Jamaal "Bonehead" Pulls Fire Alarm Inside U.S. Capitol!

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has taken attention off Republican infighting by pulling the fire alarm inside the U.S. Capitol.

Straight up stunting.

Republicans have about House 30 members who get on the party's nerves. Democrats have 25 House members as well. There are 90 members who are worthless. I won't say all their names but this one in particular is up there.

This former school principal decides to do something his former students likely face discipline.

New York Democratic do nothing lawmaker decides to pull the fire alarm. It was condemned by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and the U.S. Capitol Police.

There will be repercussions and likely a boot from his committees.

The Squad's Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) decided to take the attention off the inability for Republicans to govern to this reckless decision to react to the party's last minute passage of keeping the government open.

His antics really became the talk of the nation. McCarthy erroronously claimed this was Jan. 6 all over again. 

McCarthy has some nerve to say that. He did not vote to impeach Washed Up 45 for siccing a mob of his supporters on the U.S. Capitol on the false claims that the election against Joe Biden was stolen. 

McCarthy threatens punishment on Bowman but not Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert or Paul Gosar.

The fire alarm sounded out around noon in the Cannon House Office Building and prompted a building-wide evacuation at a time when the House was in session and staffers were working in the building. The building was reopened an hour later after Capitol Police determined it was not a threat.

The GOP-controlled House Administration Committee, which oversees issues pertaining to the Capitol complex, posted a picture of a person pulling the fire alarm who appeared to be Bowman.

The New York lawmaker told reporters hours later that it was a mistake and that he was rushing to get to votes and was trying to get through a door that is usually open, but was closed due to it being a weekend. 

That is a bold face lie.

Bowman is known for his attention grabbing stunts. He literally went outside his district to troll Washed Up 45 being criminally charged in New York City. He confronted Republican do nothing lawmaker Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who was outside her district as well. His argument with do nothing lawmaker Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) was disrupted by Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) who kindly reminded the two that they are brothers who represent Black America.

“I thought it would help me open the door,” he said about pulling the trigger, denying that it was an effort to stall anything.

His frustration with Republicans passing a bill he eventually backed became the latest stunt.

Capitol Police said in a statement late Saturday that an “investigation into what happened and why continues.”

At the time of the evacuation House Democrats were working to delay a vote on a 45-day funding bill to keep federal agencies open. They said they needed time to review the 71-page bill that Republicans abruptly released to avoid a shutdown.

The funding package was ultimately approved 335-91 on Saturday afternoon, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats — including Bowman — supporting the bill.

After the vote, Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, criticized Bowman over the fire alarm. Some lawmakers even floated the idea of drafting a motion to expel or censure him from the House.

“This should not go without punishment,” McCarthy told reporters. “This is an embarrassment.”

He added that he plans to talk with the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York to figure out a possible response.

But Jeffries met with Bowman shortly after the vote and Bowman said his fellow New York colleague was “supportive.”

“He understood that it was a mistake and that’s all it was,” he said. Bowman added that the reaction from McCarthy and other Republicans is dishonest.

"(McCarthy’s) trying to weaponize a mistake of me coming, rushing to get to a vote as something nefarious when it wasn’t,” he said.

It is likely he will face a fine, sanctions, the possibility of being booted from his committee and be censured. He could be removed from Congress but it is unlikely.

Last Minute!

Meeting of the jerks.

We are getting tired of this!

The House of Representatives finally came to a conclusion and backed the White House and Senate's proposal.

The bill, which now goes to the Senate, passed by a 335-91 margin and included overwhelming support by House Democrats. Republicans voted 126-90 to pass the measure, while Democrats approved the bill by a 209-1 margin. Seven members of the House did not vote.

The only Democrat to vote against was Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, according to CNN.

If the bill passes in the Senate, then funding will be extended through Nov. 17. After Saturday’s vote, the House adjourned until Monday.

The bill omits aid to Ukraine but increased federal disaster assistance by $16 billion, according to The Associated Press. There was also an extension of reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration, The Washington Post reported.

If the Senate rejects the House bill and does not have a deal in place to extend funding by 12:01 a.m. EDT on Sunday, the federal government will experience its 22nd shutdown or funding gap since 1976.

H.R. 5860, a 71-page bill, came to the floor under suspension of the rules, which meant that it needed a two-thirds vote in the House to pass. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., needed support from Democrats to pass the resolution, and they gave it to the embattled speaker.

An attempt by Democrats to adjourn to further study the bill failed by a 427-0 vote early Saturday afternoon. Later, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., spoke in the House and criticized Republicans for “dropping a bill on us at the eleventh hour.”

“I rise today to have a conversation with the American people,” Jeffries said. “So strap in, because this may take a little while.”

Because of the bipartisan deal, McCarthy’s speakership could be in jeopardy, CNN reported. Far-right members of the Republican caucus, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., have said that such a move would trigger a motion to vacate the chair and force a vote to oust the Speaker.

“If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that,” McCarthy said. “If someone wants to remove me, then so be it.”

“I would say it’s on some tenuous ground,” Gaetz told reporters on Saturday, according to CNN.

Hours before the shutdown, the House had announced plans on Saturday to vote on a 45-day short-term spending bill, called a continuing resolution, which would include natural disaster aid that the White House sought, The Washington Post reported. That would keep the government open through Nov. 17.

McCarthy met with House Republicans for a private meeting at the Capitol on Saturday morning, the Times reported.

It did not include billions of dollars that President Joe Biden had sought, House Rules Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., told reporters.

“Let’s not overcomplicate the matter,” Cole said before the vote. “Let’s keep the government open.”

McCarthy attempted to break the deadlock on Friday afternoon but was voted down by a 232-210 margin, The New York Times reported. Twenty-one Republicans defected to vote with Democrats to defeat Friday’s measure.

Friday’s proposal sought to keep the government open for 30 days, with up to 29% of cuts to government programs, according to the newspaper. The cuts did not include areas like veterans, homeland security or natural disaster response.

Jeffries in a speech in the House on Saturday, called Friday’s proposal “draconian” and said that Saturday’s measure was similar in its scope.

