Theprogressivist

Donald Trump will meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Florida on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter, less than a week after he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The visit is likely to fan concerns that the Hungarian leader is working as an intermediary between Putin and Trump.

Trump and Putin professed a fondness for one another during the U.S. president’s first term—often garnering bipartisan criticism. More recently, the Republican leader has said he believed he could convince Putin to end his war in Ukraine and release Americans detained in Russia if he were elected to a second term.

Orbán will travel to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after the conclusion of the NATO summit in Washington. His visit to Moscow became a central point of discussion at the gathering, where other allies pledged additional air defenses for Ukraine in its continuing campaign against the full-scale Russian invasion that began in 2022.

The idea that Donald Trump is forcing the Republican Party to moderate its extreme positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights would make for an interesting story. So interesting, in fact, that the story was all over the mainstream press. The only problem with this very interesting story is that it didn’t happen.

On Monday, a draft of the GOP platform began circulating ahead of the Republican convention. The coverage of the platform’s position on abortion was remarkable in its uniformity. The New York Times’ headline blared, “Following Trump’s Lead, Republicans Adopt Platform That Softens Stance on Abortion.” NBC News announced, “Trump Pushes New GOP Platform Softening Party’s Positions on Abortion and Same-Sex Marriage.” The Washington Post concurred: “GOP Adopts Platform That Softens Language on Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage.” These headlines could not be more misleading. (One outlet, The 19th, commendably got it right.)

First, although the new platform omits language from the 2016 version opposing marriage equality, it is silent on equal rights for same-sex couples, and certainly does not endorse them. That omission is meaningful, and should not be interpreted as moderation. The Trumpified right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has already taken quiet aim at the decision that granted same-sex couples the right to marry, and some of the sitting justices, such as Samuel Alito, have denounced that decision outright. Once the right-wing bloc on the Court has the numbers and the right case, that decision will likely be overturned.

In other words, the removal of the previous opposition does not amount to a recognition of equal rights for same-sex couples. It is a strategic silence asserted in the belief that the Roberts Court will narrow those rights in its own time without the GOP having to pay a political price for making that happen. Other language in the new platform refers to being able to “act in accordance with those [religious] Beliefs, not just in places of Worship, but in everyday life.” This is about justifying religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws, which will target LGBTQ Americans and women, among others. This is an agenda that contemplates second-class citizenship for anyone who is not a right-wing Christian, and elevated status for those who are.

“We will institute the powerful death penalty for drug dealers, where each dealer is responsible for the death, during their lives, of 500 people or more,” he said.

"Mothers will never again be forced to watch their children overdosing in hosp … and we will never allow mothers to watch their child hopelessly dying in their arms screaming, ‘What can I do, what can I do? Help me God, what can I do?’ We are a nation whose once revered airports are a dirty, crowded mess,” Trump continued, pivoting suddenly.

“You sit and wait for hours and then are notified that the plane won’t leave, that they have no idea when they will. Where ticket prices have tripled. They don’t have the pilots to fly the planes, they don’t seek qualified air traffic controllers, and they just don’t know what the hell they are doing.”

“We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C., and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city, so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime. But rather it will become the most beautiful capital anywhere in the world,” Trump said.

“Right now, if you leave Florida, ‘Oh, let’s go, darling, let’s look at the Jefferson Memorial, let’s look at the Washington Monument, let’s go and look at some of the beautiful scenes,’ and you end up getting shot, mugged, raped,” he warned, promising that he’d run the city “tough and smart.”

Watch Here:

https://x.com/atrupar/status/1810853096609694084

https://x.com/atrupar/status/1810842300961956147

It’s been months now since Dominion Voting Systems complained of a massive discovery leak and subsequently demanded the disqualification of an indicted “Kraken” lawyer from representing former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in a 2020 election-related defamation suit. While a Washington, D.C., federal court has taken no action on Dominion’s pending motion to boot attorney Stefanie Lambert from the case, the voting technology company has identified a new threat to discovery materials: a subpoena issued to Lambert in the criminal case of indicted former Colorado clerk Tina Peters (R).

In a Friday motion to enforce an existing protective order in their lawsuit, Dominion’s lawyers claimed that there appears to be a “highly-orchestrated scheme” by Byrne and Lambert to “improperly release yet more discovery information” through Peters’ case, which was set for trial in late July after months of delays.

The president of the right-wing group spearheading Project 2025 raised the specter of violence Tuesday against those who refuse to capitulate to what he characterized as "the second American Revolution" ushered in by presumptive GOP nominee and would-be authoritarian Donald Trump.

Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, said in an appearance on "Real America's Voice" that the coming "revolution" will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be"—a thinly veiled threat against those who resist the far-right's efforts to seize power.

Trump said in April that whether there is violence surrounding the 2024 presidential election "depends" on the "fairness" of the contest and the outcome.

Watch Roberts' remarks:

https://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/1808507354310209711

"We are going to win. We're in the process of taking this country back," declared Roberts, who has said Project 2025 is "institutionalizing Trumpism" in preparation for a possible victory in November.

Donald Trump appeared to keep an article about a dead Deutsche Bank whistleblower among his classified documents, according to newly released FBI photos.

The article was a feature about Val Broeksmit, a rock musician, who leaked details of Deutsche Bank's files to media and FBI agents investigating the bank's alleged links to money laundering, the Trump Organization and Russia.

“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT — HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG??? THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY. BRING BACK TTC!!! MAGA2024,” Trump wrote in the early hours of Friday.

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At the start of the video, Lauren Windsor of The Undercurrent presents herself as a true believer who showed up at a Catholic Prayer for Trump event seeking a photo op with Stone. From there, Windsor starts asking Stone for his thoughts about the coming presidential election.

While Stone said it was too early to tell who will win, and while he stated that President Joe Biden can’t win in 2024, he added that the election “can be stolen again.”

Highlighting “overconfidence” as “one of giant problems right now among our own people,” Stone said “we’re working on it,” it being the prevention of a repeat of 2020.

Link to video

CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) - Hamas accepts a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution and is ready to negotiate over the details, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Tuesday, adding that it was up to Washington to ensure that Israel abides by it.

Hamas accepts the UN security council resolution in regard to the ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli troops and swap of hostages for detainees held by Israel, he said.

"The U.S. administration is facing a real test to carry out its commitments in compelling the occupation to immediately end the war in an implementation of the UN Security Council resolution," Abu Zuhri said.

With these words Biden addressed the bitter irony that haunted the commemoration ceremonies. While D-Day occurred eight decades ago, America is now just five months from an election that could bring to power a man and a movement who embody and celebrate the twisted authoritarian values of the enemies we sought to defeat so long ago.

Fascism has not gone away. The tactics of the Nazis to employ racism and demagoguery to divide society and enable their seizure of power and their gutting of democratic institutions currently are the playbook of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

“People in our caucus… to me, they’re not really taking this as serious as we should,” Tuberville said. “American people need to wake up. This is a war; this is a war on our Constitutional rights, our constitutional republic. This is not as much about Donald Trump as it is about the people in this country.”

Tuberville also claimed that Democrats were “anti”-American, insisting that the liberal party was looking to strip citizens of their privacy and censorship rights while conveniently forgetting that it was Republican leadership who pushed through the reauthorization of a domestic spy program in April and who are continuing to press for literary censorship in majority conservative states such as Florida.