Louisiana Obliterates Separation of Church and State With Wild New Law

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a law Wednesday mandating that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom, in a startlingly clear demonstration of the blurring lines between church and state.

According to the legislation, the commandments displays would be paid for through donations, not through state funds. The law also authorizes classrooms to put up the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance—but it does not require those documents to be displayed.

The law describes the Ten Commandments not as the religious edict that they plainly are, but as “foundational documents of our state and national government.”

If that’s truly the case, then where is Louisiana’s law requiring the United States Constitution—with its Establishment Clause prohibiting the state from instituting legislation “respecting an establishment of religion”—to be hung in “large, easily readable font”?

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that a similar law in Kentucky was unconstitutional, because posting the commandments had a blatantly religious purpose, not a secular one. Now, it’s unlikely that the current Supreme Court would rule similarly.

Violations of this particular section of the U.S. Constitution have become only too easy since the Supreme Court decision Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the case of the coach who was dismissed for holding massive public prayers at school, only to quit as soon as he got his job back. The court’s ruling that Joe Kennedy’s prayers did not violate the First Amendment is also to thank for a spate of Satanic clubs across the country, which are now permitted to operate under the same guidance.

The House Ethics Committee’s investigation of Representative Matt Gaetz, ABC News reports, has a new development: a witness has come forward saying that the Florida congressman paid her for sex.

The committee has interviewed at least six women who were witnesses in the Justice Department’s 2020 sex trafficking investigation of Gaetz, sources told the news outlet. These women allegedly attended parties Gaetz attended, paid for by Gaetz’s former friend Joel Greenberg.

Investigators reportedly asked these women, some of whom are cooperating and others of whom have been subpoenaed, about Venmo payments allegedly from Gaetz and whether those were for sex. One woman told the committee that she did in fact receive a payment in exchange for sex, while other witnesses said they were paid to attend parties where Gaetz was present that included drugs and sex, according to ABC News.

Gaetz has denounced the expanded investigation, calling it “frivolous” and “Soviet-esque.” The previous DOJ investigation didn’t result in any charges against Gaetz, although Greenberg is serving an 11-year sentence in federal prison for multiple charges, including sex trafficking a minor and introducing the minor to other “adult men.”

Gaetz posted on X yesterday that the House Ethics Committee was “doing this to avoid the obvious fact that every investigation into me ends the same way: my exoneration.” He also blamed former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, hinting that McCarthy was attempting some payback over Gaetz’s efforts to oust the California Republican from the speakership.

At the time, Gaetz claimed that he was opposing McCarthy over the latter’s work with Democrats, but leaked private communications between Gaetz and a close friend later revealed that he took action against McCarthy for refusing to stop the House probe into Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct.

In addition to the latest revelations, the probe has revealed that Gaetz would show videos of his sexual conquests to other staffers and members of Congress on Capitol Hill, and bragged about using erectile dysfunction medicine–energy cocktails to “go all night.”

If the bosses at Boeing intended for CEO Dave Calhoun’s performance during a Senate hearing to smooth over the company’s abject turmoil, they were woefully mistaken.

Calhoun was forced Tuesday to answer on the record whether the embattled aerospace company had retaliated against any of the more than a dozen whistleblowers who have raised concerns over the safety standards and ethics of the company, and he gave the answer many already suspected to be true.

“I know it happens,” said Calhoun, adding that the company had taken action against those who had retaliated.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, who asked Calhoun the question, also read testimony from the late John Barnett, a Boeing whistleblower who was found dead in his vehicle from what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In his opening remarks, Blumenthal said that Barnett had “committed suicide under the immense pressure the company put on him for raising safety claims.”

Barnett, who brought up concerns about missing parts, was apparently called by one of his supervisors 19 times in one day, and was told, “I’m going to push you until you break.”

Blumenthal recounted Barnett’s testimony in which he said one of his coworkers was physically assaulted for raising concerns about safety. The senator asked whether Calhoun had followed up on this report, and the CEO said he didn’t know.

Calhoun was also absolutely decimated by a surprisingly strong line of questioning from the blatantly opportunist Senator Josh Hawley, who demanded that he should resign. But after the hearing ended, Calhoun’s humiliation was still far from over.

Nadia Milleron, whose daughter was killed in a 2019 Boeing crash, tore into Calhoun Tuesday night during an interview on CNN for his opening apology to the family members of people who died in two 737 Max crashes. “I apologize to the grief we have caused,” he’d said, turning to face the family members present in the Senate chamber. “I want you to know we are totally committed to work focused on safety.”

Milleron wasn’t so convinced. “It wasn’t a real apology. What he was doing is he doesn’t want us to know the details of how it happened,” she told CNN’s Abby Phillip.