The proposal did direct the secretary of homeland security to resume “all activities related to the construction of the border wall” at the southern border that were in place under Washed Up 45, the Times reported.

Las Vegas Police Nab Figure In Tupac Shakur Murder!

Las Vegas Police announced an arrest in the shooting of Tupac Shakur.

On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur and Marion "Big Suge" Knight were shot at an intersection in Las Vegas. Shakur was hit four times and died after being placed in a medically induced coma on September 13th.

Knight was grazed and had injures from the vehicle crash.

Nearly 30 years and finally a suspect is arrested.

The alleged shooter, Orlando "Baby Lane Blue" Anderson was gunned down years later. He was allegedly fingered as the person who murdered Shakur.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis has long been known to investigators as one of four suspects identified early in the investigation. He isn’t the accused gunman but was described as the group’s ringleader by authorities Friday at a news conference and in court. In Nevada you can be charged with a crime, including murder, if you help someone commit the crime.

“Duane Davis was the shot caller for this group of individuals that committed this crime,” said Las Vegas police homicide Lt. Jason Johansson, “and he orchestrated the plan that was carried out.”

Davis himself has admitted in interviews and in his 2019 tell-all memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that he provided the gun used in the drive-by shooting.

Authorities said Friday that Davis’ own public comments revived the investigation.

Criminals are so dumb. Keffe D snitched on himself.

Davis, now 60, was arrested early Friday while on a walk near his home on the outskirts of Las Vegas, hours before prosecutors announced in court that a Nevada grand jury had indicted the self-described “gangster” on one count of murder with a deadly weapon. He is due in court next week.

The grand jury also voted to add a sentencing enhancement to the murder charge for gang activity that could add up to 20 additional years if he’s convicted.

Hundreds of pages of transcripts released Friday provide a view into the first month of grand jury proceedings, which began in late July with testimony from former associates of Davis, friends of Shakur and a slate of retired police officers involved in the case early on. Their testimony painted a picture for the jurors of a deep, escalating rift between Shakur’s music label Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records, which had ties to Davis and represented Shakur’s rap rival, Biggie Smalls.

“It started the whole West Coast/East Coast” rivalry that primarily defined the hip-hop scene during the mid-1990s, one of Davis’ former associates testified.

The first-ever arrest in the case came after Las Vegas police in mid-July raided Davis’ home in the nearby city of Henderson for items they described at the time as “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur.”

Davis denied an interview request Friday from jail, and court records don’t list an attorney who can comment on his behalf. Phone and text messages to Davis and his wife on Friday and in the months since the July 17 search weren’t returned.

In a statement Friday, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, the rapper’s sister, described the arrest as a victory.

“This is no doubt a pivotal moment. The silence of the past 27 years surrounding this case has spoken loudly in our community,” she said. “It’s important to me that the world, the country, the justice system, and our people acknowledge the gravity of the passing of this man, my brother, my mother’s son, my father’s son.”

On the night of Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur was in a BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight. They were waiting at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them and gunfire erupted.

Shakur was shot multiple times and died a week later at the age of 25.

Davis, in his memoir, said he was in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and had slipped a gun into the back seat, from where he said the shots were fired.

He implicated his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, saying he was one of two people in the backseat. Anderson, a known rival of Shakur, had been involved in a casino brawl with the rapper shortly before the shooting.

“Little did anyone know that this incident right here would ultimately lead to the retaliatory shooting and death of Tupac Shakur,” said Johansson, the police lieutenant.

Orlando Anderson was the alleged shooter. He was killed years later.

Anderson died two years later. He denied any involvement in Shakur’s death.

Emails seeking comment from two lawyers who have previously represented Knight were not immediately returned. Knight was grazed by a bullet fragment in the shooting but had only minor injuries. He is serving a 28-year prison sentence in California for an unrelated voluntary manslaughter charge.

On the night of July 17, Las Vegas police quietly surrounded the home where Davis lives with his wife, Paula Clemons. Police lapel video obtained by The Associated Press showed SWAT officers detaining a man and his wife outside the home lit up by a swirl of red and blue lights after announcing their presence on a bullhorn. The couple’s faces are blurred in the videos.

Police reported collecting multiple computers, a cellphone and hard drive, a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs” and a copy of Davis’ memoir.

Greg Kading, a retired Los Angeles police detective who spent years investigating the Shakur killing and wrote a book about it, said he’s not surprised by Davis’ arrest.

“He put himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy,” Kading said, adding that Davis himself gave Las Vegas police “the ammunition and leverage to move forward.”

Kading said he had also anticipated the murder charge, because Davis’ public comments showed the crime was premeditated.

“All the other direct conspirators or participants are all dead,” Kading said. “Keefe D is the last man standing among the individuals that conspired to kill Tupac.”

The rapper’s death came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is still largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.

The suspect is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

He Ain't A Hero!

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) and 20 Republicans will still get paid. Federal workers will not.

The Senate and White House are angry with the House of Representatives. The games that were played by far right Republicans have jeopardize millions. They should be held accountable.

By the way, when the cable networks or non partisan hosts allow members on, they should be held accountable for their votes.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) appears on CNN and MSNBC denouncing the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. However, he still is voting with the far right Republicans in shutting the government down.

He is no hero.

So let's break down who voted against the House Republicans proposal to keep the government open.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) 

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) 

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO)

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ)

Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL)

Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX)

Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ)

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV)

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC)

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT)

Rep. Keith Self (R-TX)

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN)

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN)

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX)

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC)

Rep. Berry Moore (R-AL)

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO)

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX)

Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL)

With Buck, these Republicans are not concerned about the impact of a government shutdown. It not only jeopardizes the way of life for government employees, but things that function from passports, social security, disaster aid, financial aid, military assistance and other essentials. National Parks will shutter.

People will be laid off or forced to work without a paycheck. 

Two do nothing lawmakers are known adulterers.  

