Jude 'Mask Up!' Tomsen

The US government already has a ballroom just down the street. The Andrew Mellon Auditorium is less than a mile away from the White House is beautiful and accommodates more people than the new ballroom will and is owned by the U.S. Government. via Shelia Earl

NEW: In our latest investigation, we examine how the Yellowstone Club — whose members have included Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg — helped orchestrate a land swap that moved nearly 4,000 acres of public land into private ownership in Montana. floodlightnews.org/trump-official…

Roughly 40 insurrectionists have been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for crimes that have nothing to with their actions on January 6. Trump's choice to pardon them has real public safety risks. thenation.com/article/societ…

The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday released the transcript of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's testimony during a closed-door deposition on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. to.pbs.org/3RDg664

Trump’s sons have a financial stake in a mining company called Cove Capital that has secured $1.6 billion from U.S. taxpayers. That company is trying to mine tungsten — a critical mineral used for defense purposes — in Kazakhstan. Now they’re asking the Pentagon for $400 MILLION more to develop that mine. The CEO of Cove Capital went on the record saying the company received “direct assistance” from Trump, Secretary Rubio, and Secretary Lutnick to secure the underlying mining deal. The U.S. government financing came after. Now Trump’s sons are positioned to profit from a project their father helped secure and finance and is now asking for even more of your money. Every time this family says they’re just passive investors, it somehow ends up costing taxpayers money, and they get a check at the end of it. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/ac…

This New York Times investigation is staggering. More than 80 Polymarket accounts placed suspicious bets across nearly 30 topics, winning hundreds of thousands of dollars on military operations, presidential pardons, and crypto rulings that shouldn’t have been knowable in advance. Bettors won over $1.4 million in the hours before President Trump announced the Iran cease-fire on April 7. An Army Special Forces soldier was indicted for using classified information to bet on Maduro’s capture. An Israeli reservist allegedly tipped off an accomplice as warplanes took off for the June strike on Iran. This is exactly why I introduced the DEATH BETS Act with Adam Schiff. Americans should not be able to gamble on whether their neighbors live or die in a war, and insiders with classified information should not be able to cash in on it. Congress has to act before this gets worse. nytimes.com/2026/05/13/tec…

The DOJ—led by Trump's former personal defense attorney—is reportedly negotiating a $10 billion payout for Trump from the IRS. motherjones.com/politics/2026/…

JD Vance announced the suspension of $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California as part of his new role as "fraud czar" for the Trump Regime. Meanwhile, Trump has pardoned multiple convicted fraudsters, including several who gave money to his campaign and Super PAC. Remember this.

Chevron seeks huge tax break to build a power plant exclusively for a Texas data center motherjones.com/politics/2026/…

SCOOP: RFK Jr.'s top spokesman, Rich Danker, quit in protest over Trump admin's vaping policy -- one day after FDA chief Makary resigned for the same reason. NOW VACANT: Surgeon General. CDC director. FDA commissioner. Asst. Sec for Public Affairs nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/…

Secretary of the Interior Has No Idea How Solar Power Works trib.al/eHUNZrQ

Lost in the news this week: the real story behind Palm Beach International becoming Trump International is not the renaming. It is the coercion that produced it and the extraordinary terms hidden inside the deal. County staff told commissioners that refusing would put state transportation funding and grant assurances at risk. DeSantis has already removed state attorneys and school board members who crossed him. That is the climate one Democratic commissioner cast her deciding vote in. And the agreement itself is not a normal honorary naming. The Trump family company retains the right to pick vendors, license the name to third parties, and sell branded merchandise off-site. This is not an honor bestowed as much as it is a shakedown. theguardian.com/us-news/2026/m…

Makary is out. Now the US has no CDC Director, No FDA Commissioner, and no Surgeon General. And the NIH Director who is also defacto acting CDC Director never trained in Medicine. During this hantavirus outbreak the US needs steady public health leadership and a authoritative voice to the American people. There currently is no one to fill that role.

This weekend, Trump took a taxpayer-funded trip to his Virginia golf course to attend a LIV Golf tournament, which is backed by the Saudi government. By the way, the president taking money from a foreign government is an unconstitutional ethics violation. huffpost.com/entry/trump-bu…

Who protected Epstein in Palm Beach and why? Jkbjournalist.substack.com

FT reports that Cove Kaz Capital, which merged with a shell company backed by Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, applied for an extra $400 million from the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, in addition to the $1.6 billion already granted, to develop a tungsten mine in Kazakhstan. This is your taxpayer money at work! ft.com/content/80b47f…

Democrats said staff for Senator Chuck Grassley improperly coordinated with the Justice Department to secure high-value settlements for FBI agents fired for conduct violations. @BenjaminSWeiss courthousenews.com/democrats-cry-…

FLAG: The Wall Street Journal says it has received subpoenas for the records of its reporters — an exceedingly rare move by Trump's DOJ that prompted concerns the admin is impinging on press freedom. The subpoenas were issued in connection with a Feb. 23 article describing Pentagon officials' warnings to Trump about the risks of a military campaign against Iran wsj.com/politics/natio…

This is getting wild now 👀 So I started looking at the ballroom after digging into the Reflecting Pool yesterday. I’m starting to see some patterns. The playbook works like this. Pick your contractor personally. Invoke “Unusual and Compelling Urgency” to skip competition. Use the 250th anniversary as the justification. Inflate the price. Don’t disclose who’s actually doing the work. Repeat. Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. $13.1M. No bid. No competition. Justification: “Unusual and Compelling Urgency” 250th anniversary. Contractor: Atlantic Industrial. Zero prior federal contracts. No pool or monument experience. The subcontractor doing the actual work doesn’t appear anywhere in the justification documents. Now the ballroom. Trump personally selected Clark Construction to build his $400M White House ballroom. Clark is already on site with people and equipment. Then NPS quietly awards Clark a separate $17.4M no-bid contract to fix two fountains in Lafayette Park directly across the street. Never posted publicly. Never competitively bid. The justification? Clark was already nearby. That’s it. The original estimate for those fountains in 2022 was $3.3M. The consultant who wrote that estimate said the administration literally took his cover page and added millions with no itemization. Final price: $17.4M. Same urgency exemption. Same 250th anniversary justification. Both contracts bypassed competitive bidding. Both used the same urgency exemption. Both cited the same 250th anniversary. Both awarded to contractors with direct Trump connections. The Lafayette Park contract was never posted in public federal spending databases. The Reflecting Pool contract was posted but the subcontractor doing the primary work appears nowhere in the paperwork. Combined taxpayer bill: over $30 million. Combined competitive bids received: zero. This urgency exemption has been used in less than 1% of NPS contracts over the past decade. They used it twice in the same year. For birthday decorations. Senator Blumenthal is already demanding answers on the Lafayette Park contract by May 15th. The Reflecting Pool has a Cabinet secretary photographed on site and a subcontractor with an expired federal registration that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the contract documents. This isn’t two separate stories. This is one story. The 250th anniversary isn’t just a celebration. It’s a billing mechanism. And taxpayers are footing the bill with zero say in who got the work or why..

The @US_FDA withdrew its scientists’ COVID and shingles vaccine studies from publication last fall. My new @CIDRAP piece walks through what those studies actually found, and why their suppression matters. cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/cidra…