US continues to go backward...
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Polds4OSU
Marshall
Breaking News: The New York chapter of the Young Republicans is set to be disbanded by the party's state leaders after racist texts among the groups across the U.S. were exposed.
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The New York Times (@nytimes) on Threads
Breaking News: The New York chapter of the Young Republicans is set to be disbanded by the party's state leaders after racist texts among the groups across the U.S. were exposed.
www.threads.com
Polds4OSU
Marshall
A Vermont state senator has resigned over his involvement in a Young Republican group chat after racist and antisemitic chat messages shared among its members were made public.
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The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) on Threads
A Vermont state senator has resigned over his involvement in a Young Republican group chat after racist and antisemitic chat messages shared among its members were made public.
www.threads.com
Stillwater Townie
Ranger
At any rate, they speak for many millions of Republicans of all ages, especially for those who don't want to admit how they really feel toward minorities. A rare exception appears to be Sen. Mullin.
PF5
Sheriff
Should have just held a press conference to say, "The State of Texas proudly and boldly chooses to ignore the 1st Amendment" and left it at that.
What country are we living in? Every time I look up to assess where I’m at I find myself further to the left of the Republicans and I am pretty sure I haven’t moved. And the public health stuff has just gone insane. Even flu shots have become political.
Polds4OSU
Marshall
Top GOP strategist quits job as 'accomplice' to the Republican 'cult'
Miles Bruner, a top Republican strategist who "worked inside GOP circles through Trump’s takeover of the party" is quitting the party and encouraging others to do the same, he writes in The Bulwark.
Under President Donald Trump, the Republican party, he writes, has "devolved into a cult of personality that mirrors the worst authoritarian regimes of the last one hundred years."
But Trump hasn't worked alone, Bruner says. "While Trump and his supporters in Congress have been the driving force behind the right’s descent into despotism, it would not have been possible without the thousands of consultants, aides, and politicos working behind the scenes to fully execute their systematic dismantling of American democratic norms," he writes.
For 12 years, Bruner worked in various facets of the GOP, from grassroots voter outreach to digital fundraising.
"I worked inside GOP circles through Trump’s takeover of the party, his initial downfall, and his resurgence in 2023–2024. At every step along the way, I rationalized, compartmentalized, and found excuses to stay tethered to the party, even as I grew to believe it was undermining the foundations of our constitutional republic," he says.
Bruner says he could no longer rationalize any of it, leading to his decision to leave the party.
"But over the last few months, the compartmentalization and coping stopped working to silence my conscience," he says, using this piece in The Bulwark as his resignation letter.
"I quit. I quit the Republican party and my job as an accomplice to the party in the throes of an authoritarian cult. Today, I resigned from my career as a senior fundraising strategist for one of the leading Republican digital fundraising firms in Washington, D.C," he says.
Bruner says his decision was twofold: "first, to shed light on why someone would continue to work for an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian political party despite their divergent ethical and political beliefs; second, to convince any number of consultants, staffers, and former colleagues to follow their consciences and leave with their integrity still intact."
Bruner says that he wasn't fully on board with Trump at all in the beginning and he didn't take him seriously either.
"The thinking was that Trump’s candidacy was a joke—why alienate the sliver of voters Trump was holding when he’d be out of the race in a few months? From that point on, my anxiety began to fester," he says.
As political coordinator for Republican Janet Nguyen’s state senate campaign in California, Bruner says they were horrified at the Charlottesville, Virginia white supremacist rally which Trump excused with that now infamous "good people on both sides" statement.
"We buried the condemnation of Trump on Twitter, believing that fewer of her Republican supporters would see it," Bruner says, but within minues, Nguyen was attacked by Trump supporters.
"It was the first time I should have drawn the line and said I quit. But, again, I stayed," he said. And it weighed on him.
"The emotional and mental weight one feels when one’s career suddenly conflicts with one’s beliefs," he says. But when a new job came along, Bruner found himself deeper in the Trump world.
"In my new position, I became enmeshed in the D.C. Republican consulting ecosystem that was now fully orbiting around Trump," he says, and his clients were "100 percent pro-MAGA."
After President Joe Biden won and theJanuary 6 insurrection at the Capitol happened, Bruner thought Trump would go into exile at his Palm Beach country club "as a political pariah."
As Bruner's career took off during the years after, which went by "uneventfully," Bruner writes, "at a superficial level and putting my ethics aside, I was living the life I had imagined having as a teenager."
And it wasn't Trump that broke him out of his "comfortable cocoon," Bruner says. "Rather, it was the rightward lurch of theSupreme Court and the lengths to which the right was willing to go to undermine established legal precedents and access to reproductive rights."
