Texas Officials Trying to Cover Up Data on Maternal Deaths Ahead of Midterms

In a very convenient delay for GOP candidates, Texas says it won’t have its first maternal mortality study since the 2022 Dobbs decision ready before midterm elections. Maternal mortality reports show how many pregnant women die each year and from what causes.  Almost assuredly the real reason for the delay is to continue to obscure just how deadly Texas’s near-total abortion ban has been.  Texas definitely doesn’t need damning statistics floating around while anti-abortion extremists like GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton are flailing.

Indeed, Texas has been dragging its feet on this data for a while. The data they got around to releasing in January 2025 was so old that it predated the state’s abortion ban.   The state has also announced that when they release the new report after the midterms, they’re just not going to analyze data from 2022 and 2023, because this is how we do things now: just a persistent and deadly lack of accountability.

Though Texas has tried to keep this on the down-low, we know from reporting that by late 2024, three women had died during miscarriages when care was delayed or denied. We know that sepsis, which is life-threatening, skyrocketed after Texas banned abortion. We know that more pregnant women have nearly bled to death than ever before.

Overall, women are nearly twice as likely to die in states with abortion bans versus states where abortion is legal, according to a 2025 study from the Gender Equity Policy Institute. And even before that, the United States already had a higher maternal mortality rate than its peer nations.

The Continuing Saga of Trump's Obsession With Men's Looks

Convicted felon Donald's Trump near-homorotic obsession with men's looks is well known.  This pattern of obsession with the personal appearance of men extends back decades-- but has become more pronounced in the past ten years. During his first term, Trump often waxed poetic about the pilots posted to Air Force One, likening them to taller versions of Tom Cruise. “These guys are specimens,” he said during a late October interview with Joe Rogan. “Like perfect specimens.”

In the last three months alone, Trump has praised the looks of a sheriff in Tempe, Ariz.; a Mexican government negotiator; Shinzo Abe, a former leader of Japan; Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri; and Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, who he noted had lost weight. (“You look so handsome,” he said about Pompeo.) He also famously alluded to the size of genitalia of the deceased golfer Arnold Palmer, whose looks Trump has also apparently approved of.  “They look like Arnold Palmer,” Trump said about a group of gun-toting security officials at an event in October. “Can’t look better than Arnold.”

So it should come as no surprise that Trump's obsession with men's looks took front and center at his "midterm convention" this week when a photo of left-wing streamer Hasan Piker posing in his underwear was flashed on the big screen, prompting a flabbergasted reaction from Piker as he watched the moment unfold online.  The picture (pulled from Piker's instagram) was included in a narrated video shown on the stadium’s jumbotron.  The video was intended to stir GOP outrage on the so-called dangers of left-wing policies.  But the gratuitous thirst trap attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. Piker, who was live streaming at the time, pulled up the video in full, letting out a stunned “Ohhh!” into his microphone as the shot of him in his underwear appeared on screen.  “Nooo!” he continued. “They fucking posted the meat pic! Nooo! Yo! They posted the meat pic at the fucking Trumpapalooza!”  “They blurred my penis,” he concluded through laughter.

Not coincidentally, it should be noted that Grindr, the world's largest LGBTQ+ dating app, went down as the Republican National Convention's midterm event began on Wednesday. According to Downdetector, the app reported several outages just as the conservative event kicked off at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. The highest number of reported outages appeared to occur in and around the Dallas area.  A similar incident was reported during the 2024 RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "If that's the case, it aligns with Grindr activity during previous national conventions," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

 

 

Trump Can't Stop Lying About 9/11

Everyone knows that convicted felon Donald Trump is a prolific liar, making up statistics and blatantly misrepresenting the news to fit his own agenda. But his latest twist on an old lie may just be the sickest to date.  During an event at the Pentagon honoring 9/11 first responders, Trump claimed that firefighters rescued him from a building when he visited the area “right after” the attack.

“I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened,” Trump said Tuesday. “Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest. It was raw. Nobody’d seen anything like it, ever. We had other buildings—the United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. … But it never came down. I’ll never forget—two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen. Big, strong guys. And I’m not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms and said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’”

When the attacks began, Trump was actually nowhere near the World Trade Center. Instead, he was miles away in Trump Tower. Later that day, he even called into a news show to brag about how he had the “tallest” building in Lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers had fallen—a disturbingly egomaniacal comment.  