Milleron recounted making eye contact with Calhoun as he gave his apology. “He looked at me in the eye and he said, ‘I am sorry,’ and I said, ‘You are sorry? Are you sorry for the bombs Boeing produced that kill innocent kids in Rafah? Are you sorry for that, too?’”

Boeing helped to develop Israel’s missile defense system, and has continued to arm the Israeli Defense Forces as it wages its brutal military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 37,000 people, including thousands of young children.

“Like how can he sleep?” MIlleron asked rhetorically. “This person is a psychopath. We can not have people running these companies that do not care about human life. We have to have responsible people running these companies.”

Two hotly contested seats in Virginia’s primary on Tuesday are providing insight into how much influence Donald Trump and pro-Israel lobbying groups have over our elections.

The once-mighty Trump endorsement continues to deteriorate: Trump-endorsed election denialist Senator John McGuire’s race to oust incumbent Republican representative Bob Good remains too close to call as of Wednesday when vote tallying paused for the Juneteenth state and federal holiday. McGuire led by just 327 votes—0.52 percent—over Good. In response to the razor-thin margins, Good took to social media to sprinkle a touch of election denialism of his own, asking for “full transparency from the officials involved” in counting and certifying votes, as if that wasn’t already how the election certification process is run.

Good has courted controversy both with his efforts to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and with his early endorsement of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential campaign. Good has struggled to maintain his MAGA bona fides by demonstrating his undying love for Trump, who he’s described as “the best president of my lifetime.” Good made an appearance in New York City outside the courthouse to support Trump in his ill-fated hush-money trial. His appearance there sparked a brutal response from Trump who declared he’s “BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA” before giving McGuire his “Complete and Total Endorsement.” Despite efforts from Trumpworld to bolster McGuire, the infighting has largely left Virginia voters confused.

Further complicating Virginia’s primaries this week, pro-Israel lobbying groups continue to dump enormous resources into Democratic races across the country, despite data consistently showing that voters are primarily concerned about the economy, not with Israel. In New York, the lobbying effort has made a primary between incumbent Representative Jamaal Bowman and MAGA-funded Westchester County Executive George Latimer the most expensive House primary in U.S. political history.

Early showings from other primaries have suggested efforts from the pro-Israel lobby are largely paying off—except in Virginia’s 10th congressional district. In the crowded race with a dozen candidates, pro-Israel lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel PAC reportedly backed Eileen Filler-Corn to replace Representative Jennifer Wexton, who is retiring. On Tuesday, Filler-Corn landed in an abysmal fourth place, picking up just 9.3 percent of the votes.

The winner of that race, Virginia senator Suhas Subramanyam, received more than 30 percent of the vote. DMFI doesn’t seem too unhappy with the result, however, praising Subramanyam’s “commitment to Democratic values and his support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship,” and describing him as a “proud pro-Israel candidate.”

“Democrats in [Virginia’s 10th congressional district] have proven once again that being pro-Israel is not just wise policy, but also winning politics,” the group wrote.

How all this infighting will factor into the general election remains to be seen. The main message from Virginia’s primaries, both Democrat and Republican, seems to be that the 2024 election season has definitely activated chaos mode.

After being among more than 1,400 people charged over the January 6, 2021 insurrection and storming of the Capitol, Charles Hand III attempted to return to the scene of the crime by being elected to Congress. Unfortunately for him, he lost a Republican primary runoff for a House seat Tuesday.

Hand, who goes by Chuck, lost the Georgia 2nd congressional district race to former Trump administration official Wayne Johnson. In November, Johnson will face Democratic Representative Sanford Bishop, who has held the seat since 1993.

Hand previously received 32 percent of the initial primary election on May 21, proceeding to the runoff with Johnson, who received 44.6 percent of the vote. Under Georgia law, political candidates must receive more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff election.

Almost two weeks ago, Hand walked out of a debate after one of his opponents in the initial primary, Michael Nixon, mentioned that Hand’s wife, Mandy Robinson-Hand, had a criminal history of oxycodone possession and was Hand’s co-defendant in their Capitol riot case.

Hand admitted to breaking off “a piece of metal fencing” and placing “it in his back pants pocket” in his January 6 case, and was sentenced to 20 days in prison. Prosecutors wrote in his sentencing memo that after participating in the riot, he told his wife ”Like I said it was a perfect time to be a part of history!” He also encouraged his wife to not turn herself in and to “deny, deny, deny.”

Hand was one of many January 6 participants running for office in 2024. One of them, Derrick Evans, served three months in prison and ran for the Republican nomination in West Virginia’s 1st congressional district, only to lose in May.

A disgraced former NFL owner is desperately trying to stop the release of an upcoming film that contains a less-than-flattering depiction of Donald Trump—and he is uniquely positioned to do so.

