As Democrats prepare for their sweeping campaign to investigate corporate abuses during the upcoming Congress, Palantir CEO Alex Karp claimed this week that he and his company — a massive Trump administration collaborator — are actually “progressive” now. Karp, who gave $1 million to MAGA Inc. in 2024 and another million for Donald Trump’s inauguration, told Politico Playbook on Wednesday…
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A group of four Democrats in the Senate are jointly vowing to oppose any government funding package that allows President Donald Trump to continue his war on Iran, taking a hardline stance on ending the war before the federal government’s funding expires on December 11. In a statement released on Thursday, Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Chris Van Hollen (D…
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Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., has developed quite a reputation for flaying Donald Trump’s nominees during their confirmation hearings.
Catherine Eschbach, Trump’s pick for general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, just made the list, which also includes Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Assistant Health Secretary Brian Christine.
Trump wants Eschbach, currently the EEOC’s acting general counsel, to be the agency’s top lawyer. The EEOC is designed to uphold civil rights in the workplace, but Trump allies have perverted it into a vehicle for their bigoted and baseless conspiracy theories about systemic workplace discrimination harming white men.
At her Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Eschbach repeatedly deflected Alsobrooks’ questions about one of her direct reports: an EEOC lawyer who essentially became a men’s rights activist after receiving a 2½-year suspension from Catholic University following a fellow student’s allegation of sexual assault.
The lawyer, Benjamin North, has denied the allegation and said the encounter was consensual. In 2017, he filed a lawsuit against Catholic University that ended with a stipulated dismissal.
Alsobrooks, a former prosecutor who specialized in domestic violence cases, asked Eschbach whether she knew about North’s school suspension and whether it’s appropriate for someone credibly accused of sexual assault to lead cases at the EEOC.
The nominee didn’t seem to want to address either question head-on. Instead, she repeatedly asserted that, in obtaining his law license, North had proved to the Virginia State Bar that he was of “good moral character.”
This is certainly par for the course for an administration led by someone who was found liable for sexual assault as well as defaming his victim. And yet again, it was Maryland’s junior senator
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted right after the midterm elections demonstrates deep voter animosity toward President Donald Trump, with fewer than one third of respondents indicating approval of his job performance. The poll was conducted from November 6-9, just a few days after the elections took place. According to the survey, 65 percent of Americans disapprove of how Trump is…
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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The most expensive adultery of all time: “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned from his top post at the chipmaker he co-founded, after reports of the tech titan’s extramarital affairs came into the spotlight this week. One of those relationships has raised national security concerns.”
* In Gaza: “An Israeli airstrike targeting the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza killed six people and wounded at least a dozen more, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. The strike was carried out early Thursday, according to the Israeli military, which said it struck ‘a senior Hamas terrorist’ and other militants, without providing evidence.”
* A life-threatening problem re-emerges in Ukraine: “Ukraine said restrictions on its military-grade Starlink satellite-internet service are once again hindering its drone operations, renewing disruptions to defenses against Russian attacks that hit the country last month. Ukrainian drones that rely on Starshield, a military version of SpaceX’s Starlink service, are losing connectivity if they fly faster than 100 miles an hour, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram.”
* Great news on combating Ebola in Kenya: “Kenya began a countdown on Wednesday to declare the end of its Ebola outbreak. The final patient who had tested positive for the virus was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday. And the Kenyan cabinet secretary for health, Aden Duale, said at a news conference that the last 11 people being monitored for Ebola symptoms had also been discharged after completing a 21-day quarantine period.”
* The war apparently isn’t over: “At a combative town hall of 500 family members of the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group, Navy leaders said Iranian attacks continue