That is a question many asked after voters, despite the track record, decided to elect Donald Trump to the Oval Office again.
That should be the question people should be asking after the ethically flawed, morally bankrupt, and criminally corrupt Trump Mini Me Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton trounced four term incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican Senate runoff yesterday.
Not just for this race, but for other races across the country, where voters, despite ads and real facts, stupidly vote for the candidate that lacks a moral compass and has repeatedly demonstrated a need to put themselves over anyone else.
Like Trump, Paxton was impeached.
Like Trump, Paxton was indicted for financial improprieties.
Like Trump, Paxton cheated on his wife numerous times.
Like Trump, Paxton and his office protected known pedophiles.
What part of this record convinced close to two-thirds of Texas Republicans who turned out to vote for this disgrace?
They can not say they did not know. Cornyn's close to $100 million in media ad saturation saw to that as well as the public revelation that Paxton's ex-wife did not endorse him.
It is the same question many asked after Trump returned to office last year.
Look how well that has turned out for the American People and the country.
Paxton obviously thinks his supporters are stupid, calling his opponent James Talarico a vegan, hoping his followers do not know what that is. Since when is someone's diet a disqualifying factor?
Adulterer, Indicted, and Impeached would seem to be more disqualifying attributes on one's resume. Paxton checks all those boxes.
Pundits like influencer and former Congressional Candidate Deja Foxx wondered aloud about how voters chose Paxton on CNN last night, commenting:
"I think Trump also has some unique insight here that indictments and impeachments and infidelities and divorces don't really disqualify a candidate, right? This is a man (where)the woman who was married to him for years won't even won't even endorse him But he's got that Trump endorsement and apparently that is one of the biggest pieces of political capital we can have they were just saying that in the clip we watched but in truth the biggest power is not a Trump Endorsement, it's people showing up and voting. I'm excited to see in this general election how the youth vote and the rural vote, and how people of color turn out. Because folks like Ken Paxton are running on a record where they've enriched themselves and line their pockets, right. His net worth has grown twelve million dollars since he's been in office in 2003 basically my whole lifetime. And while Attorney General, he denied people water breaks, right? That was what he was running on. Meanwhile, he's got ten homes all across this country."
MSNOW host and former White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, in the video below, outlined the many scandals involving Paxton and the Cornyn efforts to remind Texans about them to no avail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEx2jtBmQTA
Polls today show James Talarico besting Ken Paxton in the general election.
To continue that trend into November, Talarico has to fight hard, show backbone, and appeal to Independents and like-minded Republicans who do not vote stupid to turn out.
Texans do not need to send a Trump Mini Me to the Senate.
When the history of the 2026 Midterms is written, historians may point to the Donald Trump endorsement of ethically flawed, morally bankrupt, and criminally corrupt MAGA-loving and Trump Mini Me Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his primary runoff campaign victory over MAGA-lite incumbent Senator John Cornyn as the turning point on the road to victory for Democratic Senate Candidate James Talarico and tipping the scales to giving his party control of the Congressional Upper Chamber in 2027.
Talarico, a Texas State Representative who defeated Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic Primary on March 3 after receiving a boost courtesy of Late Night Host Stephen Colbert posting a video of an interview with him after CBS cancelled it, wasted no time responding to the Paxton takeover of the Texas MAGA-Republican cult, thanking Cornyn for his public service, and inviting his supporters to join his Senate campaign.
He also broadcast the video below titled 'The People vs Ken Paxton' on social media.
"Something just happened in Texas. The most corrupt politician in America just became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate. Three years ago, Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party for using his public office to enrich himself and his donors at the expense of the people.
That kind of corruption is the rot at the core of this broken system. It's why we can't afford anything. It's why we can't get ahead no matter how hard we work.
For 50 years, mega donors and their puppet politicians like Ken Paxton have stolen from us with their bribes, their bailouts, and their billionaire tax breaks. Ken Paxton has gotten away with it. They've all gotten away with it.
But that ends this year, in this state, in this race. If we the people can come together to defeat the most corrupt politician in America, we can defeat this entire corrupt system. We can start unrigging this economy. We can start raising our pay, cutting our taxes, and lowering our costs. We can finally get ahead. It's time to come together.
This is the America informed voters with long-term memories warned those who thought Donald Trump was on their side, would become, if the twice impeached, 34-time convicted, found to be a sexual assaulter, David Duke-endorsed, and serial liar was given the keys to the Oval Office again.
Just look at what has been happening in the last week to ten days.
