This cowardly act officially killed the old-school GOP

The Republican Party as we’ve known it officially died this week as Acting Attorney General Todd “Trumpsimp” Blanche’s nomination essentially became inevitable. The personal lawyer of a convicted felon adjudicated rapist Epstein Bestie will almost certainly be the Attorney General of the United States of America.

Blanche will be remembered as the biggest traitor of them all, selling his spine to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin for a currently unknown reason. It’s clear all of the Republicans have a price, or else we’d either be enjoying President Joe Biden’s second term or President Kamala Harris’s first.

Blanche’s fellow spineless co-conspirators in the biggest political cover-up in American history are celebrating a hollow victory at the moment. How quickly they’ve forgotten Lindsey Graham and his tarnished legacy. If they think Trump wouldn’t rap his knuckles on their coffins, they’re very wrong. He’d step over the bodies of his grandchildren to escape a burning building and then blame them for starting the fire. I don’t know why Trumpublicans haven’t learned that their loyalty is never going to be returned, but I guess worrying about a mean tweet is more important than the lives of roughly 349 million Americans.

This farce played out by these fascists is fully insulting to all of us who have a functioning brain. It’s bad enough they’ve all remained silent while Trump vandalizes Washington, DC to make America look even weaker on the global stage, but that they remain willing accomplices is beyond anything the Founders could have imagined when they wrote the Constitution.

Donald Trump had to pay E. Jean Carroll the $5.6 million he owed her, and the Republicans said nothing.

Capital One just revealed in a federal court filing that it closed more than 300 bank accounts affiliated with the Trump Organization in 2021 due to “internal anti-money laundering concerns,” not political motivations, so Republicans said nothing.

Those two stories alone would have ended anyone else’s political career, but as it’s been repeatedly stated ad nauseum over these last 11 years of Trumpblight, nothing seems to stick to this guy.

Except the Epstein Files.

It’s so on brand (which means, it’s completely infuriating) for 2026 that Todd “Trumpsimp” Blanche barely made the deadline to hand over the unredacted files to a federal judge just days before his rescheduled confirmation vote. We should be forever grateful to Katie Phang, because the truth is going to come out one way or another.

I’m not enjoying being a witness to this kind of history, but I’m grateful that my two Democratic Senators (from Oregon) aren’t just sitting there and taking what the GOP’s razor-thin majority is doing to our democracy.

First, Sen. Ron “Chutzpah” Wyden cleverly timed the Tuesday release of his report documenting the Senate Finance Committee’s four-year investigation into the Wall Street banks that funded Jeffrey Epstein’s international sex trafficking ring. I know it’s not going to impact how Senate Republicans will vote, but when you follow the money, as Sen. Chutzpah and team have done diligently, you can’t help but wonder who else’s names are connected to those wire transfers that the Trump administration has declined to investigate.

This screenshot has lived on my phone since November 2025. My Senator DELIVERS, yo.

I can also share that I’m going to have a chat about all of this with Sen. Wyden once he’s home in Portland, and yes, there will be video one way or another. If I know him (which I’m lucky to say that I do), he’ll be in Portland very little, taking the August break to hold more Town Halls around Oregon as we face an increasingly scary fire season.

Just another thing Republicans don’t care about, as Trump has made drastic cuts to FEMA and we basically have no EPA while Interior Secretary Doug “Burgumeister” Burgum gleefully ignores Trump’s destruction of all of our natural resources as well as the Reflecting Pool.

As we fret over the fragility of our democracy, my other Senator, Jeff Merkley, has introduced the For the Republic Act, along with co-sponsors Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).

“Authoritarianism isn’t down the street or around the corner—it is here right now,” said Sen. Merkley. “We have all three ingredients of a strongman state in the United States: a rubber-stamp Congress doing the President’s bidding; a deferential Supreme Court finding ‘invisible ink’ in the Constitution to enhance the President’s powers; and a power-hungry President behaving like a king, breaking the law and violating the checks and balances of our Constitution.”

With “new provisions to counter the rise of authoritarianism and erosion of our democratic government under the second Trump Administration, as well as existing legislation,” the For the Republic Act outlines the steps to fight back against the known playbook of authoritarian governments:

[source: Sen. Jeff Merkley]

That’s where we are as a nation, Dear Readers, and it’s all because the Republicans don’t want us to know about the kompromat Putin has on all of them.

Therefore, this is where I’m going to ask you to take action beyond sharing this piece. I’m giving you permission to be furiously angry at the Republicans who got us here.

Unlike Sen. Chutzpah, I don’t expect Republicans to hold any Town Halls during their August recess, but if they do, I expect you to show up and show up MAD. Fighting fascism has never been easy or pretty, but it’s necessary, like cleaning your toilet. Except toilets serve a purpose, unlike Republicans.

If they can’t handle being yelled at, then they should resign. I can give you some questions to ask if you’re feeling shy:

1. Why is Trump more important to you than we are?
2. Why are you covering up the Epstein Files?
   

Everyone in the room would want those answers. You won’t get any real answers, but you’ll get great footage to share. They don’t deserve any peace after what they’ve done to our democracy. We need to use our voices like never before.

Before they take that away from us as well, that is.