Move over, Donald. The top story on cable news today will be the rescue efforts at Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed after a cargo ship rammed it about 1:30 this morning. It’s being treated as a mass casualty event; nobody is sure how many workers and vehicles were on the steel structure.
Another story out of Maryland: U.S. Rep. David Trone – yeah, the Total Wine guy – was the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by Ben Cardin. Then he put his foot in his mouth the other day – he meant to call something a bugaboo and said “jigaboo” instead. That, along with a poll showing him 7 points ahead of his closest rival, Angela Alsobrooks, prompted a wave of endorsements for Alsobrooks. Whoever wins has a tough fight against Republican ex-governor Larry Hogan. The tepidly liberal Trone’s legislative career has mostly echoed his prior lobbying interests – he keeps trying to overturn laws to make it easier and cheaper to buy alcohol, the country’s most destructive drug.
As has been normal for decades, Donald Trump dodged responsibility for his crimes when the New York appeals court lowered the size of the bond he has to post while appealing his fraud conviction to $175 million and gave him 10 more days to pay. This doesn’t actually get him off the hook, but coming up with the amount shouldn’t be a problem for him: Reuters reports that a bunch of right-wing billionaires was ready to step in for the full amount before the reduction. It’s a banana republic, folks, you can stop pretending otherwise.
Whenever a right-winger talks about “free speech,” he (and it’s almost always a he) really means “You have to shut so everyone will listen to me!” When the right-winger is rich asshole Elon Musk, he files a frivolous lawsuit against people who point out that Xitter has become a cesspool of racism under his “free speech” regime. And on rare occasions, a judge calls him out for it:
“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose,” wrote Charles Breyer, the US district judge, in the ruling. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”
The floor’s yours.