Media Fact-Checks Liar-in-Chief on Spending Bill

It is not at all surprising that the felon in the Oval Office, who uttered over 30,000 documented lies during his first term as President, would appear repeatedly to do what he does the best to promote his horrific plan that aims to redistribute wealth in the U.S. by robbing the poor to feed the rich.  CNN is just one source to fact check Trump’s appearance on Thursday to roll out impressive collection of lies, impressive even for twice-impeached convicted felon. 

Here’s a summary from CNN (please read the whole piece for details): 

In a White House speech on Thursday, Trump falsely claimed Medicaid is “left the same” by the bill. In fact, both the version of the legislation that was narrowly passed by the House in May and the latest version now being contemplated by the Senate contain major Medicaid policy changes and funding cuts that are expected to result in millions of people losing insurance coverage. 

Trump also falsely claimed that the bill includes “no tax” on Social Security benefits. The legislation would not actually fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to completely eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, though it would temporarily give seniors a substantially bigger tax deduction. And Trump falsely claimed that “there’ll be a 68% tax increase” if Congress doesn’t approve the bill; there is no credible estimate of anything close to a 68% hike.

Trump also falsely cla

In a White House speec

Erin Burnett at CNN asks Zohran Mamdani what it means to be a Democratic Socialist

Rep. Andy Ogles, the George Santos of the South

Andy Ogles Turns Christofascist Disciple of Steve Berger

 

Secretive D.C. Influence Project Appears to Be Running a Group House for Right-Wing Lawmakers

by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

For a project explicitly designed to influence Congress, Steve Berger’s operation has left a scant paper trail. The archconservative evangelical pastor, who started a D.C. nonprofit a few years ago to shape national policy, does not file lobbying reports. His group does not show up in campaign finance records.

There is a simple way to glimpse his effort’s expanding reach in Washington, however: Pay attention to who is walking out the front door of his Capitol Hill townhouse. New evidence suggests Berger may be running what amounts to a group house for conservative lawmakers, with multiple members of Congress living with him at his organization’s headquarters.

The six-bedroom, $3.7 million home is owned by a multimillion-dollar Republican donor.

Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican who is among President Donald Trump’s most aggressive allies in Congress, has been at the house on multiple days over the past two weeks, according to people who live in the area. Video reviewed by ProPublica showed Ogles leaving the townhouse with bags on Feb. 27. As he left, he locked up the front door and pocketed the keys to the house.

As ProPublica reported last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson is living in the townhouse. And Dan Bishop, a former congressman from North Carolina now nominated for a powerful post in Trump’s White House, appears to have lived there until recently as well.

Berger has said his goal is to “disciple” members of Congress so what “they learn is then translated into policy.” He has claimed to have personally spurred legislation, saying a senator privately credited him with inspiring a bill.

Berger, Bishop and Ogles did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Johnson previously said the speaker pays fair-market rent for the part of the townhouse he occupies but didn’t answer questions about the specific rate. He said Johnson has not spoken to the pastor about “any matter of public policy.”

Ogles is in only his third year in Congress, but he’s drawn attention for his bombastic displays of fealty to Trump. He recently introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution so that Trump could serve a third term as president. He’s filed articles of impeachment against multiple judges who’ve ruled against the new administration. (Last week, Elon Musk posted a video of Ogles touting his impeachment efforts, set to the beat from the rap song “Shook Ones, Pt. II.”)

Ogles’ short tenure is also notable for the pace of scandal that’s followed it. He has faced allegations that he inflated his resume, claiming alternatively to have been an economist, a member of law enforcement and an expert on international sex trafficking, NewsChannel 5 in Nashville reported. (Ogles has acknowledged at least one mistake on his resume but said that “my body of work speaks for itself.”)

Last year, the FBI seized his phone during an investigation and obtained a search warrant to review records associated with his personal email address. Federal investigators were seeking evidence related to potential campaign finance violations, according to a court filing. The scope of the FBI investigation remains unclear.

Perhaps no one is more responsible for Ogles’ rise in politics than Lee Beaman, the Tennessee businessman who owns the Capitol Hill townhouse. When Ogles announced a short-lived Senate bid in 2017, Beaman said he planned to raise $4 million to support the run. Beaman, whose wealth derives from a large car dealership chain, then served as campaign treasurer in Ogles’ successful 2022 run for the House.

Beaman and Berger have publicly advocated together for numerous specific policy changes, in areas including foreign affairs, fuel efficiency standards and removing barriers to firing federal employees. After the 2020 election, they both signed a letter declaring that Trump was the rightful winner and calling for Congress to overturn the results. (Beaman did not respond to requests for comment. ProPublica could not determine whether he and the pastor have discussed policy issues with Ogles during his time in Congress.)

