Republican Blockade Leaves Marines Without Leader for First Time in Over a Century

The U.S. Marine Corps is officially leaderless, due to Republicans holding up military promotions in objection to the Defense Department’s abortion policy, a move that experts warn hurts national security.

General David Berger stepped down Monday from his position as commandant of the Marine Corps. The current assistant commandant, Eric Smith, will serve as acting commandant until a new one is officially appointed—but there is no confirmed replacement for Berger at this time. The White House has nominated Smith to officially take over, but Senator Tommy Tuberville has blocked hundreds of military promotions since March.

Speaking at Berger’s farewell ceremony, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted it has been more than 100 years since the Marines have operated without a confirmed commandant. “Smooth and timely transitions of confirmed leadership are central to the defense of the United States, and to the full strength of the most powerful fighting force in history,” he said.

Berger urged the Senate to get a move on, saying, “We need the Senate to do their job so that we can have a sitting commandant” who is “appointed and confirmed.”

Tuberville has blocked nearly 200 military promotions since March over his objection to the Defense Department’s abortion policy. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Pentagon unveiled a new policy that allows service members to take up to three weeks of administrative leave for reproductive health care treatments, including abortion and fertility procedures. The policy also reimburses them for travel expenses.

Tuberville insists the policy is illegal, and that his blocking military promotions in protest has “no effect on readiness” of the military. Austin has debunked both of these claims.

Not only is the policy perfectly legal, but Tuberville is actually putting the nation at risk. Austin warned in a letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren in May that Tuberville’s delay “harms America’s national security” and poses a “clear risk” to the military’s readiness.

The Saudi-backed LIV Golf League—which last month reached an agreement to merge with the North American PGA Tour—has just announced its $50 million championship will be played at none other than Donald Trump’s National Doral Golf Club.

It will be the second straight year in a row that the tentacular Saudi sportswashing venture hosts its massive three-day championship at Trump’s Miami resort. The event was originally slated to be played in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but LIV officials had reportedly been ambling to bring it back to Trump’s grounds, reports ESPN.

The twice-impeached, twice-indicted, and liable for sexual abuse former president has no qualms with any of this, and is gladly taking money from a human rights abusing nation that has had no problem bullying America. Beyond constantly holding the United States hostage vis-a-vis the bargaining of the same black gold destroying our planet, the nation has gotten away scot-free for killing U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, among its many other human rights violations, like jailing women’s rights activists and a devastating military intervention into Yemen that has displaced millions of people.

This is what the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States is not only signing off on, but profiting from.

The Senate Subcommittee on Investigations is holding a hearing Tuesday on the PGA-LIV merger. Greg Norman, CEO of LIV, and Saudi official Yasir Al Rumayyan both declined to testify; they’re both apparently too busy.

A national convention of college Republicans is excitedly welcoming vicious antisemite and racist Nick Fuentes as a headliner.

The event is being hosted later this month by College Republicans United, a group that, according to its website, has been committed to “spreading America First across college campuses since January 2018.” Among its “values” are planks like “opposition to immigration and multiculturalism.”

“Republicans United’s sole focus is to support America First Policies and Christian Nationalism across the country,” an organization flier reads.

After this article was published, the original venue for the conference, the Hassayampa Inn, announced that the “event will no longer be held” there anymore. Now, the College Republicans United website ambiguously says the conference will be held in downtown Prescott, Arizona. “This year’s convention promises to be bigger, better, and more impactful than ever before,” the organization assures, noting that the actual location will be “made public July 28th.

Fuentes was previously banned from social media outlets for violent rhetoric about people of color, women, Jewish people, immigrants, LGBTQ people, Covid-19, and much more. He has also proudly said he’s “just like Hitler” (whom he has also called “a pedophile … also really fucking cool”), and that “Catholic monarchy, and just war, and crusades, and inquisitions” are much better than democracy.

Not to be outdone, also speaking at the event is January 6 rioter Jake Chansley. Known as the QAnon Shaman, Chansley has long been active in trying to spread the QAnon conspiracy theory, even attending a Black Lives Matter protest to try his luck. After the 2020 election, he focused his efforts on challenging the election results, specifically in Arizona, culminating in his participation in the January 6 attack on the Capitol (and in a photo of him with his fist raised as he stood on the dais on the Senate floor).

