sections of the Voting Rights Act has mainly been driven by lawsuits by private individuals and groups.
But after conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a single-paragraph opinion in 2021 questioning a private right of action, Republican officials in multiple states have raised a novel legal argument: Only the U.S. attorney general, they contend, has the right to bring lawsuits under these parts of the Voting Rights Act.
The case that the justices decided not to take up was brought by the immigrant advocacy group Arkansas United, which has provided Spanish-language interpreters at polling sites to assist voters with limited English proficiency. The group challenged an Arkansas law that bans a person who is not a poll worker from helping more than six voters cast ballots. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that the state law violates Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. But after GOP state officials appealed, an 8th Circuit panel found last year that private groups, like Arkansas United, do not have the right to bring this kind of lawsuit, partly because such a right is not explicitly spelled out in the words of the Voting Rights Act.
So far, the 8th Circuit — which also found that there is no private right of action under Section 2 — is the only federal appeals court to break with decades of precedent on this legal issue.
In a statement, Arkansas’ Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin called the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the 8th Circuit panel’s ruling “a victory for the state” and applauded the high court for “following the plain meaning of the language in the Voting Rights Act.”
The Supreme Court may take up this issue in a future case
The brief, unsigned order the high court released Monday did not explain why the justices decided not to review the 8th Circuit panel’s ruling in the Arkansas case.
But in a court filing last month, Republican officials in Arkansas pointed out that no other federal appeals court has issued a ruling that specifically addresses whether private groups and individuals can sue under Section 208. That, the Arkansas Republican officials argued, means there is no disagreement between appeals courts for the Supreme Court to resolve.
Arkansas United’s attorneys at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, however, countered that there is a “clear conflict between the Eighth Circuit’s decision and the unbroken line of cases allowing private litigants to vindicate their rights under Section 208.”
“The limited case law regarding private enforcement of Section 208 does not mean that the circuit split is nonexistent, or that the issue is unimportant,” the MALDEF attorneys wrote in their court filing. “Instead, it demonstrates just how much of an anomaly the Eighth Circuit’s decision is.”
Thomas Saenz, MALDEF’s president and general counsel, tells NPR that the civil rights group now plans to eventually ask the Supreme Court to review a private right of action under Section 208 through a Missouri-based lawsuit, which was put on hold while the appeals process for the Arkansas case played out.
The case led by Missouri Protection and Advocacy Services, which advocates for voters with disabilities, challenges a state law that bans a person from helping more than one disabled voter or voter who cannot read or write for each election, unless the person providing assistance is a poll worker or the voter’s immediate family member.
“We will attempt to move it forward, and these precedents will be cited to stop us,” Saenz says. “We will move up and hope that the Supreme Court will see that it needs to stop this situation where only one circuit in the entire country has taken a contrary view to everyone else and foreclosed private enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.”
A man plays with a baby as Palestinian children look on amid the rubble in Khan Younis, Gaza, in March.
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesWomen mourn a baby killed in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis last year.
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesChildren jostle for food at an aid point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Monday.
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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Scottie's Playtime 