“Consumer sentiment fell about 5 percent in August, declining for the first time in four months. This deterioration largely stems from rising worries about inflation. Buying conditions for durables plunged 14 percent, its lowest reading in a year, on the basis of high prices. Current personal finances declined modestly amid growing concerns about purchasing power. In contrast, expected personal finances inched up a touch along with a slight firming in income expectations, which remain subdued. Overall, consumers are no longer bracing for the worst-case scenario for the economy feared in April when reciprocal tariffs were announced and then paused. However, consumers continue to expect both inflation and unemployment to deteriorate in the future.”

“Year-ahead inflation expectations rose from 4.5 percent last month to 4.9 percent this month. This increase was seen across multiple demographic groups and all three political affiliations. Long-run inflation expectations also lifted from 3.4 percent in July to 3.9 percent in August. This month ended two consecutive months of receding inflation for short-run expectations and three straight months for long-run expectations. Still, both readings remain well below the highs seen briefly in April and May 2025,” says the University of Michigan’s monthly consumer sentiment survey.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday threatened to sue the Trump Regime to compel the release of the Justice Department’s files on dead sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after a Dem-imposed deadline for them to do so came and went with nothing, as usual, Fox News reports.

“They’re now breaking the law to hide the files,” Schumer posted, referring to the arcane 1928 statute the Dems had used to try to force the disclosure. “Thune must appoint a lawyer to defend the Senate in Court and get the files. If he chooses complicity – we’ll take them to court ourselves.”

The fate of the 49th state was in question on Friday as convicted felon President Trump landed there to meet with the murderous dictator now ruling the vast nation that once held dominion over Alaska. Will the day end with former Governor Sarah Palin saying she can seriously see Russia from her house for real now? Will her white trash ex-husband have to learn Cyrillic so he can understand the charges against him the next time he’s arrested over a drunken fistfight with his son-in-law?

A federal grand jury on Friday returned an indictment against New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell for… something, Fox 8 reports, writing that “Details of the indictment have not yet been released at this time,” kind of like when it took a day for the charges against George Santos to be made public.

Also like with George Santos, the media has plenty of material to work with on speculating what the charges are in connection to as Fox 8 lists an affair Cantrell had with the head of her security detail, a legal battle with a resident who took pics of them together, another legal battle with the city’s public school district, an alleged Saints tickets bribery scheme, and frequent travel during inopportune times like when all those punks broke out of the city jail and during power outages.

Of course this will become spank material for the right wing media, painting all Black Dem mayors of major cities as corrupt assholes while the national media barely notices RJ May in South Carolina.

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Friday announced that the verdicts and sentence on the five counts in disgraced former President Jair Bolsonaro’s post-2022 election defeat coup attempt trial will be pronounced from September 2nd through the 12th, the Associated Press reports.

A five-justice panel, led by now-US sanctioned Judge Alexandre De Moraes, have heard evidence that Bolsonaro plotted to overturn the election, including plans to kill President Luiz Lula – and De Moraes himself. Which… Well, not trying to give any air to the MAGA bullshit about him being “biased” against the fucking scumbag dictator, it also isn’t exactly the opposite of a conflict of interest when a trier of fact in a case was an intended target of an assassination plot.

Still, would trade De Moraes for Clarence and Sam any day of the week and thrice on Sunday.

Revealing startling new information about the troubling crime situation America is facing, President Trump on Friday posted “It’s just been found that the Democrats are buying protestors in order to fight my attack on crime. These are criminals who support crime. They are unelectable!”

It’s not clear where it was just found, but given Trump’s legendary “showman’s instincts” it’s quite possible he’s working to build suspense over a reveal of his sourcing. Stay tuned!

Asked whether his bill to count US citizens only in the census might run into some constitutional issues, MAGA Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty on Friday drew on his knowledge of history to assert that “there’s a constitutional interpretation I think that has been misapplied that goes back to slavery days and what portion of a person is going to be counted,” which was correct except it had been kind of superseded by later amendments that removed the “interpretation.”