People who pay rent, mortgages, car payments, daycare and groceries will be paying the price for the government shutdown.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) right-flank Republicans refused to support the bill despite its steep spending cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and severe border security provisions, calling it insufficient.

The White House and Democrats rejected the Republican approach as too extreme. The vote was 198-232, with 21 hard-right Republicans voting to sink the package. The Democrats voted against it.

The Democrats voting against the proposal because it failed to meet what President Joe Biden and the Senate crafted out. The debt ceiling deal was reached with McCarthy and Biden agreeing to cut spending to 2021 levels and ensuring there would be no more government shutdowns for the foreseeable future. McCarthy and Republican lawmakers broke their promise,

The bill’s complete failure a day before Saturday’s deadline to fund the government leaves few options to prevent a shutdown that will furlough federal workers, keep the military working without pay and disrupt programs and services for millions of Americans.

A clearly agitated McCarthy left the House chamber. “It’s not the end yet; I’ve got other ideas,” he told reporters.

The outcome puts McCarthy’s speakership in serious jeopardy with almost no political leverage to lead the House at a critical moment that has pushed the government into crisis. Even the failed plan, an extraordinary concession to immediately slash spending by one-third for many agencies, was not enough to satisfy the hard-right flank that has upturned his speakership.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is really a smart lawmaker. She plays dumb on Fox because she fears the far right may primary her.

The Senate pushed ahead Friday with its own plan favored by Republicans and Democrats to keep the government open while also bolstering Ukraine aid and U.S. disaster accounts. But that won’t matter with the House in political chaos.

The White House has brushed aside McCarthy’s overtures to meet with President Joe Biden after the speaker walked away from the debt deal they brokered earlier this year that set budget levels.

“Extreme House Republicans are now tripling down on their demands to eviscerate programs millions of hardworking families count on,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre said, “The path forward to fund the government has been laid out by the Senate with bipartisan support — House Republicans just need to take it.”

Catering to his hard-right flank, McCarthy had returned to the spending limits the conservatives demanded back in January as part of the deal-making to help him become the House speaker.

His package would not have cut the Defense, Veterans or Homeland Security departments but would have slashed almost all other agencies by up to 30% — steep hits to a vast array of programs, services and departments Americans routinely depend on.

It also added strict new border security provisions that would kickstart building the wall at the southern border with Mexico, among other measures. Additionally, the package would have set up a bipartisan debt commission to address the nation’s mounting debt load.

Ahead of voting, the Republican speaker all but dared his holdout colleagues to oppose the package a day before Saturday’s almost certain shutdown. The House bill would have kept operations open through Oct. 31.

“Every member will have to go on record where they stand,” McCarthy said.

Asked if he had the votes, McCarthy said, “We’ll see.”

But as soon as the floor debate began, McCarthy’s chief Republican critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, announced he would be voting against the package, urging his colleagues to “not surrender.”

 The hard right, led by Gaetz, has been threatening McCarthy’s ouster, with a looming vote to try to remove him from the speaker’s office unless he meets the conservative demands. Still, it’s unclear if any other Republican would have support from the House majority to lead the party.

Gaetz said afterward that the speaker’s bill “went down in flames as I’ve told you all week it would.”

He and others rejecting the temporary measure want the House to instead keep pushing through the 12 individual spending bills needed to fund the government, typically a weeks-long process, as they pursue their conservative priorities.

Some of the Republican holdouts, including Gaetz, are allies of Donald Trump, who is Biden’s chief rival in 2024. The former president has been encouraging the Republicans to fight hard for their priorities and even to “shut it down.”

The margin of defeat shocked even Republican members.

Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said: “I think what this does, if anything, I think it’s going to rally people around the speaker and go: ‘Hey, the dysfunction here is not coming from leadership in this case. The dysfunction is coming from individuals that don’t understand the implications of what we’re doing here.’”

Garcia said, “For the people that claim this isn’t good enough, I want to hear what good enough looks like.”

Another Republican, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a member of the Freedom Caucus who supported the package, suggested the House was losing its leverage with the failed vote: “We control the purse strings. We just ceded them to the Senate.”

Republicans convened for a closed-door meeting later Friday afternoon that grew heated, lawmakers said, but failed to produce a new plan. Leaders announced the House would stay in session next week, rather than return home, to keep working on some of the 12 spending bills.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, criticized the proposed Republican cuts as hurting law enforcement and education and taking food out of the mouths of millions. She said 275,000 children would lose access to Head Start, making it harder for parents to work.

“This is a pointless charade with grave consequences for the American people,” DeLauro said.

Mace, a frequently appearing lawmaker from Charleston, South Carolina is a notorious example of not trusting the Republicans. She is an extremely intelligent woman. She talks like a normal person on CNN and MSNBC. She criticizes Biden about policies and sometimes criticizes Republicans. But when she heads to Fox, she talks like she is a nut.

Facing a primary threat from Katie Arrington again, Mace has taken to the extremes once again to prevent a further right opponent to beat her in the swing district she took in 2021.

Got a feeling that Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is going to be the next Republican sucker (uh Speaker of the House).

The White House: We Gave You Our Plan, Kevin!

I'm f**ked.

At 12:00am on Sunday, Oct. 1, 2023, the federal government shutdown will affect over 20 million federal employees and Americans who need federal assistance.

The House Republicans with no sense of understanding have dug their feet in and stand firm in holding the government hostage. Their opposition to President Joe Biden and Democrats have finally come to head. They have not adjourned as of yet, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) hopes the House can pass a bill to keep the government open.

The White House has confirmed that there will be no talks with McCarthy.

The White House and the Senate have agreed with McCarthy during the debt ceiling debate to pass a resolution without any obstacles. Now McCarthy renigged on the deal and is pushing for far right Republican proposals.

The House voted Friday afternoon to scuttle the 30-day funding bill, leaving Republicans without a game plan to avert a shutdown.

The vote failed, 198-232.

The hard-liners say they are unconcerned if the government shuts down, as it appears likely to do at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. They want the House to pass all 12 appropriations bills, with steep spending cuts, then negotiate funding with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

These 21 members of the Republican House of Representatives are fucked up.

