SPYING ON PRESIDENTS used to be a tough business. One of the great unsung heroes of American history was a formerly enslaved woman named Mary Bowser, a spy who infiltrated the family of Jefferson Davis as a domestic servant, and eventually landed a full-time job in the Southern White House, the political seat of his Confederacy. Armed with a photographic memory and an all-access pass to the inner workings of the Davis administration, she fed details daily to the Union army, which Ulysses S. Grant called the “most valuable information” he received from the Southern capital during the war.

These days, it’s a whole lot easier. While researching our new book, The Secret Life of Data, we gathered some sensitive information from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach club, which he used as a base for political operations both during and after his presidency. He even referred to on several occasions as his “Southern White House.”

We didn’t have to risk life and limb, posing as the help and smuggling information out through a well-funded spy ring. All we had to do was sign up for an online service, enter the address of Mar-a-Lago, and click a button. Within a few minutes, we had a report profiling thousands of visitors to Trump’s club over the course of an entire year, including details like where they likely live and work, their ages, incomes, ethnicities, education levels, where they were immediately before visiting, and where they spent their time on the property once they got there.

This wasn’t some dark web hacker thing. No Bitcoin was exchanged. The service we used was perfectly legal and freely available on the open web, one of dozens of “data brokers” that collect and trade in consumer data. It’s a $300-billion-per-year business — about the same as the gross domestic product of Hong Kong. This particular data broker, called Near, uses smartphone location data to trace the foot traffic of about 1.6 billion people across 70 million locations in 44 countries.

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania legislature has quietly paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past five years to settle sexual harassment and other claims against lawmakers and staffers, Spotlight PA has learned through open records requests. Many of the settlements include controversial secrecy clauses and other provisions that prevent public disclosure of the agreement.

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In all, the state House and Senate paid out $279,361 between 2017 and September of this year to settle 11 disputes, which ranged from a disagreement over office lease payments to racial discrimination and sexual harassment complaints. Nearly all settlements named either individual caucuses or chambers within the legislature, while six also singled out current or former lawmakers. Of the 11 settlements, seven included strict confidentiality promises or provisions preventing the parties involved from speaking negatively about each other.

One settlement, resolving a sexual harassment claim leveled by a female former top state Senate security officer against her then-boss, included additional covenants preventing her from divulging personnel and other information she may have obtained over the course of her employment.

State Rep. Abby Major (R., Armstrong), one of the legislature’s most outspoken advocates for strengthening workplace protection policies and transparency around the process, said she was not surprised that the General Assembly harbored a list of little-known settlements.

you’re going to see a lot of mealy-mouthed sugar-coating going on in the mainstream media today, as journalists tiptoe around the war criminal elephant in the room.

for instance, here’s the New York Times.


horseshit. there’s nothing complicated about the legacy of Henry Fucking Kissinger. he overthrew democratic governments and bombed children on Christmas Eve.

WASHINGTON — The federal government has proposed new staffing rules for nursing homes — including requiring registered nurses to be on site 24 hours a day — a proposal that has drawn the support of Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators but opposition from the state’s nursing home industry.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid proposed in September to establish minimum standards for nursing care, including more than a half-hour of care from a registered nurse and almost 2 1/2 hours from a nurse aide every day.

While U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, D-Pa., endorsed the proposal, more than two dozen other senators — both Democrats and Republicans — said it would hurt facilities in rural areas. And Pennsylvania’s nursing home association said the proposed rule would exacerbate a shortage of trained health care workers.

The rules would affect nursing homes that participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which serve more than 1.2 million residents nationally. In Pennsylvania, the state’s nursing homes have about 65,600 residents, with Medicaid covering the care for around 44,000 of them.

well, playtime’s over and Big Boy Jimmy really wishes you would forget about all that. that satisfying sound you just heard was a big fucking rake slamming against Jimmy-Jam’s forehead.

Hunter Biden just outplayed Comer, volunteering to appear before Congress, on live television, to testify under oath. booyah, Jimmy! Hunter even offered to pull out his dick and show it to everyone. ok, I may have made that last part up. Comer was aghast, and backtracked a mile a minute.

“fuck no, I don’t want any of that,” Jimmy whined. “it’s not fair! I said closed-door deposition. what’s all this out-in-the-open shit?”

you see, Comer is done with public hearings. he’s finally grown tired of being exposed for the clownshoes fool that he is.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump filed a brief with the Colorado state Supreme Court this week arguing that a constitutional provision that would disallow him from being able to run for the presidency again in 2024 should be ignored because, as they put it, he never made an oath, as president, to “support” the Constitution.

The argument is one of semantics, as the president of the United States is sworn in through a different oath than members of Congress or other government officials. Article II of the U.S. Constitution requires presidents-elect to read an oath promising to “preserve, protect and defend” the document as they are being sworn into office.