Recently expelled Arizona state Representative Liz Harris will also appear alongside former state Representative John Fillmore, who is now the leader of the far-right Patriot Party of Arizona. Harris was expelled from the state House for encouraging conspiracy theories and defamation on the House floor.

These are the people College Republicans United has laid out the red carpet for. Meanwhile, the official Republican Party in three Arizona counties (Pima, Maricopa, and Yavapai) are all backing the event.

Notably, the event has gone through several iterations of speakers and sponsors, as more and more people have come to learn of it. Originally, State Senator Justine Wadsack, neo-Nazi streamer and January 6 rioter “Baked Alaska,” and Congressman Eli Crane were all set to appear at the event.

Meanwhile, former Arizona Representative David Stringer was listed as both a speaker and sponsor. Stringer resigned after refusing to cooperate with an ethics investigation into previous charges against him for sexually molesting two boys. Specifically, Stringer allegedly paid two boys under the age of 15—one who was developmentally disabled—$10 each to have sex with him. One of the boys told police Stringer had requested to have sex with him at least 10 additional times afterward.

Stringer also once complained at a campaign event that “there aren’t enough white kids to go around,” as he discussed integration in schools and was recorded saying he doesn’t “like to demonize” sex trafficking. He said he doesn’t think there is much child sex trafficking but there are “a lot of 15-year-old prostitutes.” He laughed after saying that.

State Senator Wadsack has been removed from the event and is now pretending to play ignorant about the whole thing.

National Republicans were punished in 2018, lost in 2020, fizzled in 2022, and have lost swaths of referendums and special elections throughout that time period. Now, into 2024, their college counterparts seem to be leaning even further into the kind of politics that is both incredibly dangerous for the nation and phenomenally damaging electorally. If the future of your party is in the hands of students who are somehow so alienated that they think this kind of event is good … good luck, Republicans.

This article has been updated.

California Governor Gavin Newsom ripped into his Republican counterparts on their apparent disregard for human life during a weekend interview.

Newsom has previously made clear he isn’t afraid to call out Republicans for their hypocritical policies on issues including gun control, health care, and child welfare. His interview, which aired on MSNBC Sunday, included some of his most forceful comments yet about the policies they push “in the name of freedom.”

He first took aim at Texas Governor Greg Abbott. “One of the worst crime and murder rates in America and one of the worst mental health records of any governor in America?” Newsom said. “I’m not so convinced about the merits of his leadership.”

But Newsom pointed out that the problems go beyond Texas. “Eight of the top 10 murder states are Republican states,” he said. “Seven of the top 10 dependent states …  are red states.”

“The life expectancy in the South, and they’re not expanding Medicaid and prenatal care and providing child care? It’s jaw-dropping,” Newsom continued.

“Infant mortality? You care about life, and you look at life expectancy? You care about life, and you’re getting kids that are gunned down by weapons of war? Spare me. All in the name of freedom, as you’re banning books?”

“With all due respect, we should not be on the defensive as the Democratic Party. The Republican Party should be on their heels, not us,” Newsom added.

Newsom is no stranger to taking Republicans to task. In January, while visiting victims of the tragic Monterey Park shooting, he told he told CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell that the Second Amendment, which many Americans believe guarantees them unfettered access to guns, is “becoming a suicide pact.”

“Nothing about this is surprising. Everything about this is infuriating,” he said of the Monterey Park attack. Hours later, while still visiting, he then received reports that there had been another shooting, this time in Half Moon Bay, which killed seven people and injured one more.

More recently, during a June interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Newsom again highlighted the major discrepancies between Democratic- and Republican-led states. Newsom pointed out that blue states make up a much stronger portion of the U.S. economy, meaning they essentially subsidize red ones.

As Ron DeSantis’s campaign continues to plummet, it seems the junior varsity fascist has gotten all the more desperate to keep those fundraising dollars coming in and maintain the illusion that he stands a chance. He’s now even begging for donations in the wee small hours of the morning.

According to several users on Twitter, his campaign sent out a fundraising text around 2:30 a.m. ET on Monday.