Moderate Republicans lashed out with fury at the conservatives who voted down the funding bill, with specific criticism reserved for do nothing lawmaker Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), whom they accused of fomenting chaos to oust McCarthy.

"Unfortunately, a handful of people, and in particular a party of one, Matt Gaetz, has chosen to put his own agenda, his own personal agenda, above all else," Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) who is facing a tough reelection bid next year, said after the vote.

"There is only one person to blame for any potential government shutdown, and that is Matt Gaetz," he added. "He's not a conservative Republican; he's a charlatan."

Gaetz later tweeted at Lawler: "20 other Republicans voted with me. And, BE BEST, Mike!"

In a bid to reset, House Republicans huddled behind closed doors in the Capitol basement for nearly three hours Friday to try to hash out their differences. But they emerged from that meeting without consensus on how to move forward and keep the government open.

The House will return for a rare Saturday session, but it's unclear what they will vote on. McCarthy said after the meeting he's now eyeing a clean funding bill — with no Ukraine aid — that would originate in the House, but added that Democrats likely would not support it.

"There are a lot of personalities at play here, and multiple strategic objectives. When you have multiple objectives, you're never going to get everyone on board," a frustrated Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) said as she left the room.

"And I will venture to say that there are members who don't care whether the government stays open or shuts down."

Dianne Feinstein Passed Away!

Dianne Feinstein has passed away.

Longtime California senator Dianne Feinstein has passed away. 

President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Gov. Gavin Newsom and members will react. 

She was 90 years old.

Newsom will appoint a member to serve the remaining term.

It will shake up the primary.

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) are currently running to replace her. If Newsom appoints a candidate, that person is most certain to run for a full term. Newsom had hinted her will appoint a woman of color.

Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate, the longest-serving female senator and the longest-serving senator from California, announced in February that she planned to retire at the end of her term. She had faced calls for her resignation over concerns about her health.

After she announced her retirement, President Joe Biden hailed his former Senate colleague, calling her “a passionate defender of civil liberties and a strong voice for national security policies that keep us safe while honoring our values.”

“I’ve served with more U.S. Senators than just about anyone,” he said in a statement at the time. “I can honestly say that Dianne Feinstein is one of the very best."

After Feinstein missed votes in late February, her spokesperson said on March 1: “The senator is in California this week dealing with a health matter," and "hopes to return to Washington soon.”

The California Democrat was a vocal advocate of gun control measures, championing the assault weapons ban that then-President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994, and pushing for restrictive laws since the ban’s expiration in 2004.

As chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein led a multiyear review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which led to legislation barring the use of those methods of torture. 

A centrist Democrat, she was known for trying to find common ground with Republicans, sometimes drawing criticism from her party’s liberal members. She parted from them on a number of issues, including opposing single-payer, government-run health care and the ambitious Green New Deal climate proposal, which she argued was politically and fiscally unfeasible.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will react.

Those tensions with progressives built to a head during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020 when Feinstein hugged Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and thanked him for how he had conducted the hearing. The move prompted swift calls for Feinstein’s ouster as the ranking member of the panel, and she ultimately did step down.

Feinstein preferred following Senate traditions than changing them, though she voiced openness in 2021 to potentially altering filibuster rules if Democrats were unable to pass key parts of their legislative agenda, including voting rights reforms, gun control and a reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act.

Feinstein faced some pressure to resign in recent years to make way for younger lawmakers. Last April, Feinstein pushed back against a news report in the San Francisco Chronicle citing multiple anonymous colleagues expressing worries that she was mentally unfit to serve. “I remain committed to do what I said I would when I was re-elected in 2018: fight for Californians,” she said then. 

Feinstein was hugely influential in state and national politics, and her support held great weight. She expressed to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, that she wanted Alex Padilla, then California’s secretary of state, to fill Kamala Harris’ seat in the Senate after Harris was elected vice president, a request that Newsom fulfilled. 

Before her election to the Senate in 1992, tragedy helped fuel her rapid rise in San Francisco and California politics. On Nov. 27, 1978, Feinstein, then-president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, became acting mayor following the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and city Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first gay elected official in California. She later became the first woman elected mayor of San Francisco.

In fact, it was Feinstein who made the shocking announcement of the assassinations on the steps of City Hall. Three decades later, she was portrayed in the film Milk, starring Sean Penn.

Thrice married, Feinstein was predeceased by her husband, investment banker Richard Blum, who died last year. She is survived by her daughter, Katherine Feinstein, a San Francisco County Superior Court judge; her son-in-law, Rick Mariano; and her granddaughter, Eileen Feinstein Mariano.

The Impeachment Inquiry Of Joseph R. Biden!🍊

A government shutdown is on Sunday and Republican lawmakers are doing an impeachment inquiry on the 46th President of the United States. The House Republicans have ran on conspiracy theories and phony outrage to launch an impeachment inquiry on Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

The attempt to tarnish Biden with corruption,

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is leading this and many Republicans are literally pulling evidence from 2017 until 2020 when Biden was not in office. 

Even with this hearing, Democrats are stating that the time is being wasted. 

Many of the Republican Party's witnesses stated that there is not enough evidence to prove Biden did anything wrong.

None of the witnesses were "fact witnesses," meaning none were involved in the investigation or the alleged activities the hearing was discussing. Instead, all three were introduced as experts in their respective fields.

The factless members of the Republican House of Representatives.

Comer said in his opening statement Biden family members and their associates "raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019" from foreign sources. "What were the Bidens selling to make all this money? Joe Biden himself," he said.

Judiciary chair, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) called it “a tale as old as time. Politician takes action that makes money for his family and then he tries to conceal it.”

One of the panel's expert witnesses, law professor Jonathan Turley, acknowledged that the evidence Republicans had gathered so far, however, doesn't prove their case.

In other words, no proof.

Republicans are days away from shutting the government down and all these distractions will hurt not just them but everyone.

👎

No one won. The former president continues to lead despite his refusal to debate.