Six residents in Colorado sued to have Trump barred from being able to appear on the state ballot next year as a candidate for president, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — sometimes known as the insurrectionist clause — as their basis for doing so. That provision states that no person can be elected to any office within the United States if they have served in a position where they “previously [took] an oath … to support the Constitution” while subsequently engaging in “insurrection or rebellion” or giving aid or comfort to those who have engaged in such activities.

Because the language of the amendment says “support” rather than any of the words used in the presidential oath of office, Trump’s lawyers contend the provision doesn’t apply to him. The former president’s lawyers claim this difference in the language was “purposefully” created by the authors of the amendment.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn) have introduced bicameral legislation that would ban all federal government employees and federally funded entities from using anything other than a person’s legal name and the pronouns that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth.

The bill, misleadingly named the Safeguarding Free Speech Act, was introduced in response to a new “Gender Identity Non-Discrimination and Inclusion Policy for Employees and Applicants” issued in October by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This policy offers direction to ensure adherence to federal regulations prohibiting sex discrimination in employment and aims to cultivate a workplace that is welcoming and inclusive for all employees by mandating that HHS employees use the preferred names and pronouns of their colleagues.

The anti-transgender bill introduced by Cruz and Ogles would block federal funds from being used to implement such rules and would entitle federal employees and contractors to sue and collect damages of up to $100,000 if a federal agency requests that they use the preferred name and pronouns of a coworker. The bill’s co-sponsors include Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Eli Crane (Arizona), Doug LaMalfa (California), Andy Harris (Maryland) and Mary Miller (Illinois).

Cruz has a history of anti-LGBTQ actions; in the past, he has introduced a federal transgender sports ban and endorsed a judge known for his opposition to gay marriage. He has also claimed that “engaging in homosexual conduct is a choice,” and in 2015 reintroduced the State Marriage Defense Act, which would leave it up to states to define marriage.

THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL Committee is in a funding drought, listing less cash on hand as of October 30 than on any report filed to the Federal Election Commission since February 2015, according to a report from The Washington Post.

A comparative analysis by the Post found that with only $9.1 million cash on hand, the RNC has brought in only about one-seventh of the amount of cash they had ahead of the 2020 election cycle — when their coffers were stuffed with about $61 million in available funds. This dropoff comes despite former President Donald Trump once again being the leading candidate in the 2024 primaries. Comparatively, the Democratic National Committee is sitting on $17.7 million cash on hand.

The cause of the disparity is not immediately clear, but the RNC’s struggles in recent midterm election cycles may have left donors skittish over the party’s ability to produce results. The Post spoke to over 10 sources who raised concerns over the committee’s financial troubles. “The RNC’s electoral record since 2017 speaks for itself,” Virginia RNC member Patti Lyman told the Post, who opposed McDaniel when she was reelected to another term in January. “The damage from that chair election goes far beyond the drop in donations. Our base was demoralized.”

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel brushed off the financial struggles in a statement to the Post. “I think there’s more donors just fully committed to their candidate right now, saying I am all in, and once the nominee is set, I’ll be there. That’s what I hear more than anything. And they’re really solidly in the camps of their candidate, which is normal,” McDaniel said, adding that there was “nothing unusual” about the situation.

this past Saturday, as yet another one of his obnoxious motorcades blocked traffic on its way to Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia SC, Little Donny Fuckface looked up and saw a billboard bearing a heartwarming message that was written just for him:

“you lost. you’re guilty. welcome to Columbia, Donald.”

the signoff at the bottom was the icing on the cake.

“sponsored by league of radical leftist vermin — Jay Bender Instigator.”

Ozzy Osbourne acknowledges he may never take the stage again after years of medical issues — including a recent spinal surgery that also uncovered a tumor — in a new interview with Rolling Stone UK. The singer, named the first-ever Rolling Stone UK Awards icon in a new cover story, talked about his fourth spinal surgery, aimed at remedying the damage from a 2019 fall that dislodged the metal rods from a previous surgery.

“It’s really knocked me about,” Osbourne said of the procedure. “The second surgery went drastically wrong and virtually left me crippled. I thought I’d be up and running after the second and third, but with the last one they put a fucking rod in my spine. They found a tumor in one of the vertebrae, so they had to dig all that out too. It’s pretty rough, man, and my balance is all fucked up.”

In July, Osbourne called off his headlining set at the upcoming Power Trip festival, which would have seen him co-headlining alongside Metallica, AC/DC, and Guns N’ Roses. Osbourne was able to make two live performances, one in Birmingham, England, and the other in Los Angeles, in 2022, but each lasted only one or two songs, and he had a stand that he could lean against in case he needed it. While Osbourne is hopeful he’ll one day return to the stage to give fans an appropriate farewell performance, he realizes medically that might not be possible.

“I’m taking it one day at a time, and if I can perform again, I will,” Osbourne told Rolling Stone UK. “But it’s been like saying farewell to the best relationship of my life. At the start of my illness, when I stopped touring, I was really pissed off with myself, the doctors, and the world. But as time has gone on, I’ve just gone, ‘Well, maybe I’ve just got to accept that fact.’”