1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Busy busy busy… Texas Senate candidate, Ken Paxton. The WSJ reported that Paxton spent New Year’s Eve 2024 in Dubai. Partying with a woman who was not his wife. Along with two fugitives from US justice. But it’s not expected to affect his fortunes in the upcoming election. Just another crook in a long list. Hypocrisy watch though. VP Vance et al have vowed to remove more than 760,000 citizens from the ACA. Citing widespread fraud. While the fugitives Paxton was hanging out were wanted on federal healthcare fraud charges. One embezzled $15M from a Chicago hospital. One was charged with receiving at least $195M from the US government for fraudulent Covid-19 tests. One of the men donated $190,000 to Paxton. $25,000 of it after he was indicted. Or more succinctly…”JD Vance running around the country saying he’s fighting health care fraud while his nominee for the senate in TX who he completely supports is partying in Dubai with a guy [who] stole over $300 million in health care fraud and gave Paxton $190,000. This is the Republican Party.” Similarly, lots of boasting about cracking down on SNAP fraud by cutting benefits. Recent reporting says that the real fraud comes from criminal syndicates, often from Romania, who last year walked away with $470M stolen electronically from more than 990,000 households. The theft could be stopped with digital microchips. But Congress has refused to add them to benefit cards. Instead the Trump administration has decided kids going hungry will solve the problem. Diesel prices just jumped. Traders appear to doubt Trump’s abandonment of Russian sanctions will do much for prices in the US. Which means higher consumer prices are forthcoming. Or more succinctly…a Gulf Oil adviser posted: “Absolutely stunning price spikes in wholesale diesel today…. Market clearly not believing that Russian oil is on the way. US retail diesel price record of $6.53/gal could be topped by the midterms.” And we’re watching an administration becoming more brazen in flouting laws and judges. 400 trees cut down on the East Potomac Golf Course over the weekend. After being told explicitly not to. And then blaming the outcome on poor communication. Missed emails. Excuses not successful when used by children much less DOJ lawyers. Same with running political ads on the taxpayer dime. They were told not to. They went ahead anyway. The government might just as well have flipped a bird at our court system. But there may be a saving grace. Reporting says that Republicans are worried not only about how much work Congress needs to get through after the midterms, but also about whether Republicans will even bother to come back to vote after the election. “Attendance is an issue.” You made a mess. Now you don’t want to clean it up?