Bruner says it was his and his wife's experience trying to start a family that broke him out of his staunch pro-life stance and he "slowly became pro-choice."
To a degree, I understood the selfishness of my reaction. I had been willing to work in a system and for a party that had allowed rulings like these to take hold—that had celebrated them, in fact—only to find it unbearable when I felt personally attacked," he admits.
"It is not to excuse my actions that I note that sometimes a personal experience is what it takes for an awakening like this to occur," he adds.
That's when he began plotting his exit from the Republican party, and while he previously excused Trump's role on Jan. 6, "his lack of leadership during the COVID pandemic," and his "migrants are rapists tirade," Bruner says "our nation has arrived at a moment in its history where staying silent for personal comfort isn’t an option anymore."
"I know now that if I continue to stay, I won’t be able to explain to my children why I didn’t take a stand when I had the chance," he says. "I wish I had realized this sooner and I applaud my colleagues who did so long before me."
Bruner's clarion call encourages those who care about the country to speak out and do something.
"If you believe in this country now is the time to refuse to ferry its destruction for a tainted livelihood. Take a stand. Speak out. Show your pride as an American who believes in the Constitution and the values we grew up with. Today, I quit allowing my complacency to destroy America, and I urge you to quit, too."
Better late than never. I supposeTop GOP strategist quits job as 'accomplice' to the Republican 'cult'
Miles Bruner, a top Republican strategist who "worked inside GOP circles through Trump’s takeover of the party" is quitting the party and encouraging others to do the same, he writes in The Bulwark.
Under President Donald Trump, the Republican party, he writes, has "devolved into a cult of personality that mirrors the worst authoritarian regimes of the last one hundred years."
But Trump hasn't worked alone, Bruner says. "While Trump and his supporters in Congress have been the driving force behind the right’s descent into despotism, it would not have been possible without the thousands of consultants, aides, and politicos working behind the scenes to fully execute their systematic dismantling of American democratic norms," he writes.
For 12 years, Bruner worked in various facets of the GOP, from grassroots voter outreach to digital fundraising.
"I worked inside GOP circles through Trump’s takeover of the party, his initial downfall, and his resurgence in 2023–2024. At every step along the way, I rationalized, compartmentalized, and found excuses to stay tethered to the party, even as I grew to believe it was undermining the foundations of our constitutional republic," he says.
Bruner says he could no longer rationalize any of it, leading to his decision to leave the party.
"But over the last few months, the compartmentalization and coping stopped working to silence my conscience," he says, using this piece in The Bulwark as his resignation letter.
"I quit. I quit the Republican party and my job as an accomplice to the party in the throes of an authoritarian cult. Today, I resigned from my career as a senior fundraising strategist for one of the leading Republican digital fundraising firms in Washington, D.C," he says.
Bruner says his decision was twofold: "first, to shed light on why someone would continue to work for an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian political party despite their divergent ethical and political beliefs; second, to convince any number of consultants, staffers, and former colleagues to follow their consciences and leave with their integrity still intact."
Bruner says that he wasn't fully on board with Trump at all in the beginning and he didn't take him seriously either.
"The thinking was that Trump’s candidacy was a joke—why alienate the sliver of voters Trump was holding when he’d be out of the race in a few months? From that point on, my anxiety began to fester," he says.
As political coordinator for Republican Janet Nguyen’s state senate campaign in California, Bruner says they were horrified at the Charlottesville, Virginia white supremacist rally which Trump excused with that now infamous "good people on both sides" statement.
"We buried the condemnation of Trump on Twitter, believing that fewer of her Republican supporters would see it," Bruner says, but within minues, Nguyen was attacked by Trump supporters.
"It was the first time I should have drawn the line and said I quit. But, again, I stayed," he said. And it weighed on him.
"The emotional and mental weight one feels when one’s career suddenly conflicts with one’s beliefs," he says. But when a new job came along, Bruner found himself deeper in the Trump world.
"In my new position, I became enmeshed in the D.C. Republican consulting ecosystem that was now fully orbiting around Trump," he says, and his clients were "100 percent pro-MAGA."
After President Joe Biden won and theJanuary 6 insurrection at the Capitol happened, Bruner thought Trump would go into exile at his Palm Beach country club "as a political pariah."
As Bruner's career took off during the years after, which went by "uneventfully," Bruner writes, "at a superficial level and putting my ethics aside, I was living the life I had imagined having as a teenager."
And it wasn't Trump that broke him out of his "comfortable cocoon," Bruner says. "Rather, it was the rightward lurch of theSupreme Court and the lengths to which the right was willing to go to undermine established legal precedents and access to reproductive rights."
Bruner says it was his and his wife's experience trying to start a family that broke him out of his staunch pro-life stance and he "slowly became pro-choice."