The creation of a slush fund, from taxpayer money, to pay for the January 6 domestic terrorist insurrectionists. They are even deleting the records of the January 6 arrests in a grotesque attempt to rewrite history. Even sane Senate Republicans are going crazy about this, bolting from Washington, D.C., rather than having to vote on it along with Trump's anti-immigrant funding requests.
The continued obsession with having Congress provide taxpayer dollars to fund a ballroom while people starve and go sick because Trump and his Republican loyalists cut off food and health assistance programs.
Southern Republican controlled states, after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, launched a return to the Confederacy by gerrymandering Black House-led districts out of existence.
Trump is continuing a purge of Republican ranks in favor of MAGA loyalists who will not ask questions like what is in the Epstein Files or why should we gerrymander mid-decade, with at least one of them, Ken Paxton of Texas, being an election-denying, state-impeached, scandal-prone, pedophile-protecting, adulterer kindred spirit.
People continue to pay higher prices at the gas pumps while Trump pursues Netanyahu's ill-advised war of choice against Iran. Trump says a peace deal is imminent. How many times has he said that over the last two months? This is getting like his infamous pledges to 'have my health care plan out in two weeks.' Does anyone want to bet that he winds up with a worse peace deal than the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran?
Trump backed down from issuing an Executive Order on mandating mild A.I. regulations after tech donors to his coffers bellyached to him.
While Trump is continuing to run the United States into the ground like one of his many bankrupted businesses, including a casino, Trump Steaks, and Trump University, his white nationalist besties and private prison corporate donors are profiting off MAGA's and Project 2025's cruel anti-immigrant policies and the unconstitutional and brutal criminal treatment of innocent people in America's Concentration Camps.
Just last week, ICE apprehended a 29-year-old DACA recipient, Karla Toledo, at her home on what can be described as flimsy at best justifications and placed her first in a Tucson ICE facility and then the Eloy Detention Center.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0dAP4sDcew
The outcry from Tucson's leaders and populace against what ICE did to Toldeo was immense.
Karla Toledo and Representative Adelita Grijalva. Photo by KTAR.
Representative Adelita Grijalva helped lead the way in calling for Toledo's release, saying what ICE did was another example of America's Gestapo "terrorizing our communities," equating ICE's assertion that Toledo was a criminal with the bogus "gaslighting" charge that Alexi Pretti was a domestic terrorist before they gunned him down, and calling their treatment of the 29 year old "an absolute disgrace."
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero released the below Instagram Post:
Fortunately, Toledo was released just before the Memorial Day Holiday Weekend on a $1500 bond. It was the same day the federal courts dropped, as Representative Yassamin Ansari wrote, "bullshit" charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man Trump's Gestapo wrongly deported to El Salvador.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfWLf5Cg81M
Talking to News Four, Tucson, Representative Grijalva commented on Toledo's release:
"Her bond was $1,500. That is not the bond that you put on a high criminal. That is this administration acknowledging that they did something wrong. What happened? Why did they enter her home without a warrant? All of those are things that we need to understand, because I don't want people that are here legally in this country to be afraid to go out of their homes."
What happened was that Donald Trump's untrained goons are going after people based not on any facts or credible accusations of criminal activity, but on the color of their skin and what their surnames are.
On Toledo's release, Senator Ruben Gallego posted:
"My office worked to make sure that Karla got back home to her family. It’s good news, but this shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
The Trump Administration needs to stop targeting DACA recipients who have known no other home than the U.S. They are our neighbors, essential workers, and patriots. Enough is enough."
During the same time period that Toledo was being detained on bogus charges, Arizona's two other Democratic House Representatives, Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton, paid a second surprise visit to the Mesa Detention Facility by Mesa Gateway Airport.
The two Representatives had visited the facility on April 9 with Congresswoman Grijalva and reported horrendous overcrowding and living conditions.
Representatives Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton. Photo from KTAR.
After making the second surprise visit, Ansari and Stanton held a brief presser outside the facility, conveying better but still inhumane conditions that only improved resulting from their first surprise visit and the City of Mesa threatening action for the detention center for violating health and safety standards.
Below is a transcript of their revelations to the public:
Representative Stanton: "...One thing we learned, we talked about earlier, is that your advocacy, our advocacy is actually working. They know the pressure is on, that they can't keep treating people the way they have inside the facility, which was only built for 12 hours. They're aware that we are paying close attention to the number of people inside this facility and the way that they are treated inside this facility,which, though better today, is still not where it needs to be.