But it’s not the first time Trump has told a version of the lie that he went to Ground Zero soon after the attacks. In reality, he almost certainly did not visit the rubble in the days after the attacks, according to CNN reporter Daniel Dale, noted for his fact-checking of public figures. 

“There was public concern in the days following the attack that One Liberty Plaza [the former U.S. Steel Building] might collapse, but the authorities repeatedly said it was structurally sound, and there’s not currently any public evidence Trump went into it amid these collapse worries (?), much less that he was rushed out by firefighters,” Dale wrote on X, in response to a video of Trump’s claims.

Dale continued, “In varying language, he has repeatedly claimed for years he was at Ground Zero with a large crew of his workers helping with the recovery in the days after 9/11, but people who were definitely on site have said they never saw him or a Trump-organized crew on site and that it wouldn’t make sense for them to have had access; there are pictures and videos of Trump in the neighborhood in the following days, in a clean suit, but not on the actual site.”

And it’s not even the only lie Trump has told about 9/11.  As Dale notes, Trump has claimed that he personally went to the site of the fallen towers, and sent “over 100” employees to help assist reconstruction and recovery efforts. However, there is no evidence that he did that, either.

“Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services. Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn’t know it? It’s possible, but I know of no one who ever witnessed him there,” Richard Alles, a New York Fire Department battalion chief who held a supervisory role in the rescue and recovery efforts, told Politifact in 2019.

In the end, Trump was disinvited to the 25th anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center memorial this week—largely because he insisted on being allowed to give remarks at the event, The New York Times reported.  And given Trump's ever-evolving lies about the recovery efforts and his role in it, it’s clear why.

 

Miley - Bass Persuades

Horrific Pit Bull Attack in San Francisco

A woman was viciously attacked by a pit bull on the streets of San Francisco after the canine was illegally left off leash by its owner.  A woman was walking through the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood when the dog suddenly attacked her, a witness said.  

The attack lasted ten to 15 minutes as passersby attempted to use pepper spray to get the dog away from the victim.  It took place about a quarter mile from the neighborhood’s police station.  When police arrived on the scene, officers used a catch pole to restrain the vicious animal. 

According to the outlet, the dog and its owner frequently appear in the Tenderloin, although it remains unclear whether the dog is always kept on a leash.  A video posted to the Citizen app shows the woman lying on the ground with the pit bull beside her, its face covered in blood.  In a video uploaded by Tenderloin Activities, witnesses can be heard shouting conflicting instructions at police, with some yelling, "Shoot that dog!"  while others shouted, "Don’t shoot that dog!"

The woman suffered severe injuries to her left hand and wrist, as well as her right hand and knee, Tenderloin Activities reported.  She was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator and remains in critical condition.  Thankfully, the dog died at the scene, and its remains were taken by officers from San Francisco Animal Care and Control.  The dangerous dog's (criminal) owner apparently fled the scene.  "While the dog was being restrained, the dog became unresponsive and was declared deceased on scene," SFPD said in a statement.

Tenderloin supervisor Bilal Mahmood addressed the incident on social media, writing: "This is not an isolated incident - we have regularly met and worked with families and neighbors in the TL who have experienced similar incidents with dogs in the streets over the last year.  Earlier this year, we worked with SFPD Tenderloin Station on a Paw Patrol pilot to increase both enforcement and education in the neighborhood, and we will be working with SFPD again in the weeks ahead to identify similar efforts to increase enforcement and keep our communities safe."  Since January, the Dangerous Dogs Unit has received 729 reports of dog bites.  Last year, the unit received 1,027 reports.

 

All-Time Best Delivery Confirmaton Photo

Trump Going Brunette for the Fall

Convicted felon Donald Trump is known for sporting a light blonde quiff, however, during a recent departure from Air Force One, it was noticeably absent.  When Trump touched down in Morristown, New Jersey to waiting reporters, he was photographed with significantly darker, brunette hair.  

The change took so many people by surprised that many began questioning if it was fake.  Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic, wrote in all caps, “You have got to be kidding me.”