Shelley Kerber

🚨 ICE awarded a $12M immigrant-tracking contract to a tiny vendor whose “lead computer scientist” was represented by a stock photo also used by therapy and life-coaching sites. After The Lever asked questions, the executive vanished from its website.

🇺🇸Trump at 10:00 AM — “I can't think of anybody in history that should get the Nobel Prize more than me. Nobody else settled wars.” 🇮🇷 Iran at 10:05 AM — "This idiot actually started a war against us, lost it, and fools everyone by saying he settled it. Absolutely crazy." 🤣 This response by Iran will remain epic 🔥

🚨 Real scam. Confirmed by law enforcement. Scammers are wedging a small screw into the gas pump nozzle cradle. You pay. You pump. You leave. But the pump never fully resets. Your card keeps getting charged. Gas is up 66% since December. Scammers know you’re distracted at the pump. - Return the nozzle yourself - Make sure the screen resets to $0 - Grab a receipt before you leave - Never let a stranger pump for you Share this. It takes 5 seconds to check.

Wow. This NYC pop up is 🔥 The Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room is open as a public installation displaying all 3.5 million pages of the released and partially redacted Epstein files, printed and bound into 3,437 volumes. This shouldn’t just stay in NYC. Take it on the road.

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..

@Dalbodog Where is this? Did the dog get adopted?

This picture just broke me. Staring at that wall waiting for people who are never coming back. Every dog deserves a home, but not every home deserves a dog. 💔 please send your love to this sweet soul. 🦮💞

Is anyone investigating why the president keeps falling asleep in public, or do we have to wait on the tell-all book to come out?

#OnThisDay May 11 1858: Minnesota becomes the 32nd state of the United States after the bill is signed by President Polk. Because there are few roads and the telegraph lines reach only as far as La Crosse, WI, word doesn't reach Saint Paul by steamboat until May 13.

@JonahDispatch You can come to my house anytime, sweet Pippa! We love springers! 🤎🤍

“Good morning. It’s Monday. I like trying to go into other peoples houses and cars when I’m in a new neighborhood. It makes my people angry. But all the other people I say hi to don’t seem to mind. Also, I love you.”

🇺🇸🧐 This is beyond outrageous. Openly, shamelessly, without fear of anyone, he is robbing America right in front of the entire country — robbing all of us. Kaitlan Collins, host of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, described the situation this way: “Imagine suing the government for $10 billion while also being the person who controls that very government. That’s exactly what is happening right now. Donald Trump, sitting in the White House, has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the IRS — the very Treasury he controls, the very IRS he oversees, the very government he leads. He is effectively both the plaintiff and the defendant, and he wants taxpayers — you, me, every working family in America — to hand him $10 billion. Just think about that.” Trump even appeared on television boasting that he had already “won,” essentially bragging that he was negotiating a settlement with himself. Then his lawyers walked into federal court asking for a 90-day delay — not to fight the lawsuit, but to “reach an agreement.” An agreement between Donald Trump and Donald Trump, paid for with your money. But then something unexpected happened. Judge Kathleen Williams looked at this circus and basically said: “Wait a second. You are telling me you are suing yourself and expect me to approve a $10 billion payment from the U.S. Treasury directly into your personal pocket? Absolutely not.” She rejected the 90-day delay. She demanded separate reports from both sides — despite both sides effectively being controlled by the same person. Then she took the extraordinary step of appointing three of the nation’s most respected law firms as independent advisers to the court. Why? Because $10 billion of taxpayer money is at stake. What is really happening here is terrifying: a sitting president allegedly using the power of his office, and a Justice Department under his influence, to settle a personal lawsuit with himself and funnel public money into his own bank account. Constitutional law already has a name for this: a collusive lawsuit. The Supreme Court ruled on this principle more than 200 years ago. If both sides are effectively the same party, the courts have no authority to proceed. The Constitution requires a real conflict, real opposing sides — not a friendly deal between a man and his reflection in the mirror. And this is not some isolated stunt. Critics argue it is part of a broader strategy: stage a fake legal battle, force a surrender, cash the check, and walk away. But this time the number is staggering: $10 billion. Money that could repair roads, fund schools, support veterans, or feed hungry children. Instead, critics say it is being redirected through one of the most transparent legal scams America has ever witnessed. And the people supposed to defend the public interest? The Justice Department. Government officials whose job is to protect taxpayers. They are not fighting. They are not even pretending to fight. The judge sees it. Top legal scholars see it. The Constitution itself sees it. The only remaining question is whether the system still has enough courage to say “No.” Because if a president can sue himself and pay himself with public money, then the word “government” no longer means anything. It simply means: the person holding the pen writes the check — and everyone else pays the bill.

Appalling.

SHOULDNT THIS BE ALL OVER THE NEWS 🤷

Ted Lieu says the unreleased Epstein files show Trump r*ping children. That’s what’s being hidden. That’s why the files stay sealed. That’s why there are no arrests. Release everything. Or resign.

Trump took $59 million from 590,000 Americans for a phone that may never exist. Then quietly updated the terms: “No guarantee a phone will be produced or sold.” The crypto coin. The sneakers. The Bible. The gold card. The ballroom. The phone. Every single time the same pattern. Take the money. Change the terms. Walk away.

@JonahDispatch Oh, sweetheart , take care in the big city! 🤎🤍

“Hello. It’s Thursday. I am a gritty city spaniel now. Every morning we get in a box. The door closes and when it opens we are somewhere else. It’s very strange. But when the door of this ‘L-Vator’ opens sometimes there are people who are nice to me. But sometimes they have dogs. There haven’t been any mean ones yet, but I worry about an ambush. I don’t know how long we will be here. But Zoë is definitely working hard to catalog the smells. Also, I love you.”

18-year-old U.S. citizen dying from cancer begs to see parents one last time—ICE is keeping them detained. Parents were denied humanitarian visa—so forced to cross border illegally. Son is in hospice care—only wish is to hug mom and dad before he dies. Willing to self-deport and sign any paperwork voluntarily just to be released from the detention center before it's too late. "It’s very difficult because the processes are very slow," said their lawyer. Meanwhile, Kevin faces the possibility of dying in just a matter of days far away from his parents. "Please help me fulfill my last wish."

In July, the White House said the new ballroom would cost $200 million. Privately funded. Not a dollar from taxpayers. October: $300 million. December: $400 million. This Monday, Senate Republicans tucked $1 billion in taxpayer money for the ballroom into a $72 billion ICE and CBP reconciliation bill. Here is what my investigation found🧵

Trump admits he bypassed federal bidding laws to hand a Lincoln Memorial project to his personal country club contractors. He treats national monuments like his own private real estate properties. The corruption inside the White House is absolutely staggering.

Not a great sign that President Trump’s judicial nominees seem incapable of stating that President Trump is ineligible to run for a third term.