Of course, there’s nothing with perhaps trying to connect with those who may be awake at nonconventional hours—workers with different or later schedules, individuals with different sleeping patterns, and those who maybe just have trouble falling asleep. But given DeSantis’s war on practically every subgroup of people under the sun, one may not be off-the-mark to imagine this fundraising text as unintentional.

This instance alone doesn’t indict the DeSantis campaign as incompetent. But taken in tandem with his disastrous Twitter campaign launch alongside Elon Musk, his immediately subsequent signing of a bill that would protect Musk if his rockets explode and kill workers, his sharing of a viciously homophobic and downright odd campaign video, and numerous reminders of his generally nonrelatable demeanor, the sum of it all perhaps explains why DeSantis is not built to win a presidential primary, let alone a general election.

And these campaign bugs don’t even get into DeSantis’s actual policies, like his infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, or the rollback of gun safety laws while the country is awash in practically daily mass shootings that have radicalized people from Tennessee to Texas.

Elon Musk has decided that the only way to determine which billionaire tech bro can reign supreme is to have a literal dick measuring contest.

You read that right.

Musk is fuming over Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg’s newest platform, Threads. The Twitter competitor came out of the blue and has been a runaway hit, amassing more than 100 million downloads in its first week of existence. People are leaving Twitter in droves for Threads.

And Musk, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion and promptly ran it straight into the ground, will not stand for it. “Zuck is a cuck,” he tweeted Sunday night. “I propose a literal dick measuring contest.”

Musk also sued Meta last week for allegedly poaching former Twitter staff to create the “copycat” site. Those former staffers would be among the nearly three-quarters of all Twitter employees that Musk fired when he took over.

Meta’s response was short and to the point: “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee—that’s just not a thing.”

Zuckerberg had not responded to Musk’s call for a dick measuring contest as of press time.

Musk seems determined to duke it out with Zuckerberg, one way or another. He has also challenged the Facebook founder to a cage match. And if that wasn’t enough toxic masculinity on display for you, misogynist influencer Andrew Tate—who has been charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group to sexually exploit women—has offered to train Musk for the fight.

George Santos has taken many identities, finding his inspiration, personality, and even personal background from the lives of others. His latest model? Rosa Parks.

Santos compared himself to the civil rights leader during a bamboozling interview on conservative talk show host Mike Crispi’s Unafraid podcast last week, during which he appeared live from the back seat of a vehicle and went on a rant about how his party is apparently not intersectional enough for far-right Latino gay men.

“Come for me, I go right back for them because they think for far too long they’ve gotten away with getting along to get along. So no, it’s not going to stay that way anymore. I’m going to call them out. You want to call me a liar, I’ll call you a sellout,” Santos spitted.

“I mean, Mitt Romney: The man goes to the State of the Union of the United States wearing the Ukraine lapel pin, tells me a Latino gay man, that I shouldn’t sit in the front, that I should be in the back,” the fake volleyball all-star and vet charity scammer continued.

“Well guess what, Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back and neither am I gonna sit in the back. That’s just the reality of how it works. Mitt Romney lives in a very different world. And he needs to buckle up because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for him,” finished the congressman under investigation for potential criminal activity both here and abroad.

It’s unclear why Santos brought up Romney’s wearing of a Ukraine pin as an apparent pejorative or contrast to his identity as a Latino gay man. But Santos’s typically odd sentences pale against him—a member of Congress and possibly serial financial criminal—likening himself to a Black woman risking her life to make a stance against systemic racism and discrimination.

From Martin Luther King Jr. to now Rosa Parks, one wonders which other civil rights leaders Republicans may try to co-opt next!

Fabian Basabe used to be known as the “male Paris Hilton” in tabloid circles, a cosmopolitan socialite famous for being famous (being the son of a wealthy Ecuadorian businessman probably helped, too). Now, as a Florida state representative known for pushing anti-LGBTQ policies, he is being accused of sexual harassment by two male former staffers.

On Thursday, the Miami Herald reported on the lawsuit, which said Basabe made repeated sexual comments and advances towards a legislative aide and an intern. The suit detailed accusations including Basabe nonconsensually slapping the aide’s butt while at an elementary school career day, and groping and trying to kiss a Florida State University graduate student before then going on to hire him as an intern.