The Fox Business Republican Presidential Debate will have a few days of talk and soon they'll go back to the controversies of Washed Up 45. The candidates who are vying to be the Republican nominee are all but ignored. The event was at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

The former president despite the lies, the indictments, the legal woes and the fact he refuses to debate won. He was not even there but the results show that the former president won hands down. Now he is demanding the Republican National Committee to end debates and rally behind him.

I mean I did not watch or listen to it. Fox literally had to reduce ad buy because it was going to be a snoozer.

What infuriates me is the fact that the far left is bitching about President Joe Biden not participating in debates with Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., two libertarian candidates masquerading as Democrats. The far right is backing Washed Up 45 despite his refusal to participate in the debates and is not willing to accept the fact he lost to Biden. 

The former president is trying to cause so much chaos.

Vivek Ramaswamy, Nimarata "Nikki" Haley, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Mike Pence were qualified to participate at the debate.

Asa Hutchinson, Larry Elder and Will Hurd were left off the stage.

Washed Up 45 went to Michigan to upstage Biden and Republican candidates.

The debate was a trainwreck.

Most agitators on the cable news channels said this was not a race for second place.

This was a race to be Washed Up 45's running mate. Of course, the former president denounced Pence as his running mate. 

The debate’s tone was far removed from a campaign that’s been driven by Washed Up 45’s attacks on his rivals and democratic institutions as well as his grievances about a litany of criminal indictments and civil cases targeting him and his businesses. The moderators did not ask about the indictments or why the people onstage were better qualified than the former president, instead posing questions about issues including education, economic policy and the U.S.-Mexico border.

Univision's Illa Calderon was attacked online by far right extremists for asking DeSantis the question about slavery in Florida's education.

The candidates often went after the former president on their own, hoping to distinguish themselves at a critical moment with less than four months before the Iowa caucuses launch the presidential nomination process. The former president has continued to dominate the field even as he faces a range of vulnerabilities, including four criminal cases that raise the prospect of decades in prison.

“He should be on this stage tonight,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is attempting to establish himself as the leading Washed Up 45alternative despite recent struggles to break out from the rest of the pack. “He owes it to you to defend his record where they added $7.8 trillion to the debt. That set the stage for the inflation we have now.”

Several others blistered the former president for not showing up, a departure from the first debate, when the field mostly lined up behind former president. DeSantis said just a few minutes in that President Joe Biden was “completely missing in action from leadership. And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing in action.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has built his campaign around criticizing Washed Up 45, said the former president “hides behind the walls of his golf clubs and won’t show up here to answer questions like all the rest of us are up here to answer.”

Even Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur who has declared the former president to be the “best president of the 21st century,” distanced himself and argued he was a natural successor.

“Yes, I will respect Donald Trump and his legacy because it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But we will unite this country to take the America First agenda to the next level. And that will take a different generation to do it.”

The former president speaks at a non union business courting union members.

The former president gave a lengthy prime-time speech in suburban Detroit that continued into the start of the debate. The crowd booed when he referenced the debate. He joked, “We’re competing with the job candidates,” and poked fun at his rivals for not drawing crowds as large as his.

He told the conservative Daily Caller early Thursday that the GOP should cancel future debates “because it is just bad for the Republican Party.” The next debate is scheduled for Nov. 8 in Miami.

“There is not going to be a breakout candidate,” he said.

Even hours before the debate began in Simi Valley, about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, the first group of supporters for any campaign to arrive waved Washed Up 45 flags and put up a banner reading “Trump, our last hope for America and the world.”

His rivals seemed to sense his command over the field on Wednesday and did their best to change the direction of the race.

“Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself,” Christie said. “You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one here’s going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you Donald Duck.”

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, drew larger crowds and new interest after the first debate. Her team raised expectations prior to Wednesday’s debate ahead of an expected campaign swing in Iowa.

Haley accused her former boss of not being tough enough on China while he was president. She picked multiple fights with Ramaswamy, as she did in August. She assailed him for creating a campaign account on TikTok, the social media app that many Republicans criticize as a possible spy tool for China.

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” Haley said.

Haley also fought with Sen. Tim Scott, her fellow South Carolinian and once her pick to fill the state’s open Senate seat. As Scott accused Haley of backing a gas tax as South Carolina governor and upgrading the curtains in her office as United Nations ambassador, Haley responded, “Bring it, Tim.”

After a first debate in which he assailed rivals and derided the rest of the field as “bought and paid for,” Ramaswamy tried to show a softer side when Haley and others went after him. After Haley’s attack on his use of TikTok, Ramaswamy said, “I think we would be better served as a Republican Party if we’re not sitting here hurling personal insults.”

DeSantis sniped at Ramaswamy and so did Pence, suggesting that he’d failed to vote in many past elections. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum steered clear of Ramaswamy, but repeatedly jumped in to answer questions he wasn’t asked to get himself more screen time in the debate’s early going. He repeatedly shouted for attention from the left end of the stage, leading a moderator to threaten to cut his microphone.

In one awkward exchange, two candidates made references to sex in talking about teachers unions. “When you have the president of the United States sleeping with a member of the teachers union, there is no chance that you can take the stranglehold away from the teachers union,” Christie said at one point, referencing first lady Jill Biden’s teaching career and longtime membership in the National Education Association.

A short time later, Pence turned to Christie: “I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years. Full disclosure.” His wife, Karen, is a teacher.

The night concluded with the moderators noting that it was unlikely a divided field could stop the former president, but then asking candidates to say who they would vote off the island, an apparent reference to the “Survivor” reality show. The proposed game didn’t get far as DeSantis suggested it was insulting.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson was the only candidate not on the second debate’s stage after qualifying for the first one. He too headed to suburban Detroit, saying, “Donald Trump is here in Detroit tonight because he wants to avoid a debate.”

Wednesday’s site was symbolic given that Reagan has long been a Republican icon whose words and key moments still shape GOP politics today.

But in addition to fighting with the library’s leaders, Washed Up 45 has reshaped the party and pushed it away from Reagan. The second debate’s participants were largely respectful of all that Reagan stood for — but also didn’t distance themselves much from the former president's major policy beliefs.