According to an exclusive report from the Daily Beast, Dan Snyder, the former owner of the Washington Commanders (previously the Redskins), is working overtime to prevent the release of The Apprentice, a film that depicts Donald Trump as a sexual abuser.

Sources told Variety that Snyder is a friend of Trump’s and donated $1.1 million to his inaugural committee, and another $100,000 to his campaign in 2016. Now, Snyder has accidentally funded a film that could very likely hurt Trump’s image, and his chance at reelection, should it be released before November.

The Apprentice depicts the former president raping his first wife, Ivana. During her 1989 divorce case, Ivana claimed that Trump raped her, but she later refuted her own allegations ahead of the 2016 presidential election and said that the two were the “best of friends.” The film also portrays Trump cheating on his wife, doing hard drugs, and getting plastic surgery.

Snyder was initially willing to fund the film through its production company Kinematics, which is run by his son-in-law Mark Rappaport, because he thought it would be a flattering portrayal of the former president—but what he got was something else entirely. Snyder was reportedly “furious” when he first saw the film last month, according to Axios.

The Beast reported that Snyder is leveraging his financial stake in Kinematics to prevent the production company from striking a deal with the independent distributor, Briarcliff, to release the film. And Trump’s campaign is apparently “thrilled” by Snyder’s loyalty.

It may be that the movie is striking a little close to home for Snyder. An investigation into his time owning the Commanders found that he fostered a toxic work environment, sexually harassed an employee, and withheld $11 million in revenue from the NFL. Snyder was fined $60 million, and the team was simultaneously sold for $6.05 billion, according to ESPN.

Snyder was also accused of making hush-money payments to silence those who accused him of misconduct—similar to the former commander-in-chief, who was found guilty of trying to cover up payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Perhaps that’s part of what has launched his protective streak against the former president, a sort of kick-back kinship. Snyder was also found to have given “misleading” testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Whether or not the film could possibly affect the 2024 election is still up in the air. “This is not Barbenheimer,” one Trumpworld strategist, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Beast. “The idea that a movie would have any impact on the 2024 election is laughable.”

Even so, it would likely enrage Trump, who has shown himself to be particularly sensitive to unflattering depictions: He even privately seethes over courtroom sketches, according to Rolling Stone.

Turns out the White House has a red line when it comes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after all: Claiming the U.S. isn’t giving Israel enough weapons to bombard Gaza. The White House canceled a planned meeting with Netanyahu slated for Thursday after the prime minister released a video on Tuesday claiming the U.S. withheld military aid to Israel.

“It’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” Netanyahu states in a video address in English posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.

“Churchill told the United States, give us the tools, we’ll do the job. And I say, give us the tools, and we’ll finish the job—a lot faster,” said Netanyahu. (Churchill’s original quote is “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”)

Netanyahu’s video is technically true but overall false. The U.S. “paused” sending one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel ahead of their assault on Rafah, which Biden had previously declared was his “red line,” over concern of the civilian toll use of the bombs would take. Aside from that one shipment, however, the U.S. has continued sending weapons to Israel “as it normally would,” according to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Just this week, the U.S. approved a request from Biden to send an expected $18 billion weapons package to Israel.

According to Axios’s Barak Ravid, Netanyahu’s video enraged Biden’s top advisors. An unnamed U.S. official told Ravid that the meeting with Netanyahu scheduled for Thursday to discuss Iran was canceled to send a message, “This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts.”

“The Americans are fuming,” a senior Israeli official told Axios.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded to Netanyahu’s video on Tuesday, confirming a continued pause on just one shipment of bombs but that the U.S. had otherwise not stopped showering Israel with weapons. “We genuinely do not know what he’s talking about,” said Jean-Pierre.

Netanyahu is still slated to address a joint session of Congress on July 24, but the video has rankled officials in the Biden administration and provoked calls from Senator Bernie Sanders to make Netanyahu’s backhanded claim a reality, declaring “no more bombs for Netanyahu.”

“Let’s be clear: the right wing, extremist Netanyahu government has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 85,000, sixty percent of whom are women, children, or elderly,” said Sanders. “It is absurd that Netanyahu has been invited to address Congress. We should not be honoring people who use the starvation of children as a weapon of war. Instead, the United States should be withholding all offensive military aid to Israel and using our leverage to demand an end to this war, the unfettered flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, a stop to the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, and initial steps towards a two-state solution.”

It’s pretty well-documented that Donald Trump is a liar, but the rate at which he lies is actually sort of impressive.

At a rally in Racine, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, the former president delivered a ranting and rambling speech that lasted about an hour and a half—and was filled to the brim with false statements.