Representative Ansari: "...When we were here on April 9th, it was shocking and horrifying. Every cell was overcrowded by two or three times the number of people that should have been in there. People were really desperate to talk to us and explain to us that there was a lack of clean drinking water, that when people were sick, there was no on-site medical staff. So I was happy to see tonight that the numbers were much fewer. So there were 125 people here tonight, and when we asked why that was, the staff members had read public reporting that advocacy and local government advocacy, our advocacy, had made a difference in the pressure to bring those numbers down to par. But I still think there's a lot of work to do.They are regularly keeping people here for longer than 12 hours. They admitted regularly for 36 hours, and I thought the showers were really notable.
Representative Stanton: "Well, there's one shower, and as a practical matter, they don't let the detainees use that shower. So people are here for three or more days and do not have a chance to actually clean their bodies, and that's an unhealthy thing, not only for the individual but obviously for other individuals around. So that is, there's a reason why this was built for only 12 hours and there's a reason why there's a significant cost to people's health for staying three days or more in a facility that wasn't built for them."
Representative Ansari: "We have to keep the pressure on; that is very clear. We have to make it abundantly clear that this facility is not meant, is not designed to be, a long-term facility. They do not have the infrastructure, the health, and the safety of human beings who stay here. So we are going to keep advocating to make sure that our bill is passed and that ultimately no more money is given to ICE without major, major reforms nationally, and this is one of many examples of the problems that exist within ICE."
Representative Stanton: "The purpose of the bill is 12 hours means 12 hours. A facility that was built for a certain length of stay should not get a categorical exemption to stay three days or more. That is bad for people's health and I do want to give a shout out to the City of Mesa who has actually written to the landlord of this facility letting them know that the Mesa Fire Department, which is called when there's medical emergencies, they don't have on-site medical as Yassamin just said and so each and every time there's a medical issue, it's the City of Mesa that has to respond and it was the City of Mesa Fire that originally reported that there was significant overcrowding the facility behind us and so they've written that landlord and landlord seems to be actually taking actions because ICE is not exempt from city rules dealing with the life safety of the of the people who are in this facility."
Arizona's Democratic Congressional Delegation also condemned Mr. Trump's regime for wanting to now make Green Card applicants, many of whom are living and working productively in the United States, to self deport and continue processing their applications from abroad.
"They’ve been lying when they say they support immigration “the right way.” This radical policy will target people here LEGALLY, including people married to Americans and parents of U.S. citizen children. It will separate families for months or even years, devastate communities, and kill jobs. We have to do everything we can to stop this insanity.
"This is outrageous. Trump wants people already living, working, studying, and raising families here to leave the country and gamble everything on a visa interview overseas? Imagine telling a mom, a student, or the spouse of a U.S. citizen to pack up, leave the country, and just hope they’re allowed back in someday. How many families will be separated? How many people will lose jobs or homes while stuck waiting overseas?"
"Trump just made legal immigration harder — on purpose. America is able to attract the top researchers, doctors, & engineers because of our worker visa programs. Forcing these immigrants to now leave the U.S. before applying for citizenship will deprive us of their innovation, their tax dollars, & their contributions to our economy."
"So this means that there will be American children who will be separated from their mom or dad for months or YEARS. This is anti-family. I’ll do everything I can to stop it."
Ansari is right. This is insanity.
Grijalva is right: This is outrageous.
Stanton is right: This will hurt our local, state, and national economies.
Gallego is right. This is anti family.
Unfortunately, it is sad to say that this is not the worst examples of Trump's White Nationalist Anti-Immigrant Agenda. Remember Minnesota this last winter.
Also, please watch the segment below from Morning Joe last week, where co-host Mika Brzezinski and Univision Journalist Lidia Terrazas reported that 145,000 American Citizen children have experienced the detention and, in some cases, deportation of one or both parents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvr53wv99g
What is actually more horrifying and disgusting in this report is that some mothers, many of whom had pending immigration cases before they were taken away, were not allowed to breastfeed their children, with a reported 360 pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding women being subjected to detention and deportation during 2025 and 2026.
One woman developed mastitis.
Brzezinski rightly called what is happening to these women "horrendous" and "a huge toll on the families left behind with the babies."
Terrazas warned that these detentions were becoming more commonplace after being rarely imposed.
This is not the America soldiers who were just honored this Memorial Day died for.
This is not the America most people voted for in the 2024 elections.
Donald Trump is trying to take this country backward to a pre-Progressive Gilded Age where the wealthy dictated policy, and Social Darwinism, Chauvinism, Racial Segregation, and Nativism were well-regarded belief systems.
This is not the America of 2026, and voters need to show that at the ballot box this November and defeat, as Blog editor Larry Bodine wrote, "the Mass Deportation Machine" of Trump's White Nationalist-Fascist Goon Squad.