Democrats, meanwhile, argued the debate didn’t matter. Biden was in California at the same time, raising money in the San Francisco Bay Area for his reelection campaign, which at the moment is likely to be a rematch with Washed Up 45.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was in Simi Valley representing the Biden campaign and offering zingers to reporters about the debate, saying it was like a junior varsity or minor league game.

“This is a sideshow by any objective measure,” Newsom said in an interview.

DPRK Releases AWOL!

American soldier back in custody of U.S. Army.

Earlier this year, U.S. Army 1st Class Pvt. Travis King crossed the Demilitarized Zone separating North Korea and South Korea. He was quickly detained by DPRK military and sent to holding.

The U.S. and South Koreans negotiated his release. Details are unknown but it appears he will be released to Chinese custody and soon American authorities and military authorities will arrest him. He is likely to face criminal charges for this as well as the criminal charges in South Korea before his defection.

Earlier, North Korea said it would expel Pvt. Travis King — an announcement that surprised some observers who had expected the North to drag out his detention in the hopes of squeezing concessions from Washington at a time of high tensions between the rivals.

King’s expulsion almost certainly does not end his troubles or ensure the sort of celebratory homecoming that has accompanied the releases of other detained Americans.

And there remain unanswered questions about the episode, including why King went to North Korea in the first place. His fate also remains uncertain, having been declared AWOL by the U.S. government. That can mean punishment by time in military jail, forfeiture of pay or a dishonorable discharge.

King was transferred to American custody in China, according to one of the officials. The two U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss King’s status ahead of an announcement.

King bolted across the Demilitarized Zone and was quickly detained.

King, who had served in South Korea, ran into North Korea while on a civilian tour of a border village on July 18, becoming the first American confirmed to be detained in the North in nearly five years.

At the time he crossed the border, King was supposed to be heading to Fort Bliss, Texas, following his release from prison in South Korea on an assault conviction.

On Wednesday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that authorities had finished their questioning of King. It said that he confessed to illegally entering the North because he harbored “ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination” within the U.S. Army and was “disillusioned about the unequal U.S. society.”

It has attributed similar comments to King before, and verifying their authenticity is impossible.

In an interview last month with The Associated Press, King’s mother, Claudine Gates, said her son had reason to want to come home.

“I just can’t see him ever wanting to just stay in Korea when he has family in America. He has so many reasons to come home,” she said.

King, who is from Wisconsin, was among about 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea. U.S. officials had expressed concern about King’s well-being, citing the North’s harsh treatment of some American detainees in the past.

World's most dangerous border.

Unauthorized crossings across the Demilitarized Zone separating the Koreas are extremely rare. The few Americans who crossed into North Korea in the past include soldiers, missionaries, human rights advocates or those simply curious about one of the world’s most cloistered societies.

North Korea’s decision to release King after 71 days appears relatively quick by the country’s standards, especially considering the tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over the North’s growing nuclear weapons and missile program and the United States’ expanding military exercises with South Korea. Some had speculated that North Korea might treat King as a propaganda asset or bargaining chip.

In the end, the North apparently concluded that King simply wasn’t worth keeping, possibly because of the cost of providing him food and accommodation and assigning him guards and translators when he was never to be a meaningful source of U.S. military intelligence, said Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst at South Korea’s Sejong Institute.

Captive Americans have been flown to China previously. In other cases, an envoy has been sent to retrieve them.

That happened in 2017 when North Korea deported Otto Warmbier, an American college student who was in a coma at the time of his release and later died.

The Trump Organization Is Dissolved!

New York will seize Trump Org.

Washed Up 45, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump and Allen Weisselberg are on the verge of being banned from establishing a limited liability company in the state of New York.

The Trump Organization has been found liable for fraud.

The state will eventually take over The Trump Organization and seize its assets.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Engoron ordered that some of the former president’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations.

If not successfully appealed, the order would strip Washed Up 45 of his authority to make strategic and financial decisions over some of his key properties in the state.

Washed Up 45, in a series of statements, railed against the decision, calling it “un-American” and part of an ongoing plot to damage his campaign to return to the White House.

“My Civil rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether federal or state, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision,” he wrote on his Truth Social site. He insisted his company had “done a magnificent job for New York State” and “done business perfectly,” calling it “A very sad Day for the New York State System of Justice!”

Washed Up 45’s lawyer, Christopher Kise, said they would appeal, calling the decision “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”

Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of the former president’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Washed Up 45, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Washed Up 45's contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing criminal charges over the same conduct but declined to do so, leaving James to sue the former president and seek penalties that aim to disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business.

Engoron’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolves the key claim in James’ lawsuit, but several others remain. He’ll decide on those claims and James’ request for $250 million in penalties at a trial starting Oct. 2. Washed Up 45’s lawyers have asked an appeals court for a delay.

“Today, a judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump and the Trump Organization engaged in years of financial fraud,” James said in a statement. “We look forward to presenting the rest of our case at trial.”

Washed Up 45’s lawyers, in their own summary judgment bid, had asked the judge to throw out the case, arguing that there wasn’t any evidence the public was harmed by the former president’s actions. They also argued that many of the allegations in the lawsuit were barred by the statute of limitations.

Engoron, noting that he had rejected those arguments earlier in the case, equated them to the plot of the film “Groundhog Day.” He fined five defense lawyers $7,500 each as punishment for “engaging in repetitive, frivolous” arguments, but denied James’ request to sanction the former president and other defendants.

Washed Up 45 with Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump. They may lose their trademarks and company licenses.

James, a Democrat, sued Washed Up 45 and the Trump Organization a year ago, accusing them of routinely inflating the value of assets like skyscrapers, golf courses and his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, padding his bottom line by billions.

Engoron found that the former president consistently overvalued Mar-a-Lago, inflating its value on one financial statement by as much as 2,300%. The judge also rebuked Washed Up 45 for lying about the size of his Manhattan apartment. The former president claimed his three-story Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size, valuing it at $327 million.

