In 2014, Mona Charen, now policy editor of The Bulwark @thebulwark.com, cited True the Vote in a National Review column about supposed widespread voter fraud. TTV, founded by Catherine Engelbrecht, has a history of spreading baseless claims on voter fraud and was funded by right-wing billionaires.

The Bulwarks' @monacharen.bsky.social has a column out criticizing Democratic voters who chose democratic socialists in primaries. Charen cheered my home state's Charlie Sykes for helping 2010 GOP wave. Republicans then gerrymandered Wisconsin and passed voter suppression laws targeting minorities.

Now Cori Kramer of Center Forward says her group is not "legally affiliated" with A Stronger Michigan, which has spent a hefty $13 million backing Stevens. @michigandems.bsky.social should know that the dark-money Center Forward is led by lobbyists for pharma, Northrup Grumman, Leidos, etc.

Federal officials and Hill staff appear to be placing lots of bets on Kalshi and Polymarket using inside info, per WSJ. Democrats could have outlawed officials owning such commodities by passing the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act anytime from 2021–22. The progressive bill has never moved.

"lost a few days every summer to the smoke-outs, and not weeks, or months at a time." David Wallace-Wells: "The estimates from scientists now suggest that the damages from the wildfire effects on our health outweigh all the damages from all other climate effects we're seeing in this country."

"If we do that, if we do it rapidly enough, we can alter the trajectory of our future summers so that this, what tens of millions of Americans have been experiencing, remains a strange occurrence, rather than a future in which our kids look back at this summer as the 'good old days' when you only...

"And it will likely be among the coolest year that our kids ever see again. Floods that were once-in-a-millenium are now commonplace... The other thing is, we do have an opportunity to transfer rapidly to carbon-free energy that right now is growing at rates never seen before, ready and scalable...

"The White House is also using billions of your taxpayer dollars to pay renewable energy companies to kill proposed wind turbines, that is, paying them not to produce carbon-free energy, to make clean energy that could reduce our reliance on fossil fuels... same time, spending $1B to prop up coal...

"Under the watch of Administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA has been essentially gutted. Last year, DOGE ended a key project set to debut this year that would have put new monitors on satellites with advanced ability to monitor wildfire and wildfire smoke...

"the smoke close to the ground... the guidance for much of the Midwest is stay indoors, not folks with breathing problems or the elderly, everyone... difficult to convey just how awful the conditions are... We're victims here at the whim of the jet stream...

Opening segment of "All In" was on wildfire smoke in front of our eyes, choking. "Climate change is exacerbating everything. Winters are warmer, the warmest on record in fact, which means less snow, means drier conditions, means more wildfires, means more smoke, then the scorching heat traps..."

After Scott Brown's January 2010 win deprived Dems of the ability to overcome a filibuster, Senate leaders could still have pressed ahead on a FY11 budget res and reconciliation bill with a cap-and-trade system in it, albeit less regulation. No dice, among Dems: www.motherjones.com/politics/201...

The House-passed ACES would have put $190 billion into clean energy technology by now. The investments catalyzed by the IRA could have been spurred in 2010, imagine. But the climate bill (an inadequate one) was blocked by fossil fuel-funded Dems like Landrieu. grist.org/article/2009...

If you're bereft at summer days taken away from you by wildfire smoke, thank the Senate Dems who helped block a major House-passed climate bill in 2009–10 and revolved out: -fossil fuel lobbyist Mary Landrieu -lobbyist Blanche Lincoln -insurance CEO Ben Nelson They joined GOP in slamming the EPA:

Noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare, according to a Brennan Center roundup of independent research first published in 2017, updated in 2024. The libertarian Cato Institute agrees: “Noncitizens Don’t Illegally Vote in Detectable Numbers.” www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

If you were online in Tea Party years, you remember former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, then of FreedomWorks, claiming that 3% (!!) of all votes were Dem fraud. Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation spread baseless claims of voter fraud. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...

Trump will push the SAVE Act in a primetime speech. Never-Trump conservatives at The Bulwark ( @thebulwark.com ) will pretend to care about democracy. They're just mad they're not atop the GOP machine. Bulwark founders cheered the Tea Party's voter suppression and its false claims of voter fraud.

Under FCC Chair Brendan Carr, the agency will vote to end 39% local TV station ownership cap. Media reform group Free Press calls the attempt illegal. Carr was featured at a D.C. gala in November by the Trump-aligned tech-policy think tank FAI, the Foundation for American Innovation.

The AQI in NYC is at least 125 now (50 is healthy), with unhealthy levels in much of Northeast from wildfire smoke. If this concerns you, send a note to Claire McCaskill @clairecmc.bsky.social, MS NOW @msnowreports.bsky.social analyst, who in 2009 was bearish on Dems' cap-and-trade bill. WaPo:

The 2009 ACES bill, though inadequate to the climate crisis, contained $190 billion in investment in clean energy technology that would have rolled out by now. Renewables would be further. The House-passed bill was never brought up in the Senate due to opposition from conservative, oil-funded Dems.

The current Dem leadership accepts six-figure donations from a billionaire hedge fund AIPAC donor, earmarked through AIPAC's PAC. They like it that way! Then Jeffries announces he opposes cuts to aid that AIPAC is fighting. There's even a pop-up of Rep. Massie's face on AIPAC's advocacy website.

Steve Gunn indeed, thanks Hell Gate

Wendy Eisenberg, Ripper’s, Hell Gate, surf report pleasant

Sludge reached millions of people with the timing of Trump's hidden stock purchases. This work is made possible by our subscribers, who keep us digging through disclosures. Support our two-person investigative work: readsludge.com/membership/

Our scoop this week became a segment on the Today Show ... Also in CNBC, NBC News, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal, and others that mentioned Trump's 327 individual stock purchases before tariff announcement, which we found in the disclosure. None of them cited Sludge, of course, but out there.

Global heat waves happening. In 2009, House Dems passed a cap-and-trade bill that, while inadequate, would have invested in clean energy tech. ACES never came up for a Senate vote, blocked by business-favoring Democrats like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson, who revolved to corporate lobbying.

In 2018, I was part of a volunteer effort called the County Committee Sunlight Project, which worked to engage the local reform process, in line with New Kings Dems. In 2020, the BK Dems machine mismanaged a *13-hour* virtual meeting! In 2022, a meeting started so late that the venue cut the power!

"at Brad Lander and his race, he led with such a humanity and an embodiment of what Mr. Rogers would speak about as the actions of a good neighbor... he would speak about, Mahe is going to Congress not only to fight against bigotry, whether Anti-Semitism or Islamophobia..."

"she and I are having a conversation about how our government has sent more than $30 billion in bombs for the Israeli military to kill civilians in Palestine or Lebanon, and it speaks to what New Yorkers are tired of, and what they want to see, people who are not just willing..."