The lawsuit, filed by former intern Jacob Cutbirth, former aide Nicolas Frevola, and his mother Janette Frevola, goes into great detail of what allegedly transpired. According to the accusations, Cutbirth first met Basabe and Frevola at a Tallahassee bar in December. Later, Cutbirth was asked to drive the drunk Florida representative back to his hotel.

While Cutbirth was driving, Basabe allegedly “began to physically touch and grope him and to grab at him to try to kiss him.” Cutbirth says he “repeatedly told Basabe to stop touching him” and refused a request to come back to Basabe’s hotel room. Cutbirth accepted a part-time unpaid internship in Basabe’s office just weeks later; he saw the opportunity as an “apology.”

But things did not end there. Cutbirth alleges that Basabe repeatedly requested that he “flirt with him” while in the office, and that Basabe described him as “eye candy” in front of other people. Basabe allegedly even suggested that Cutbirth should break off his engagement with his girlfriend and instead “explore his sexuality by having sex with men.”

In a different incident, Basabe allegedly told his aide, Frevola, that he wanted “all of that butt” before slapping Frevola’s buttocks in the back of a fifth grade classroom, while another aide spoke to students during career day.

On another occasion, Basabe allegedly showed Cutbirth and Frevola a photograph of a naked man on his phone, and told the two that he was a “bottom,” while they should be “tops.”

Cutbirth says he quit in March due to “pervasive sexual harassment.”

The lawsuit also carries a previous claim made by Frevola that Basabe slapped him across the face at an event hosted by one of the largest Tallahassee lobbying firms, following Ron DeSantis’s inauguration. Allegedly, while Frevola was talking to a lobbyist, Basabe—who had apparently been drinking all day—approached and asked Frevola if the lobbyist was the woman he had “slept with” a few weeks ago. The pair were both shocked by the question and denied the inquiry. Basabe apparently grew angry, saying “Oh, so you are cheating,” before slapping Frevola and telling him to stand in the corner.

Basabe has been criticized for running as a supposed social moderate, while supporting Florida’s slate of anti-LGBTQ bills. That includes the infamous Don’t Say Gay bill, a measure that prevents teachers from asking students their preferred pronouns, and another that makes it a crime to host drag shows with anyone under the age of 18 present.

Cutbirth and Frevola said they didn’t know what they could’ve done in response to all the alleged incidents, as Basabe apparently made them both sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. Asked earlier as to whether he had indeed required them to do so, Basabe simply said, “There’s an application package, whatever is in there is in there. I don’t deal with the hiring process.”

The Florida legislature doesn’t require or provide NDAs for staff. Basabe has since accepted forcing staff to sign NDAs, and defended doing so. Still, he has denied the broader allegations, even calling the accusations from Frevola a “false” one made by “lazy, entitled, unscrupulous, self-involved, ungrateful, lying scum.”

Basabe once appeared on the reality TV show Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive, which depicted privileged children of celebrities experiencing the rugged life of working on a Colorado cattle ranch. “I just can’t believe some of the stuff that comes out of [Fabian’s] mouth,” one viewer remarked in an IMDB review of Filthy Rich. “He is the most disrespectful, lazy, arrogant person I have [ever] come across.”

“Every week I am amazed at what a spoiled, immature, brat Fabian is,” another said.

In 2006, he was arrested in New York for drunk driving and running a red light in his Hummer. He sued a New York nightclub $2 million after the doorman, who he called a “sand negro,” didn’t allow he and his friends to enter.

In December 2019, Basabe reportedly called a Black Miami publicist the n-word at a party at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach.

“When he’s leaving, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘peasant,’ ‘whore,’ ‘bitch’ at me … When he’s 50 yards away, he screams, ‘F–k you [n-word] bitch,’” publicist Tayo Otiti said.

Basabe has since viewed himself as a reformed man. “[Raising my son] has made me realize and focus and make up for any wrongs in my past,” he said in 2021.

Rudy Giuliani has been embroiled in scandal for years, most recently for being accused of promising to pay a woman a $1 million annual salary to be his close associate, and instead raping and abusing her over the course of two years. He also was allegedly constantly drunk, plotted to sell pardons to criminals, and regularly made racist and antisemitic comments.