Earlier this month Julie Howell, doing one year on a theft charge at Club Fed in Bryan, Texas, told the Telegraph she was “disgusted” at having to share the space with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, telling the paper the “facility is supposed to house non-violent offenders. Human trafficking is a violent crime.” Howell added that “every inmate I’ve heard from is upset she’s here.”

“We have heard there are threats against her life and many of us are worried about our own safety because she’s here,” Howell said, without realizing there was worse danger in the system. Howell said her own daughter had been sex trafficked as a teenager, got beaten and shot, prompting a downward spiral into gambling addiction that led her to embezzle $1 million from the college where she once taught. “I don’t blame anyone else for the actions that brought me to FPC Bryan, but I can definitely say that the circumstances that surrounded my daughter being shot were what sparked my spiral and addiction to gambling to escape my reality. Having Ms Maxwell here triggered all of those feelings,” said Howell in comments relayed to the paper by her husband, Kent.

The Trump regime have taken care of that problem. CNN reports that Howell was first banned from service dog puppy training and then transferred to a federal detention center in Houston in what’s pretty goddamned obviously retaliation for daring to speak out to the media. “Nobody’s going to say anything about Ghislaine Maxwell now, are you kidding?” Howell’s lawyer Patrick McLain said to CNN, as if there was any doubt as to whether his client had requested the transfer.

The Reich are not beating the charges. In fact it kind of seems like they’re almost even enjoying this.

Facial self-mutilator Kristi Noem has been using as her taxpayer-funded DC pad the home normally reserved for the Coast Guard’s commandant, the Washington Post reports while printing the response from DHS spokesworm Tricia McLaughlin, who called it necessary because Noem has been “so horribly doxxed and targeted that she is no longer able to safely live in her own apartment.”

McLaughlin then added it was “sad” for a Post reporter to “suggest a rancher should have to pay a second rent because of a reporter’s irresponsible decisions to dox where she lives” and “If you cannot find humanity in another human’s safety and security, I invite you to find it here,” texting a link to Washington National Cathedral’s website, as if to say “FIND JESUS LIBTARD!”

Now-former Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan was given three hours – 59 days and 21 hours less than SOP – to move out of the house on January 21, 2025 after convicted felon President Trump fired her for being a woman. It’s not clear if Fagan’s replacement had been kicked out of the spacious home on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Southeast Washington when Noem moved in.

Unbelievable things are happening pic.twitter.com/LKaMISXaMh

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 14, 2025

An ICE agent tells the New York Post that the new trucks that got Pizzagate asshole Jack Posobiec so hard are “like having a bullseye” on agents. “This will only raise officer-involved incidents in the streets because people will target the vehicles,” said another, adding that libs have already successfully “impeded operations” against ICE stormtroopers even without marked vehicles.

A registered Republican North Carolina was arrested this week on felony charges of sexual exploitation of a minor, WRAL reports citing to the state Bureau of Investigation’s tech crimes Unit.

A warrant for Norlina Zion Global Methodist Church Pastor Shelton Burkart, 30, alleged that on June 24, 2024, he “knowingly” possessed visual material of children, ages 8 to 12, naked in dressing rooms and engaging in sexual activity. It doesn’t say he was secretly trying to figure out who the evil child pornographers are and only downloaded it for that purpose but his lawyer can figure it out.

It’s rural North Carolina, so maybe he’ll luck out and get a jury of 12 QAnon fans who’ll buy that.

DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb on Friday filed a lawsuit to challenge convicted felon President Donald Trump’s imperial takeover of the capital district’s police force, CNBC reports.

“They go well beyond the bounds of the President’s limited authority and instead seek a hostile takeover of MPD. They infringe on the District’s right to self-governance and put the safety of DC residents and visitors at risk,” said Scwalb announcing the complaint against the Orange Overlord.

Convicted felon President Trump rambled to reporters on board Air Force One bound for Alaska on Friday, getting off on the wrong neurologically-impaired foot by quipping about Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s economy and that his genetics make him prone to violent conquest.