“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.

On X in the wake of the ruling, Eric Trump insisted his father’s claims about Mar-a-Lago were correct, writing that the Palm Beach estate is “speculated to be worth well over a billion dollars making it arguably the most valuable residential property in the country.” He called the ruling and the lawsuit “an attempt to destroy my father and kick him out of New York.”

Under the ruling, limited liability companies that control some of Washed Up 45’s key properties, such as 40 Wall Street, will be dissolved and authority over how to run them handed over to a receiver. The former president would lose his authority over whom to hire or fire, whom to rent office space to, and other key decisions.

“The decision seeks to nationalize one of the most successful corporate empires in the United States and seize control of private property all while acknowledging there is zero evidence of any default, breach, late payment or any complaint of harm,” Kise said after the decision.

James’ lawsuit is one of several legal headaches for Washed Up 45, the Republican front-runner in next year’s election. He has been indicted four times in the last six months — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf.

The Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud last year in an unrelated criminal case for helping executives dodge taxes on perks such as apartments and cars. The company was fined $1.6 million. One executive, The former president’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty and served five months in jail.

James’ office previously sued Washed Up 45 for misusing his charitable foundation to further his political and business interests. Washed Up 45 was ordered to give $2 million to charity as a fine while his own charity, the Trump Foundation, was shut down.

Walking That Fine Line!

Biden proves that he is the man of the people.

One national strike has been averted. The Writers Guild of America has reached a three year deal to end their five month strike with the AMPTP. The writers will soon return to the jobs. However, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists are still on strike and scripted television shows are on the verge of cancelation despite the WGA strike being over. Of course, the United Auto Workers strike is one of the biggest strikes this year.c1

President Joe Biden went to Metro Detroit to stand in solidarity with striking UAW members who are protesting GM, Ford and Stellantis. The first in modern history for a U.S. president to break silence on a polarizing issue.

On top of that, he is defending his record. He says he is a pro union president and defender of the middle class. On top of that, the rival, Washed Up 45 is trying to exploit the vulnerability of Biden.

The former president is expected to speak to non union members in Michigan, thereby skipping the second Republican presidential debate tonight. The RNC is not sanctioning him for failing to appear due to their fears of a backlash from Washed Up 45 and his allies.

Biden and Washed Up 45’s campaigns have been in a tit-for-tat for weeks over supporting autoworkers. The former president spent much of Tuesday flogging Biden’s trip, while the Biden campaign insisted that Washed Up 45 was merely backing the workers in order to benefit politically.

The attention is warranted –– Michigan, along with Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, is a key state that could help determine who next takes the White House. It’s also one that Democrats blew in 2016, when Hillary Clinton notoriously left it off her travel list in the crucial final days of that year’s election.

Biden, his White House and his campaign, however, do not seem to be taking the Great Lakes state for granted.

“You deserve a hell of a lot more than what you’re getting paid now,” Biden emphatically told cheering union workers sporting red shirts and signs, alongside UAW President Shawn Fain. 

The UAW has notably not yet endorsed Biden in 2024, saying in May that it has concerns over the White House’s focus on EVs — a policy the former president repeatedly hit Biden over as the reason the workers went on strike in the first place.

The former president said Tuesday that Biden’s “draconian and indefensible Electric Vehicle mandate will annihilate the U.S. auto industry and cost countless thousands of autoworkers their jobs.”

Republicans more concerned about the president's shoes, Hunter Biden and drag queens.

“This is nothing more than a PR stunt from Crooked Joe Biden to distract and gaslight the American people from his disastrous Bidenomics policies that have led to so much economic misery across the country,” Washed Up 45 later said in a statement shortly after Biden’s appearance.

Note: The former president was in East Palestine, Ohio doing a campaign event trying to attack Biden for not appearing at the train disaster in Feb. 2023.

The former president plans to give a speech while in Michigan on Wednesday — the same day as the second GOP presidential primary debate — at Drake Enterprises, a nonunion manufacturer in Clinton Township.

Fox Business will host the second presidential debate in California at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. The remaining candidates have not caught up to the former president and are angry the junk food media giving him all this free air time again.

The union is warning its members that the former president believes in union busting.

The UAW said, however, that it also wouldn’t endorse the former president, and Fain went so far earlier this month as to say that Washed Up 45 is “not a person I want as my president.”

Holding on to Michigan is essential for Biden, who touts his policies around U.S. manufacturing, job creation, improving the U.S. economy for the middle class, and supporting big labor. But some union workers still resonate with the former president's anti-free trade message and other rhetoric, which led him to win states such as Ohio in 2020 and 2016.

A source close to the Biden campaign told The Hill (Nexstar Media) that Team Biden “feels confident” about its prospects in the state after Democrats flipped both chambers of the Michigan Legislature in the 2022 midterms.

“Michigan is a state where the president is taking nothing for granted and is already investing in [an] aggressive paid media campaign in the state, as well as investing in [the] state party. [The] campaign feels confident that its message and agenda are popular and will build off momentum from Michigan Dems’ 2022 historic wins,” the source said.

Union households had somewhat shifted blue-to-red in 2016, but in 2020, Biden doubled union household support compared to the support Clinton received, according to Bloomberg Law. 

The former president winning back key union-strong swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin that he lost to Biden in 2020 — despite winning those states against Clinton in 2016 — is essential to his taking the White House in 2024. 

So far, Biden and Washed Up 45 are running in a nearly dead heat in national polls that pit them against each other in a hypothetical rematch next November.

When it comes to unions, though, Biden and Clinton’s backgrounds are different. Biden has claimed throughout his presidency that he is the most pro-union president in U.S. history, something he has leaned heavily into not just in Michigan but in other stops throughout the country during his presidency. 

He’ll need the union vote and any other key voting bloc to muster enough votes should he and the former president run against each other again.

Biden’s visit to the picket line Tuesday wasn’t the first time he has sided with workers against big corporations since taking office. Biden supported workers in April 2022, when he issued a warning to tech giant Amazon days after workers at one of its New York City sites voted to be represented by a union.

