CupidS Escorts

update - Fed'l judge blocks Trump attack on Planned Parenthood

mandrill

monkey
Aug 23, 2001
84,544
123,975
113
British newspaperThe Telegraph has written a scathing rebuke of President Donald Trump's "anti-tourism" measures, saying they have turned America into "one of the world's least welcoming countries."

"Donald Trump’s anti-tourism measures and a federal lock down are making travel to the States increasingly fraught – and that’s a shame," writes TheTelegraph's Robert Jackman.



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Thegovernment shutdown, Jackman sarcastically says, is good news, because "you shouldn’t encounter any problems getting to America in the first place, given that both airport security and border control are deemed essential services (and thus are expected to be running as normal)."

For visitors to Washington D.C., "on nearby Capitol Hill, the visitor centre has already closed down in what will be a crushing blow for any West Wing obsessives," he says.

And while national parks can't shut down like a visitor's center can, Jackman says, "Europe has history, while America has geography – meaning that the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park are as important to America’s tourism sector as stately homes are to ours."

"Now just imagine if Blenheim Palace had to warn visitors to stay away because [Prime Minister] Keir Starmer had suspended its funding until MPs agreed to pass his budget," he writes.




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Wondering if the Trump administration has become "too cavalier"when it comes to America's tourism industry, Jackman notes that "it wouldn’t be the first time that the White House had chosen to sacrifice the US tourism sector in order to pursue its wider Maga agenda."

One example Jackman cites is Trump's "enthusiasm to tighten visa rules – including those which apply to standard tourists – to extreme ends in order to reduce any risk of illegal immigration," and the new requirement "for certain visa applicants to deposit a hefty fee (at least $250, and up to $10,000 in some cases) to prove they won’t abscond when they enter the States."

And though these fees don't apply to British tourists, Jackman says, they do "send a strong sign as to where Trump’s priorities lie."

Another example of America pulling away the welcome mat is seen in "travelers being detained and deported for what most of us would consider careless behavior at worst," such as a 28-year-old Welsh tourist who was detained for 19 days whenimmigration officials discovered she was planning to undertake voluntary work in the US in return for free boarding.




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The scrutiny of tourists' social media feeds has also turned off visitors and been cause for confusion, Jackman says, because "given the President himself has called for those expressing anti-American views to have their visas revoked, it’s hardly implausible that a border officer might jump the gun a bit."

Just last week, when the NFL announced Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl's halftime headliner, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem warned that only “law-abiding Americans” should attend, insisting immigration authorities will be patrolling the stadium.

"Did Secretary Noem mean to imply that non-nationals aren’t welcome at one of the biggest sporting events in America?" Jackson ponders. "You can understand why some travllers – particularly those from south of the border – might think twice about making the trip to California."


As the numbers continue to show plummeting rates of tourism in hot spots like Las Vegas, Miami and California, based on Trump's policies and international tourist reaction to them, things are only expected to get worse, Jackman says.

"You’d think that a President who has spent five decades leveraging his own personal brand to such brilliant effect would see the value in protecting America’s reputation for friendliness to tourists," he says.

"Instead the White House seems content to sit back while friendly foreigners are turned off by a barrage of negative stories about what might await them if they make the trip," he adds.


Trump sacrificed US tourism for his MAGA agenda — and it 'could get worse'
 

mandrill

monkey
Aug 23, 2001
84,544
123,975
113
President Donald Trump hit out at Democrats with a rabidly partisan attack during a meeting with a foreign leader on Tuesday, dubbing the opposition party as “insurrectionists” and threatening to give his budget director free rein to slash government jobs and programs as he answered questions alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the Oval Office.



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Trump was in the middle of a long-winded soliloquy about the benefits of his Big Beautiful Bill tax cut and spending package when he laid into Democrats for having opposed the legislation.

“I was greatly helped by our speaker, Mike Johnson and by the Senate. I'll tell you what, John Thune has been — both of those guys have been incredible ... because these Democrats are like insurrectionists ... they're so bad for our country, so their policy is so bad for our country,” he said.