In sermons, Berger has devoted long stretches to attacking the separation of church and state, as well as COVID-19 vaccines. The pastor used violent language to describe his disdain for “LGBTQ+ Pride” parades and “drag queen story hour” during an interview for a podcast in 2022, according to unpublished footage obtained by ProPublica.

“If I was left to myself, I’d take a baseball bat and beat the hell out of every single one of them. And not feel bad about it,” Berger said. “I have to go, ‘You know what? That’s probably not the will of God, is it?’ And obviously it’s not.”

Beyond his ownership of the townhouse, Beaman’s role in the pastor’s influence project is unclear. After Beaman purchased the house in 2021, a lawyer sought to change it from a single-family dwelling to a “boarding house/rooming house,” according to Washington, D.C., property records. Around that time, Berger’s nonprofit group, Ambassador Services International, registered the home as its address.

Members of Congress are allowed to live anywhere, as long as they pay fair-market rent, experts said. Discounts on rent are generally seen as improper gifts and prohibited by House ethics rules.

Beaman has said he got to know Ogles when Ogles was the Tennessee director of Americans for Prosperity, part of the Koch brothers’ political network. Beaman and Ogles joined forces to fight a mass transit project in Nashville and reportedly worked together on a successful effort to repeal the estate tax in their home state. After leaving the Koch network, Ogles served four years as the mayor of a Middle Tennessee county with a population of roughly 100,000. He held that role until 2022, when he was elected to Congress.

Ogles’ 2022 campaign was the subject of a blistering House ethics report released this year. The nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics concluded that there is “substantial reason to believe” that Ogles’ campaign had accepted illegally large donations and then falsely reported that the funds had come from Ogles himself. Ogles has said he is “confident that any reporting problem was at worst an honest mistake.” (Beaman was not named in the report and has not been accused of wrongdoing.)

The report said that Ogles refused to cooperate with the investigation. It recommended that the House Ethics Committee issue a subpoena to the congressman.

Do you have any information we should know about Steve Berger, Rep. Andy Ogles or Speaker Mike Johnson? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.

Six Year Old Honduran Boy In ICE Detention Misses Leukemia Treatment

 There is no hell hot enough to properly punish Felon47 and his ICE army of thugs. Story from TPR:

A Honduran mother and her two children — ages 6 and 9 — sued the Trump administration over their arrest at Los Angeles Immigration Court, the first lawsuit challenging the arrests of children under a new ICE directive targeting courthouses.

The mother brought her two children to the immigration court on May 29 expecting to continue to make a case for asylum after fleeing Honduras because of threats of violence. But like many other immigrants across the country, they were surprised to see their case quickly dismissed as ICE agents waited for them to step out of the courthouse into the hallway. 

"There were men waiting for them in civilian clothing. The [ICE agents] detained the family for many hours, and it was a terrifying time for the two children and their mother," said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.

"They were crying in fear. One of the agents at one point lifted up his shirt, which displayed the gun that he was carrying," Mukherjee said. "The 6-year-old boy was terrified to see the gun. He urinated on himself and wet all his clothing. No one offered him a change of clothing for many hours."

The family was then transported to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, where they have been detained for several weeks.

The 6-year-old boy has been diagnosed with leukemia and has missed a medical appointment to be treated for worsening symptoms, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in San Antonio by the Immigrant Rights Clinic and The Texas Civil Rights Project. . . 

Ways to Kill Public Schools

 

Privatization Schemes Kill Local Public Schools by Andy Spears

An example from Pennsylvania

Read on Substack

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Marine Corp Vet’s Breastfeeding Wife Now in ICE Detention

Trump hopes his illegal war on Iran will shift attention away from his War on America, which is being waged by his sicko sycophants in Congress, who are trying to have 15 million people lose their health insurance, more children to go hungry, thousands of hospitals and nursing homes to close, $3.1 trillion added to our grandchildren’s national debt payout, and millionaires and billionaires to be granted more massive tax cuts.  

Another element of Trump’s War on America is being waged by the incompetent and dangerous criminal gangs of ICE that he has unleashed on brown and black immigrant communities as workers, mothers and fathers, students, and infants are rounded up for deportation.

This from ABC News:

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre doesn't know how to tell his children where their mother went after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her last month. 

When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, “Mama will be back soon.” When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He’s worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact.

His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day. . . 