“The Emerson College Polling survey of the 2026 Republican US Senate primary in Texas shows a neck-and-neck race between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, with Cornyn at 30 percent, Paxton at 29 percent, and 37 percent of voters still undecided,” says the often questionable-ish pollster in their intro to the first survey of the heated race in months.

This is by far the best result for Cornyn, and as such an extreme outlier. It’d be one thing if there was like a tightening where Pax’s 17 percent-ish average lead across previous findings fell while Corny gained, but it’s hard to imagine anyone sincerely taking this result seriously. Key word there emphasized because of course the establishment GOP are going to be demanding Paxton drop out immediately since there’s absolutely no path to victory for him after this devastating poll.

An Alexandria, Virginia man wanted on federal wire fraud charges over financial crimes he committed against at least four women he had dated over the last few years escaped from FBI agents just as they entered his apartment last Friday, fleeing via the balcony, WTOP reports.

According to prosecutors, Shawn Steven Harris, had “falsely represented to Victim 1 that he had held various federal jobs – previously with the US Treasury Department and US State Department, then with the US Defense Intelligence Agency, and lastly with the CIA,” telling the women he needed their credit cards for “government purchases” that he would later reimburse them for with pets, student loan payments, houses, cars, and so on, none of which ended up materializing.

Instead, for example, Harris put $15,000 on one victim’s credit card to buy electronics, DoorDash/GrubHub deliveries, Uber/Lyft rides, and at least one OnlyFans porn subscription.

Prosecutors dismissed the charges against Harris this week because his balcony’s on the 15th floor.

Convicted felon President Trump’s Reich keeps a “scorecard” that Axios reports rates 553 companies and trade associations on what they did to support his Big Beautiful piece of shit bill, something to consult when the lobbyists hired by these companies come knocking on the door of the White House. The “nice list” of “examples of good partners” includes Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, AT&T, Cisco, Airlines for America, and the Steel Manufacturers Association.

A regime official tells the bullet-point news factory that the running list “helps us see who really goes out and helps vs those who just come in and pay lip service.” Examples of the “help” include sending a woman to wear a red “DoorDash Mom” t-shirt to stand behind Trump at a White House event last month to sell the “No tax on tips”, a blog post from Uber saying the same, a tweet from Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins saying he’s “encouraged by” the bill’s “corporate tax provisions,” and AT&T announcing more fiber-optic internet lines because of the “pro-investment policies” in the bill.

It’s not clear what the White House considers to be “just lip service.”

A new national survey from the Pew Research Center puts convicted felon President Trump’s approval rating at 38 percent to 60 percent disapproval, down from a 47 to 51 approve/disapprove in their February 2025 poll. The sharpest drop and thus most of the decline in approval came from among Trump voters aged 18 to 34, down from 92 percent in February to 69 percent in August.

The fat bastard’s approval rating on the self-inflicted Epstein files issue is particularly freaking bad: 25 percent approve to 70 percent disapprove, though he does at least manage a net +9 among Republican/lean Republican respondents at 53 percent approve to 44 percent approve. Yay?

You don’t need to parse very carefully what FBI Director Kash Patel told Sean Hannity on Thursday to understand that he and his fellow Trump minions are already giving up on accountability for what the fat fuck was last month calling the “CRIME OF THE CENTURY” before and after the 2016 election. Still worth flagging this part: “So the best approach is to release this information with them and also go to our colleagues in Congress” to point out that pretending elected federal legislators are members of a separate and coequal branch of the government is so last year. Now they’re just a notch above “team members,” kind of like Target corporate comms refers to part-time cashiers.

Anyway Kash says these “colleagues” have “an oversight function on the Judiciary Committees and Oversight Committees and demand from us information and documentation that we can publicize, things like the Durham Annex” and blah blah blah which is a long and stupid and very much intentionally obfuscatory way of saying FBI agents are not going to be perp-walking Hillary Clinton or Adam Schiff anytime soon. It’s more about symbolic accountability for these villains, lol.

A Tennessee man is dead after picking up and being bitten by what was likely a timber rattlesnake during a hike in the Savage Gulf State Park in Grundy County, USA Today reports without further embarrassing details about the kind of idiot that would intentionally pick up a rattlesnake.