Trump was also asked whether his administration intends to honor a law he signed during his first term, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which requires furloughed workers to be paid “at the earliest date possible after the lapse in appropriations ends.”

Although the law is clear on the subject, the Office of Management and Budget recently rewrote their shutdown guidance to cast doubt on whether workers will be made whole after going without pay since last Tuesday.



President Donald Trump and Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein (REUTERS)
Trump replied that it would “depend on who we’re talking about” and blamed Democrats for having “put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy” while suggesting that some workers don’t deserve back pay.

“For the most part, we're going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don't deserve to be taken care of, and we'll take care of them in a different way,” he ominously said.



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Trump’s implicit threat not to pay federal workers despite the clearly written law enacted during his first four years in the White House is consistent with a long history of failing to pay contractors and vendors during his many years as a businessman and hotel/casino operator.

In 2016, USA Today reported that he’d stiffed “hundreds of people” including carpenters, painters, dishwashers, and even attorneys who worked for him.

He told the newspaper at the time that he’d routinely “deduct” from what he owed vendors if he disliked their work.

“Let’s say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t finish, or a job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract, absolutely,” Trump said.

Pressed further on whether federal workers will be paid as the law requires, Trump later told reporters: “I follow the law and what the law says is correct.”



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The president’s comments came on the seventh day of the first government shutdown since a 35-day lapse in appropriations during his first term.

Hundreds of thousands of workers were furloughed or forced to work without pay starting one week ago when legislators failed to advance a Republican-authored temporary funding bill, with most Democratic senators stating that they won’t vote for any legislation that doesn’t extend tax credits that help approximately 10 million Americans purchase health insurance.

Trump has threatened to use the temporary shutdown to permanently gut programs favored by Democrats and fire federal workers who his supporters view as “deep state” members opposed to him and his administration.

During his sit-down with Carney, he threatened to allow Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to begin slashing things “pretty soon” when asked if he has a list of programs to eliminate.


“We have a lot of things that we're going to eliminate and permanently eliminate,” he said.

The president described Vought, a longtime GOP activist who was depicted as the Grim Reaper in an AI-generated video he posted over the weekend, as a “very serious person” who is currently “sitting there and getting ready to cut things.”

When pressed further on whether there’s a list of programs to cut, he said he’d be able to reveal it “in four or five days” if the shutdown continues.

“If this keeps going on, it'll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back,” he said.


Trump labels Democrats ‘insurrectionists’ as he threatens ‘Grim Reaper’ Vought to start cutting American jobs in ‘4 to 5 days’
 

mandrill

monkey
Aug 23, 2001
84,544
123,975
113
Florida Republican State Rep. Kevin Steele has filed a bill ordering every public university and college campus in the Sunshine State to rename a nearby road after the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk or risk losing funding.

Kirk, the influential 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was killed by a sniper’s bullet while debating students on the campus of the University of Utah Valley in Orem, Utah, on September 10.



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Steele filed his bill to honor Kirk in the Florida House of Representatives on Tuesday; however, there is no Senate counterpart so far.

Should his legislation pass, any institution that failed to comply with its terms would face losing the funding it receives from the state within 90 days.

“State funds shall be withheld from any state university or Florida College System institution whose board of trustees fails to redesignate the roadway or portion of a roadway listed above within 90 days after the effective date of this act,” it declares.

“This act shall take effect upon becoming a law.”

The bill lists the exact roadways it expects to be redesignated, giving all 40 in alphabetical order.

Another state GOP lawmaker, Juan Carlos Porras, last month filed a bill of his own to rename a portion of a busy thoroughfare in Miami-Dade County as “Charlie Kirk Memorial Avenue.”