Oak Ridge Schools Bows to Book Banning Legislation by the Tennessee Taliban

Fifty years ago I was Director of Library Media Services at Oak Ridge High School. I could not have dreamed that 50 years later librarians would be scouring shelves to find school library books to purge in hopes of satisfying the illiterate legislative members of the TN Taliban who passed a criminally-vague and illegal statute last year, which aims to impose unconstitutional restrictions on intellectual freedom and the right to read. 

Here's a sample from over 300 axed titles :

Really!  Rodin, Hopper, Donatello???  Could this capitulation represent another case of unethical (un)professional conduct compounded by cowardice, or have professional standards sunk so low as to allow this kind brazen stupidity to prevail in the hiring of public school educators in a district that once celebrated intellectual freedom and artistic achievement?

The Oak Ridge Schools’ surrender to the political scourge that MAGA embodies could prove costly.  PEN America reported on June 10 that its lawsuit against Rutherford County Schools for banning hundreds of school library and public library books has led to the restoration of some of the titles removed earlier this year. The lawsuit, which is supported by TN ACLU, continues, however, until all the titles removed are restored to the shelves.

Thousands Attend Nashville's “No Kings” Protest

Bill Lee Sits on $2 Billion Rainy Day Fund As Children Lose Summer Food Support

Lee's Legacy: Leaving More Kids Behind by Andy Spears

Lee lets hunger win to prove a political point

Read on Substack

Get Up, Get Out

Lesson 13 of "On Tyranny": Practice corporeal politics. Find your No Kings protest, June 14th.

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— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 10:05 AM

Felon47 Appearance at Ft. Bragg More Reality TV

 

Can’t emphasize enough what a disgrace this whole sad episode was

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— Kai Ryssdal (@kairyssdal.bsky.social) June 11, 2025 at 2:10 PM

A New Lucrative Wrinkle for Wealthy in MAGA’s “kill public education” Voucher Movement

 From Counterpunch, by Jeff Bryant:

. . . . An ‘Unprecedented Giveaway’ to the Wealthiest

It’s telling that the measure, originally called the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2025 when it was introduced and in committee, is now called “tax credit for contributions of individuals to scholarship granting organizations” and appears in the part of the [big awful pile of bullshit] bill devoted to “Additional Tax Relief for American Families and Workers,” rather than grouped with other education proposals in the Committee on Education and Workforce section.

But the subterfuge goes much deeper than the name, according to the speakers at the town hall, including Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), who called the measure“the quintessential definition of a tax shelter.”

The tax advantages are derived from how the program is funded. As Hanauer explained, school vouchers would be funded by a tax credit system and a federally mandated network of scholarship granting organizations (SGOs), one in every state. Each SGO is its own nonprofit that can grant vouchers to parents who apply. When private individuals and corporations donate to an SGO, they would, in turn, receive a tax credit from the federal government that’s dollar-for-dollar equal to the amount of the donation—limited to 10 percent of a donor’s income.

The first advantage is that the reward for donating comes in the form of a credit rather than a tax deduction, which, as the Tax Policy Center pointed out, increases the value of the tax advantage because a credit is “subtracted directly from a person’s tax liability,” while the value of a deduction “depends on the taxpayer’s marginal tax rate, which rises with income.”

Those specifics make the voucher program a more attractive system for giving than other charitable causes.

Also, “no other charity, not pediatric cancer research, not disaster relief, not assisting disabled veterans, nothing gets this level of tax incentive,” said Hanauer, “no other charity has ever gotten this kind of one-for-one payback.” . . .

AI Promoters Set to Become Corporate Education Reform’s Next Golden Goose

Another Bad AI Classroom Guide by Peter Greene

Read on Substack

Utah Judge Rejects School Voucher Scheme

Utah Judge Rejects School Voucher Scheme by Andy Spears

Public money must be for public schools, ruling says

Read on Substack

June 14 USA Says NO KINGS

ONE WEEK UNTIL NO KINGS DAY! At this time next Saturday, we will be taking to the streets across the country. While Trump wastes millions on a birthday parade in DC, we’re showing up everywhere else to say NO KINGS. There are nearly 2,000 events planned. Join us: www.nokings.org?SQF_SOURCE=i...

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— Indivisible ❌👑 (@indivisible.org) June 7, 2025 at 7:42 AM

Debunking DEI Misconceptions [and Lies]

Trump gets SHREDDED by PROTEST ANTHEM he Feared

TN Effects of TACO’s Disgusting Abomination Bill

CBPP: “Trump’s budget sharply reduces the fruit & vegetable component of WIC’s food benefits for expecting parents and young children… takes away $1.3 BILLION in fruit & vegetable benefits from 5.2 MILLION participants…” (104,000 in Tennessee) www.cbpp.org/blog/trump-b...

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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 7:08 AM