CNN’s Daniel Dale compiled a list of the 30 lies Trump rattled off during his appearance. This puts Trump’s lies-per-minute rate at about one lie for every three minutes, which is on par given the amount the former president was repeating himself.

Here’s just a few, according to Dale: Trump “said there was world peace in 2020. There was very much not. He said he won Wisconsin in 2020; he lost. He said the Democrats rigged the 2020 election, a lie. He said people around President Biden cheat on elections, no. He said people’s votes tend to disappear; they simply do not.”

Dale pointed out that although Trump claimed to have “saved” Kenosha in 2020 from riots following the shooting of Jacob Blake, it was actually Democratic Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers who sent the national guard to the city, before Trump ever told him to.

He skewered Trump for saying that “hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cocaine” was found in the White House last month, when in reality, a small bag “generously in the hundreds of dollars’ worth” was found 11 months ago.

Trump breathlessly repeated invented numbers about immigration, the crime rates in Venezuela, and the number of people who have crossed the Southern border. He attempted to rewrite history by spinning lies about his previous term as president, imagining that he pulled American troops out of Syria and lowered the trade deficit with China. He even lied about what he did last week, telling the crowd that he was in D.C. for one of his many trials, when he was really there to meet with Republican lawmakers.

Republican Vermont state Representative Mary Morrissey apologized to Democrat Jim Carroll this week for a pretty bizarre reason: She was recently caught on video pouring water into her Democratic colleague’s bag, and has apparently been doing so for months.

The incident was first reported by Vermont independent weekly Seven Days. Morrissey said during a state house session Monday that her behavior was “disrespectful” and that she had given a private apology to Carroll, adding that she would work “toward resolution and restoration through our legislative process.” The two represent the city of Bennington in Vermont, and reportedly have known each other since childhood, even attending the same church.

“It was conduct most unbecoming of my position as a representative and as a human being, and is not reflective of my 28 years of service and civility,” Morrissey said, asking for forgiveness from her colleagues and Vermont citizens.

According to Carroll, Morrissey had been treating him badly in public as well. “[She] would say demeaning things in front of other legislators,” Carroll said. Water had been poured into his bag since January, so he set up a camera in the coat rack outside his committee room. Carroll’s videos show someone lawmakers later identified as Morrissey dumping a cup into Carroll’s bag.

According to Carroll, Morrissey said that at first she “flicked” water on the bag because she saw a bug on it. But later, she said she didn’t know why she decided to dump water on Carroll’s bag for months on end.

Seven Days got ahold of the footage from Carroll due to a public records request. “I have been very reluctant to disclose the video because I believe it will deeply embarrass Representative Morrissey,” Carroll wrote in a statement to the outlet. “However, it has become clear to me that the media are aware of the details of Representative Morrissey’s behavior and likely will continue to report on that behavior in the near future.”

Republicans don’t seem to be conducting themselves well in local politics. In May, a local moderate Republican councilman in central New Jersey was arrested after he was caught in a sting operation stealing political signs promoting rival MAGA-aligned conservatives. In that case, AirTags were pinned to the signs to apprehend the culprit.

Donald Trump keeps raising the bar of how far Republicans will go to spin President Joe  Biden’s debate performance. Reminder: it hasn’t even happened yet. 

During his rally in Racine, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, Trump suggested that if Biden performs well during the upcoming presidential debate, he’ll have hard drugs to thank.

“He’s gonna be so pumped up. He’s gonna be pumped up,” said Trump. “You know all that stuff that was missing about a month ago from the White House? What happened?”

As Trump was setting up his punchline, presumably about selling stolen goods to pay for drugs, he lost the plot and pivoted into incoherently rambling about Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

“Who left it? Somebody left it. I wonder, let’s see. Somebody left the laptop in an office of a gentleman who was supposed to fix the laptop from hell,” said Trump. “He never picked it up, and somebody didn’t pick up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine. I wonder who that could’ve been.”

“I don’t know—actually, I think it was Joe. Ha-ha,” he said, cuing the audience that he had, against all odds, made it to the end of what he wanted to say.

Obvious cognitive decline aside, Trump is once again mindlessly parroting something he heard Sean Hannity say, which has quickly become a regular Republican talking point: that Biden has a secret stash that saves him during public speaking events. Trump previously suggested that Biden was “higher than a kite” during the State of the Union address, and seems adamant on keeping the company line as he heads into the first Biden-Trump debate on June 27. 

In fact, just Monday night, Hannity reiterated his claim to Trump’s daughter-in-law and RNC Chair Lara Trump.

“I think the Joe Biden we see on the debate night is gonna be the guy that we saw at the State of the Union,” Hannity said. “He’s going to be all hyped up, hyper-caffeinated, whatever ‘it’ is.”