New College of Florida has already announced that it is commissioning a statue of Kirk for its campus (New College of Florida)

New College of Florida has already announced that it is commissioning a statue of Kirk for its campus (New College of Florida)
Porras’s legislation arrived on September 23, the same day the Lake County Commission unanimously approved a resolution to redesignate Schofield Road, connecting Lake County to Orange County, in memory of Kirk.

The activist’s murder a month ago has provoked President Donald Trump’s administration to pursue a clampdown on left-wing protest organizations it accuses of promoting domestic terrorism, as a heightened state of tension persists between Republicans and Democrats.



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While Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, said at his memorial service in Arizona that she forgives her husband’s killer, Trump himself has continued to rebuke his political enemies in heated terms, particularly in response to the ongoing government shutdown, which has seen him taunt the opposition leadership with memes rather than seek to set an example by finding common ground.

Trump has not ruled out honoring Kirk with a national holiday, while Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has called for a statue to be erected in his honor at the U.S. Capitol in tribute.

One has already been commissioned at the New College of Florida.


Florida universities will be required to rename a campus road after Charlie Kirk or risk losing state funds, according to proposed law
 

mandrill

monkey
Aug 23, 2001
84,544
123,975
113
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Michael Nachmanoff has built a quiet reputation in the federal courthouse in northern Virginia — a onetime public defender turned judge known for methodical preparation and a cool temperament. On Wednesday, he finds himself at the center of a political storm: presiding over the Justice Department’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey.



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Confirmed to the bench by President Joe Biden in 2021, Nachmanoff was randomly assigned to the case after a Virginia grand jury indicted Comey last month on charges including obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The assignment instantly drew President Donald Trump’s attention. Trump, long fixated on Comey, blasted him as a “Dirty Cop” and derided Nachmanoff as a “Crooked Joe Biden appointed Judge” while celebrating the charges as “JUSTICE FOR AMERICA!”

Despite the political noise, lawyers who know Nachmanoff say he is unlikely to be swayed.

“Whatever his personal politics are, I do not think that they will enter the courtroom,” said longtime Virginia defense attorney Nina Ginsberg, who has tried cases before him. “He’s confident enough in his ability to judge fairly that I don’t think he’s going to be influenced by politics or the media coverage.”



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Nachmanoff, 57, came to the bench after more than a decade as the Eastern District of Virginia’s top federal public defender, where he argued and won a Supreme Court case that helped reduce racial disparities in crack cocaine sentencing. He served six years as a magistrate judge, handling some politically tinged cases. In 2019 he oversaw the first appearances of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, releasing them on $1 million bonds. More recently, he refused to block the CIA from firing Dr. Terry Adirim, a Pentagon physician targeted by Trump allies over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

“He was an aggressive advocate, the kind of lawyer who left no stones unturned,” Ginsberg said of the judge. She said he conducts his courtroom in an even-handed, respectful manner.

Timothy Belevetz, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, said Nachmanoff was “always a worthy adversary.”

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“He’s been around the courthouse for years and years and years,” Belevetz said. “He’s very well-respected. He’s very smart, he’ll give parties a fair shake, he listens to the arguments.”

Comey was charged late last month with lying to Congress. Days earlier, Trump appeared to urge Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute the former FBI director and other political enemies.

Comey himself has acknowledged the political backdrop but expressed confidence in the court system. In a video after his indictment, he said: “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial.”

The clash between Trump and Comey has been building for years. Trump fired the FBI director in 2017, just months into his first term, as the bureau investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. Since then, the former president has repeatedly called for Comey’s prosecution and, in the days before the indictment, publicly pressed Bondi to act.


For lawyers who’ve worked with Nachmanoff, that kind of political noise is unlikely to matter. They point to his long record of independence and constitutional rigor. “Federal public defenders are renowned for their fidelity to the Constitution and due process,” said Lisa Wayne, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

She said the White House should welcome Nachmanoff’s involvement as a safeguard “against the appearance of partisan political attacks.”

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Associated Press write

Veteran defense lawyer turned judge oversees case against ex-FBI Director Comey
 
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