While people are suffering because of Trump and MAGA Republicans' cuts to the Affordable Care Act, SNAP-Food Assistance, Pell Grants, and Rural Health Care Facilities, the Mad King and his loyalists in Congress think it is a good idea to spend working and middle-class taxpayers' money on a Gilded Age White House Ballroom.
In a social media post, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly reported how parents could not afford to put gas in the car to take their daughter on a 300-mile round-trip to get cancer treatment.
While people are dealing with higher gas and food costs, thanks mainly to Trump's war of choice in Iran, the man who bankrupted a casino is engaging in war profiteering, buying and selling stocks timed to the whims written in his "Truth" Social posts.
While people, including law enforcement, were assaulted on January 6, protecting the country from the Domestic Terrorist Attack that Trump provoked with his Big Lie about the 2020 election results, his handpicked Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, who was once Trump's defense attorney, approved a deal with the I.R.S. with Trump's current personal lawyers on setting up a slush fund of $1.776 billion to pay off those same January 6 criminal animals if they proceed with their outrageous and heinous claims that they were victims of an overzealous Biden/Harris Justice Department.
Trump also secured a deal where the Internal Revenue Service could no longer audit him or his family.
Talk about stacking the deck.
How unconstitutional.
How criminal.
How much lower can these vile people go, especially when using the numerical figure of 1776 to try and make an historical/emotional tie in with America's War for Independence.
Make no mistake.
The filth that attacked the Nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021 were not patriots fighting for freedom and a noble cause.
They were stupid and vile criminal domestic terrorists who caused the death of innocent people while doing the bidding of the person who wants to be America's Fascist Duce.
And Trump is no messianic savior.
He is nothing more than a traitor and a charlatan who has spent his adult life conning and swindling people, bankrupting various businesses, including a casino, and taking the country to the economic and international brink...twice.
Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego introduced an amendment on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to block Trump from using his "Insurrectionist Slush Fund," offering:
"I offer this amendment for one simple reason. Taxpayer dollars should never be used to enrich a sitting president, his family, or his political allies. This week, President Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, but only after the creation of a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded compensation fund.
Let's just let that sink in. The President of the United States sued his own government, and then negotiated an arrangement with his own Department of Justice to create a nearly $2 billion fund to compensate himself, his family, and his allies. According to reports, that fund could be used to compensate individuals involved in the events of January 6th.
Many of those individuals assaulted Capitol Police and other law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to defend this institution and everyone in it, including many of us in this room. This guy, this guy, and this guy, and this guy are going to potentially get payouts from the federal government for assaulting these police officers. So much for backing the blue.
Taxpayer dollars should not support those people that attack these officers. This is not justice. It is profound abuse of public funds.
Right now, Americans are struggling with high prices and economic uncertainty. Federal dollars should be used to lower costs and serve the American people, and not create a slush fund for the President's political allies or to reward those who assaulted law enforcement. My amendment is straightforward.
It prohibits the federal government from using taxpayer dollars to pay out settlements for lawsuits brought by the President or his immediate family or allies. It also prohibits creating a fund to provide payments to the President, his family, or the traitors who attack the Capitol.No President, Republican, or Democrat should be able to use the federal treasury as a personal checkbook, and I urge my colleagues to support this amendment."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP0P0v6KUXc&t=12s
All the Republicans on the Committee voted against the Gallego Amendment.
What that vote, all of those Republicans told the American People that their loyalty is with the convicted and impeached Trump and the domestic terrorists that attacked the Capitol, and many of them on January 6, 2021, and not them.
Other members of Arizona's Democratic Congressional Coalition reacted strongly against Trump's corrupt shell game in favor of domestic insurrectionists.
"Let me get this straight: • Trump sued the IRS for $10 BILLION after his tax returns leaked. • Then he put his friend and former personal attorney, Todd Blanche in charge of the Justice Department. • Now there’s a $1.8 BILLION taxpayer-funded slush fund that could funnel YOUR money to Trump allies and even January 6 rioters. Corruption at its finest!"
Representative Greg Stanton wrote on social media:
"This is corruption in broad daylight, and we can never allow it to be normalized."
"Trump is using taxpayer money to pay off his friends and allies. This is corruption and theft in broad daylight."
Again, is Trump's America the one you want to live in, where he profits off your misery while his Republican allies say or do nothing and stand with the domestic terrorists-insurrectionists and set up a fund to pay the cop-killers who stormed the Nation's Capitol?
This should not be a tough decision come voting time this November.