And now, separately, a court panel is calling for him to be disbarred from practicing law for trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

The D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility issued a 38-page memo on Friday detailing their conclusion that the former Trump lawyer should be disbarred for his “destructive” efforts to help overthrow the election in service of the twice-impeached, now twice-indicted, and liable for sexual abuse former president.

“His malicious and meritless claims have done lasting damage and are antagonistic to the oath to ‘support the Constitution of the United States of America’ that he swore when he was admitted to the Bar,” the panel wrote. “The misconduct here sadly transcends all his past accomplishments. It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the wrong he has done. For these reasons, we unanimously recommend that Mr. Giuliani be disbarred,” the panel added.

The panel, appointed by the D.C. Court of Appeals to serve as its “disciplinary arm,” had deliberated for months on the decision.

The D.C. bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel had come to the conclusion last December, saying his license to practice law should be revoked. Giuliani’s ability to practice law in the district had already been suspended by the D.C. Court of Appeals, and that same court is now tasked with deciding whether to heed the calls and indeed fully disbar him.

Giuliani had already previously been suspended from practicing law in New York for making “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while trying to help overturn the election.

“The decision-makers at the DC Bar Association are nothing more than an arm of the permanent regime in Washington,” said Giuliani advisor Ted Goodman. “This is also part of an effort to deny President Trump effective counsel by persecuting Rudy Giuliani—objectively one of the most effective prosecutors in American history. This is the sort of behavior we’d expect out of the Soviet Union, not America.”

“I call on rank-and-file members of the DC Bar Association to speak out against this great injustice,” Goodman finished.

Giuliani may also likely face further criminal charges in the Department of Justice’s investigation into Trump’s 2020 election interference, led by special prosecutor Jack Smith. Smithhas already leveled 37 felony counts against Trump for taking and mishandling top secret government documents.

She’s a Barbie comrade, in a Communist Barbie world—or so say Republicans, who are doubling down on accusations that the upcoming Barbie movie is Chinese propaganda.

The film, which comes out July 21, stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, who leave Barbie Land to explore the real world. In one scene before they leave, a rough, hand-drawn map of the world can be seen in the background. The map includes the so-called nine-dash line, a much-disputed division of territory in the South China Sea.

Senator Ted Cruz was one of the first U.S. lawmakers to weigh in, sarcastically tweeting, “I guess Barbie is made in China.…” Fox News commentators speculated outright whether Barbie was Communist or not.

More Republicans have joined them. “While it may just be a Barbie map in a Barbie world, the fact that a cartoonish, crayon-scribbled map seems to go out of its way to depict [China’s] unlawful territorial claims illustrates the pressure that Hollywood is under to please CCP censors,” Representative Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House select committee on China, told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

Representative Jim Banks, who also serves on the select committee, accused the film’s producers of “endangering our national security.”

“We defeated the Soviet Union with Coke, Levi’s and James Dean. We need soft power superiority just as much as we need military superiority to win the new Cold War with China, and that’s impossible with Hollywood working alongside the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

Representative Mike Waltz accused Hollywood of “hypocrisy” and slammed Barbie as “yet another disgraceful example of Hollywood being in the pocket of communist China.” Senator Marsha Blackburn accused the movie of “bending to Beijing.”

Representative Mark Green warned Hollywood that continuing to spread Chinese propaganda would cost the industry federal support. “In no world should American films be spreading CCP propaganda,” he said. “I encourage all film studios to stand with integrity or lose support from federal entities like the DOD.”

In March, Green reintroduced the SCREEN Act, which would bar the U.S. government from helping American studios produce films if the movie is co-produced by a Chinese company.

China has used the nine-dash line to mark its controversial territorial claims in the South China Sea. Over the years, Beijing has tried to claim sovereignty over 90 percent of the region. Even though The Hague ruled in 2016 that China has no legal basis for its claims, the country has pressed on, building military installations on otherwise uninhabited islands in the sea.

Hanoi has already banned the Barbie movie for its inclusion of the nine-dash line, which Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all say violates their sovereignty. The Philippines is also considering banning the film.

For the record, here is the shot in question of the nine-dash line: