Tom Scallon

🚨 The numbers are clear: America was better off when President @JoeBiden left office than it is after nearly a year and a half of Trump. On every major economic indicator, Biden was better. Better economy. Better president. Better man. What happened in 2024 was one of the biggest self-owns in American history. Completely avoidable. And the people who put us here own it.

@archeohistories Finished this a few weeks ago, great read.

The greatest knight who ever lived was English. He defeated 500 knights, served five kings, fought for over fifty years in war — and saved the English crown personally leading a charge at seventy years old. He started with nothing — a fourth son with no land, no title, and no inheritance. William Marshal was born around 1146 into a minor gentry family wrecked by the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. At the age of five, he was handed over as a hostage to King Stephen, who threatened to catapult him over the walls of his father's castle. His father told the king to go ahead — he still had the anvils and hammers to make more sons. Stephen could not bring himself to do it. The boy survived. Sent to Normandy as a teenager, Marshal trained as a knight and found his calling on the tournament circuit. These were not the regulated jousts of later centuries. They were brutal, sprawling melees — hundreds of mounted knights charging into each other across open country, fighting with lances, swords, and maces. Men were dragged from their horses, beaten, and held for ransom. It was organised violence for profit. Marshal was built for it. At one tournament, his helmet was so battered they had to find a blacksmith to hammer it off his head. He and his partner Roger de Gaugi captured 103 knights in ten months. Over the next sixteen years, he remained undefeated. On his deathbed, he claimed to have bested 500 knights across his career. He said he had kept their arms, their horses, and all their gear — and if that meant the kingdom of heaven was closed to him, so be it. But Marshal's story is not just violence. It is loyalty under impossible pressure. He served Henry II's eldest son, Henry the Young King, as mentor, bodyguard, and tournament captain for over a decade. When the Young King died of dysentery in 1183, Marshal honoured his dying wish and carried his crusading cloak to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. When he returned, Henry II took him into his own household. Then came the moment that defined him. 1189, near Le Mans. Henry II is retreating — broken, betrayed, his sons in open revolt. Richard, the future Lionheart, is hunting him. Marshal rides the rearguard. He meets Richard head-on. He unhorses him — clean. One thrust of the lance and he could have killed a future king. He doesn't take it. He strikes Richard's horse instead and rides on. Skill with restraint. Power without cruelty. When Richard became king, he did not punish Marshal. He rewarded him — recognising a man who kept his oath even when it cost him. Richard arranged his marriage to Isabel de Clare, one of the wealthiest heiresses in England. The landless fourth son was suddenly one of the richest men in the kingdom. Marshal went on to serve Richard, then King John — standing beside him at Runnymede when Magna Carta was sealed in 1215. When John died the following year, the heir to the throne was a nine-year-old boy and half the country was in the hands of a French prince who had proclaimed himself King of England. England was on the edge of becoming a French vassal state. William Marshal, now seventy years old, became regent. He reissued Magna Carta. He won back the wavering barons. And on 20 May 1217, at the Battle of Lincoln, he personally led the charge — bursting through the gates of the city at the head of his knights, so eager for the fight that his biography says he forgot to put on his helmet. The French were routed. Their commander was killed. The invasion collapsed. He died on 14 May 1219. On his deathbed, he was received into the Knights Templar — a promise he had made years earlier in the Holy Land. He was buried in the Temple Church in London, where his effigy still lies. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, called him the greatest knight who ever lived. Five kings served. Over fifty years of war. 500 knights defeated. A kingdom saved at seventy. And he never broke his word. © The Stoic English #archaeohistories

A closer look at Trump's 2027 budget

ECONOMICS FACT CHECK: -8 of the 10 poorest states in the US are controlled by Republicans. -10 of the last 11 recessions started under Republican Presidents. -The only 3 Presidents to lower the deficit in the last 50 years were all Dems: Clinton, Obama, Biden. -6 out of 7 Presidents with the highest job creation rates since 1945 were Democrats. -GDP growth under Republican Presidents averages just 2.5% but a whopping 4.3% under Democrats. REPUBLICAN TRICKLE DOWN HURTS THE ECONOMY #FACTSMATTER

Wallace: What is happening to these criminal cases? Are they just dismissed and the criminals go back out into the community? MacFarlane: In so many of these cases, they're not launching the prosecution. They're declining what federal agents are bringing them. And when I say federal agents, I mean the FBI, the inspectors general, immigration and customs enforcement. They're bringing potential cases and they're being declined. So they're never getting to the grand jury. They're never getting to the trial jury.  But, you'll note some cases are getting to the grand jury still proposed cases against Letitia James, against James Comey, against the guy who threw the sandwich at the federal agent. Some things are still matriculating through.

BERNIE: “The top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%.”🇺🇸 GUY IN AUDIENCE: “WHAT?!”😬 BERNIE: “1 person, Mr. Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom 53%… Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ made 938 Billionaires $1.5 TRILLION richer.” (This is who @MarshaBlackburn fights for)

In what world is it okay for the Defense Secretary to make multi-million dollar investments in defense companies: a) Ever; b) Just before launching a war. FT has the scoop: ft.com/content/744ea8… In a functional democracy, he would offer his resignation tonight.