On Tuesday, he rallied workers who cheered him on: “Stick with it, because you deserve the significant raise you need and other benefits,” he said. “Let’s get back what we lost, OK?”

"Shivering Karen" Abigail Elphick Suing!

Suing the person who filmed her making a fool of herself.

The woman who made the internet having a meltdown after allegedly assaulting a Black customer in Victoria's Secret in New Jersey is suing. 

She is suing the woman who filmed her, Victoria's Secret for not telling her to leave and mall security for failing to handle the matter. She is claiming she is mentally challenged and the whole ordeal triggered the infamous meltdown. She said it has caused distress and ruined her reputation.

Abigail Elphick is suing Ijeoma Ukenta. Ukenta made money off the video and has a social media profile. Elphick is saying the woman is making a profit off her disability.

Ijeoma Ukenta had gone there to use a coupon for a free pair of Victoria’s Secret underwear. Another shopper, Abigail Elphick, got too close, Ukenta said, leading her to ask the woman to move 6 feet away.

Elphick complained to a cashier. Ukenta began recording the incident on her phone. The drama escalated quickly from there.

Elphick, who is white, lunged at Ukenta, who is Black, and then fell to the floor in tears, sobbing and begging that she stop recording her “mental breakdown.”

Ukenta summoned security officers; Elphick called the police. For 15 minutes, the recording continued.

To viewers of what quickly turned into a viral video, Elphick became known as the “Victoria’s Secret Karen,” a villain in a now-familiar genre of online fare.

But people watching online or at the store as the episode played out did not know that Elphick was disabled, with a long history of medical and psychological conditions, according to legal filings that shed new light on the encounter.

Such shaming videos have emerged in recent years as potent tools for exposing the casual and routine racism that Black people face in their daily lives. But two years after the Victoria’s Secret incident, the court documents, filed in recent weeks, show how they can also distort complicated interactions, reducing them to two-dimensional accounts.

New Jersey woman who filmed the white woman's infamous meltdown is sued.

Elphick, 27, lives in a complex reserved for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Her behavior stemmed not from a “race-based” problem, according to a complaint filed by her lawyers, but from fear that being filmed would lead to the loss of her apartment and job.

Ukenta, in her lawsuit, also described being motivated by fear — “keenly aware that if the police were called, she, a Black woman, may not be believed.”

At the time of the July 2021 encounter, Ukenta had an established online presence and a YouTube channel, where she offered vignettes about gardening, food, overseas travel and cultural events in Newark, New Jersey, where she lives.

She posted the Victoria’s Secret video in installments on several social media sites, and the brief encounter in the Mall at Short Hills in Millburn, one of the wealthiest communities in New Jersey, quickly tapped the internet’s rage.

Ukenta’s first video, “Karen Goes Crazy Part 1,” was viewed 2.6 million times on YouTube. An unrelated YouTube channel, Public Freakouts Unleashed, ranked it No. 1 in a compilation of the “Top 25 Most Notorious Karen Videos of ALL TIME.”

A GoFundMe campaign Ukenta created — “Help Me Defend Myself Against Karen” — generated donations of more than $104,000.

The incident was held up as an extreme example of the “Karen” meme: an encounter between a Black person and a white woman in which the white woman calls authorities, potentially endangering the Black person as a result.

“This how they be getting us killed, you see that?” Ukenta says on the video.

But the clash and its aftermath were even more complicated than they seemed.

In July, Ukenta filed a lawsuit against Elphick, Victoria’s Secret, the mall and its security company, which she argues were grossly negligent, slow to respond and treated her as the antagonist rather than a victim of a fellow shopper’s attempted assault. In the video, Ukenta can be heard asking why the security officers, who do not appear until a store employee goes to fetch them, are taking so long to arrive.

“They were extremely dismissive toward her,” Ukenta’s complaint states, “and were indifferent and nonchalant about her concerns for her safety.”

When police arrived, Elphick told an officer that her panic stemmed from fear that the video would be published and cause her to lose her job and her apartment, according to a police report.

As images of Elphick ricocheted around the world, an online commenter urged fellow viewers to contact a school district where Elphick had had an internship to demand that their “racist employee” be fired. She began getting harassing calls and as recently as April contacted police to report that a man who referred to the Victoria’s Secret video had called her and threatened to rape and kill her, court records show.

“I was horrified,” Tom Toronto, president of Bergen County’s United Way, which runs the residential complex where Elphick lives, said about the video’s aftermath and what he called a “total loss of perspective and proportion.”

“She has a disorder. She has anxiety,” he said. “She had a meltdown. Then the world we live in took over, and it became something entirely different than what it actually was.”

Elphick, through her lawyer, declined to comment.

Elphick’s counterclaim argues that her right to privacy was violated after Ukenta shared personal information about her. But the legal filing also highlights newer, unrelated videos Ukenta has published since the Short Hills mall incident that are critical of a landlord and several retail stores; the filings point to those videos as evidence that she has pursued a broader pattern of “harassment.”

“Ukenta has made a job out of preying on individuals from behind a keyboard,” the complaint states, “inciting hate while taking advantage of victims and the public at large for her own financial gain.”

It is an accusation that Ukenta’s lawyer, Tracey Hinson, strenuously rejects, and one that she said only underscored the wisdom of the impulse that led Ukenta to refuse to stop recording in the first place.

“She knew that in Millburn, New Jersey, she would not be believed,” Hinson said. “And that is exactly what has transpired.”

Ukenta has also continued to publish videos that do not depict conflict, including positive dining and shopping experiences.

Lawyers for the lingerie store and the security company did not reply to requests for comment. A lawyer for the mall declined to comment, citing the lawsuit.

It will be hard to prove seeing that Elphick slapped Ukenta's hand while holding the phone. Ukenta did not know about this woman having a mental disorder. Ukenta filmed to provide evidence in case both would spent a night in the county. Also, it is a free country to film a person. The only legal liability is if you're harassing, using a phone for malicious purposes and attempting to entice criminal activity.