July 23, 2025

Wednesday, July 23, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

Repeat. Remember this.

The Republicans in the House don’t seem to have any work to do. Why are they paid?

Johnson cuts short House Session to avoid Epstein vote.

Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday announced he was cutting short the week’s legislative business and sending the House home early for the summer on Wednesday to avoid having to hold votes on releasing files related to the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

He made the move to deny Democrats the chance to try to force procedural votes on measures that would call on the Justice Department to make the information public. It reflected how deep divisions among Republicans on the matter have now paralyzed the House, as Republicans seek to avoid a politically perilous vote on a matter that is confounding President Trump and roiling their MAGA base. (New York Times).

The Epstein-Trump connection is not going away, even though House Republicans stop working.

His own teammates.

Democrats.

The Public.

The media.

Watch.👇

https://x.com/DemocraticWins/status/1947801963527344359

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Trump is always crazy.

Touch to watch.

After President Trump posted an AI-generated fake video showing former President Barack Obama's arrest on social media, Trump accused the former president of "treason." (ABC News).

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Obama breaks silence on Trump’s ‘outrageous’ call to prosecute him.

Office of ex-US president breaks precedent and warns that allegations of attempted ‘coup’ are ‘attempt at distraction’

Barack Obama has broken his silence on calls from Donald Trump for him to be prosecuted by unequivocally rejecting his successor’s accusations that he tried to engineer a “coup” following Trump’s 2016 election victory by “manufacturing” evidence of Russian interference.

Obama’s office took the unusual step of issuing an emphatic refutation after Trump told reporters that his predecessor had “[tried] to lead a coup” against him and was guilty of “treason” over intelligence assessments suggesting that Russia had intervened to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the campaign.

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” the statement said. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

The statement went on to criticize claims made in an 11-page document released last week by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who said she was passing evidence of what she claimed was a “treasonous conspiracy” among Obama national security officials to the justice department, recommending their prosecution.

“Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes,” it said.

“These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

Obama’s response followed a fusillade of accusations by Trump in the White House as he was meeting the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son of the country’s former autocratic president, who was ousted in a popular “people’s power revolution” in 1986.

Asked by a reporter who should be the main target of the criminal investigation recommended in Gabbard’s report, Trump said: “Based on what I read, and I read pretty much what you read, it would be President Obama. He started it, and Biden was there with him. And [James] Comey [the former FBI director] was there, and [James] Clapper [the former director of national intelligence], the whole group was there.

“It was them, too, but the leader of the gang was President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him?”

He went on: “This isn’t like evidence. This is like proof, irrefutable proof that Obama was sedatious [sic], that Obama … was trying to lead a coup, and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people, but Obama headed it up.

“He’s guilty. This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever even imagined.”

Trump said Gabbard had told him she had “thousands of additional documents coming”.

“It’s the most unbelievable thing I think I’ve ever read. So you want to take a look at that and stop talking about nonsense,” he said, in what appeared to be a coded appeal for supporters to drop their demands for the release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who was found dead in his prison cell in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges.

But the Gabbard report, which accused the Obama administration of forcing spy agencies to alter their conclusions, conflated and misrepresented different issues to discredit the intelligence community’s assessment in 2017 that Russia sought to simultaneously help Trump and damage Clinton.

The assessment concluded that Russia did not engage in cyber-attacks against election infrastructure to change vote tallies, but found Moscow hacked and leaked documents from the Democratic National Committee to damage the Clinton campaign. (The Guardian).

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We haven’t discussed CBS’ firing of Stephen Colbert.

Touch to watch. 👇

Touch to watch. 👇

Yes, touch to watch.👇

https://x.com/magalietracker/status/1947510098563371061?s=61&t=I_Od53CbnPTsbLcD0baXPg

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This,👇 of course, is so outlandish and offensive it requires an outcry from each of us to block it.

House panel votes to name Kennedy Center opera house for Melania Trump

The Opera House at the Kennedy Center.

The vote came after Congress previously designated $256 million for improvements to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

WASHINGTON – House Republicans were singing from the same sheet music as the Trump administration July 22 when a key panel voted to name the Kennedy Center opera house after first lady Melania Trump.

"This designation is an excellent way to recognize her support and commitment to promoting the arts," said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who shepherded the Appropriations Committee's spending bill that funds John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, opposed the change and alleged it's part of giving Trump power to run the Kennedy Center "with very little oversight" from Congress.

"The Republicans snuck in, I think, something that is slightly divisive, which is renaming one section of the Kennedy Center after a family member of this administration,” Pingree said.

The committee voted 33-25 to adopt the name change as part of a larger amendment. The full House and the Senate would still have to vote on the proposal approved by the Appropriations Committee as part of the spending bill for the interior, environment and other agencies.

But the move reflected support from Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress. The theater would be named the "First Lady Melania Trump Opera House" if the legislations becomes law.

Lawmakers have already agreed to spend $256.7 million on improvements to the Kennedy Center by 2029, as part of President Donald Trump's legislative priorities. The House subcommittee was voting on $37.2 million in routine annual funding for the center for the year starting Oct. 1.

"The Republicans have now given the president six times the normal amount of money to run the Kennedy Center, carte blanche over who will be on the board, and how different parts of the Kennedy Center − or perhaps the whole Kennedy Center itself− will be named," Pingree said.

Trump dismissed much of the Kennedy Center's board after he took office and designated himself chairman. He criticized drag performances and said after the cancelation of one theatre engagement that he "never liked 'Hamilton' very much."

"We'll make it great again," Trump said during a tour in March. "I'm very disappointed when I look around. The bottom line: It has tremendous potential." (USA Today).

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A Poem for Troubled Times.

Pity the nation...

BY LAWRANCE FERLINGHETTI (2007)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airways

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
but aims to rule the world
by force and by torture
And knows
No other language but its own

Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed

Pity the nation Oh pity the people of my country

My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

Ferlinghetti's Greatest Poems

Ferlinghetti wrote “Pity the Nation” at age 88 in 2007, near the end of George W. Bush's presidency.