At Newburgh in 1783, Washington walked into a room of soldiers who wanted to march on Congress and install him as a constitutional monarch. He reached into his pocket for his eyeglasses — the calculated theater of a man who understood exactly what the moment required — and said he had grown not only gray but nearly blind in the service of his country. Some men broke into tears. The conspiracy died in that room. Nichols asks us to sit with what Washington chose not to do in that moment. A lesser man, he writes, would have nodded and taken the throne. Washington had the army, the love of the citizenry, and a government too weak to stop him. He chose to go home instead. Trump stood in Arlington National Cemetery and looked at the graves of the honored dead and said: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” He said that in the same country, about the same army, whose commander-in-chief he was. The distance between those two men is not partisan. It is the entire argument for why the republic was designed the way it was.

McGovern: Stop the BS that somehow ICE is being defunded. $85 billion. That's what they have. Their normal budget is $10 billion a year. Only Republicans would say that somehow that's not enough

I want to flag something that may have flown under the radar, but shouldn't. In December 2025, President Trump and @SecVetAffairs Doug Collins moved to ban access to abortion care at the VA, even in cases of rape, incest, or when the health of the mother is at risk. Earlier this week, the Senate voted on our bill to overturn that policy. 50 Republican Senators opposed it, meaning the abortion ban remains in effect. This threat to women's healthcare continues to be real. After losing elections in the wake of Roe falling, Republicans know that it's not politically popular to be publicly for abortion bans. So they do it just like this: quietly, in the dark of night, through bureaucratic rule-making -- hoping we won't catch it. Our veterans deserve access to abortion care. Period. And I will not stop shining the light on this and working to overturn this new ban. ms.now/news/senate-re…

Fact checking fraud claims: Heritage Foundation documented 1,620 cases of voter fraud from 1982-2025, including 100 cases of noncitizens voting. That's about 0.000008% of more than 1.3 billion votes cast in presidential elections in that time. @YLindaQiu nytimes.com/2026/03/27/us/…

The most annoying thing about this SAVE Act nonsensical bullshit is that every study in the world (including those by Conservative organizations) has determined that voter fraud is so miniscule, it doesn't even come close to changing the results of any election. Republicans are in this weird state of psychosis, where they believe there's 10 million "illegal aliens" waiting to cast votes. You know what illegal aliens in this country do? Fly under the radar as much as they can. When Biden won in 2020, these people conducted every audit, recount, voter machine autopsy, in the books. They found nothing And even the ones with the guts to take voter fraud complaints to court, admitted to judges they didn't actually have any evidence. The biggest virus Trump installed into the MAGA @GOP is this myth of stolen elections. It's not real. Ironically, Elon Musk was blatantly giving money to people who "vote" (hint hint) all during the last election cycle. So if there's anyone fixing elections right now, it's them. Massive voter fraud, but not a single living soul can prove it? It's like my dad says, some people are SOS: Stuck On Stupid

🚨MASSIVE BREAKING; Republican Chip Roy, the SAVE ACT’s author, assured voters on Fox News it would be easy for women to vote. In private leaked footage provided to CTA, Roy admits his Chief of Staff had to jump through “hoops” and go to the DMV at least twice. This is criminal.

GOP Senator Kennedy admits Trump is the reason for TSA shutdown: "He said said 'No deals with the Democrats.' We could have had TSA paid by the end of the week. But the President said 'No deal.'"

🚨 BREAKING: Republican Senator John Kennedy just blamed Trump for the shutdown. “The Democrats offered a deal… we said accept it… Trump said no.” That deal would have paid TSA this week. This isn’t partisan spin. This is coming from inside the party.

Here's the voter fraud rate in WA elections from 2008-2025, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation.

trump gloating "I'm glad Mueller's dead" didn't make me forget his Pearl Harbor insult to Japan's PM. That Pearl Harbor insult didn't make me forget his sending thousands more troops to a war of choice with Iran. Iran War didn't make me forget the racist Obama apes video he posted. The apes video didn't make me forget the Supreme Court slapping down his tariffs (and him calling them unpatriotic). Tariffs didn't make me forget his divisive State of the Union lies & Dem-bashing. SOTU didn't make me forget his push to 'nationalize' elections. Nationalizing voting didn't make me forget threatening to seize Greenland by force. And all of his cascading scandals, lurching from one to the next, haven't make me forget his million mentions in the Epstein files, or the fact that he might've started a freaking war trying to distract from them. And I will NEVER forget that.

THE TRUMP EFFECT: Gas when Joe Biden left office: $3.13/gallon Gas today: $3.94/gallon Electricity when Biden left office: 17.5c per kWh Electricity today: 19.9c per kWh Oil when Biden left office: $70/barrel Oil today: $112/barrel Heating Oil when Biden left office: $2.50 Heating Oil today: $4.60 Coal when Biden left office: $116.35/T Coal today: $146.50/T Beef when Biden left office: $5.50/lb Beef today: $7.50/lb Bread when Biden left office: $2.00 Bread today: $2.10

5 states have looked for non-citizens that managed to get registered. Utah found 1 out of 2.1 million voters; Georgia found 20 out of 8.2 million, Michigan found 3 in one county out of 724K voters, Louisiana found 390 out of 2.9 million (shame on you Mister Speaker), and Idaho found 36 out of 1 million. Illegals don't vote. Why should they. Trying to register to vote is a good way to get caught and be deported.