To a degree, I understood the selfishness of my reaction. I had been willing to work in a system and for a party that had allowed rulings like these to take hold—that had celebrated them, in fact—only to find it unbearable when I felt personally attacked," he admits.
"It is not to excuse my actions that I note that sometimes a personal experience is what it takes for an awakening like this to occur," he adds.
That's when he began plotting his exit from the Republican party, and while he previously excused Trump's role on Jan. 6, "his lack of leadership during the COVID pandemic," and his "migrants are rapists tirade," Bruner says "our nation has arrived at a moment in its history where staying silent for personal comfort isn’t an option anymore."
"I know now that if I continue to stay, I won’t be able to explain to my children why I didn’t take a stand when I had the chance," he says. "I wish I had realized this sooner and I applaud my colleagues who did so long before me."
Bruner's clarion call encourages those who care about the country to speak out and do something.
"If you believe in this country now is the time to refuse to ferry its destruction for a tainted livelihood. Take a stand. Speak out. Show your pride as an American who believes in the Constitution and the values we grew up with. Today, I quit allowing my complacency to destroy America, and I urge you to quit, too."
Polds4OSU
Marshall
Married GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales allegedly had an affair with his senior aide, Regina Aviles — who was found dead after she supposedly doused herself in gasoline and set herself on fire, per The Daily Mail.
Uvalde Police are blocking release of the 911 call, video & records. (Daily Mail)
www.dailymail.co.uk
Uvalde Police are blocking release of the 911 call, video & records. (Daily Mail)
Congressman's alleged affair with aide before she set herself on fire
The Republican allegedly had an affair with his senior aide, multiple sources have told the Daily Mail. She later died after dousing herself with gasoline and setting herself on fire at home.
Polds4OSU
Marshall
We’ve received a lot of questions about Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing.
Here’s how the process is supposed to work:
1. Initial Proposal: The White House is managed by the National Park Service (NPS) but used by the Executive Office of the President (EOP). Any proposed change, even by a sitting president, begins internally through the Office of the Curator and the White House Facilities Management Division.
2. Historic Review: The NPS, as custodian of the White House under the Presidential Residence Act and National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), must review all alterations for compliance with Section 106 of the NHPA. This requires assessing potential impacts on historic and cultural resources in consultation with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) and the D.C. State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO).
3. Planning & Environmental Oversight: The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) evaluates all major federal projects in the National Capital Region, including work on the White House grounds, for design, planning, and environmental impacts under NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act). Public comment and design reviews are part of that process.
4. Aesthetic Review: The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) reviews and advises on the design and appearance of any exterior modifications to the White House or its grounds.
5. Final Authorization: After approvals from NPS, NCPC, and CFA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the White House Chief Usher / Facilities Management Office finalize funding, scheduling, and logistics.
Only after completing this full process could any major construction or demolition legally begin.
Yet Trump ignored every step, acting unilaterally through executive order, bypassing oversight, and ordering demolition as if he were a monarch. The result: the people’s house, altered without the people’s consent.
More details:
Section 107, let’s talk about it.
The above process has always been the process taken, and here’s why.
Section 107 of the National Historic Preservation Act exempts the White House, the U.S. Capitol, and the Supreme Court from being legally required to go through the Act’s formal Section 106 review. In other words, the law doesn’t automatically force those branches to follow the same procedures as other federal buildings. That exemption exists only because each branch of government controls its own seat of power, it was never intended as a free pass to ignore preservation, planning, or environmental rules altogether.
In practice, every administration since the 1960s has followed the same review structure out of duty, accountability, and executive-branch policy. The White House is still federal property, managed by the National Park Service under the Presidential Residence Act and subject to Executive Order 11593, which requires federal agencies to protect and consult on historic resources. Major exterior or site work still triggers National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) and U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) design reviews, along with NEPA environmental assessments. Any project involving government resources must also comply with the Anti-Deficiency Act and federal ethics rules on funding and gifts.
So yes, Section 107 means the NHPA can’t force compliance, but presidents are still bound by a network of executive orders, planning statutes, environmental laws, and constitutional duties. That’s why the process described isn’t optional, it’s the framework that has always protected the people’s house from unilateral or politically motivated alteration.
These executive orders:
- Executive Order 11593 (1971) – Protection and Enhancement of the Cultural Environment - Requires all federal agencies (including the Executive Office of the President) to “locate, inventory, and nominate to the National Register all properties under their control” and to consult with the Secretary of the Interior before altering historically significant structures. (Demolishing part of the White House without such consultation would conflict with this order.)
- Executive Order 12148 (1979), delegates emergency and historic property responsibilities to the Department of the Interior, reaffirming that federal agencies must protect historic resources even when exemptions exist.
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