Ballmer was suspended as part of the NBA's punishment of the Clippers for cap circumvention
Nothing is inevitable until somebody profits from calling it that.
On the witch hunt
Democrat
TWO GRAND JURIES
Read the docket in both directions. His own: 34 counts in Manhattan, sentenced in January 2025 to an unconditional discharge, with a third attempt to move the case to federal court denied in August 1. The $5 million verdict for the writer was made final when the Supreme Court denied rehearing in August; a petition on the separate $83.3 million award is pending 2.
Now the other direction, in the same eighteen months. In November 2025 a judge dismissed the cases against the former FBI director and the New York attorney general, finding the prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed 3. The department then took the attorney general's case to two grand juries, on December 4 and December 11, and both refused to indict 4. The former director was indicted again in April, over a post about seashells 5. The former national security adviser pleaded guilty in June to one count, with sentencing next month 6. Two grand juries looked at one of these and declined. That is what the word is supposed to describe.
Sources
- Sentenced to an unconditional discharge in January 2025; a third bid to move the case to federal court denied in August 2026 — CNBC, 28 August 2026 ↑
- The $5 million verdict finalized after the Supreme Court denied rehearing — Forbes, 17 August 2026 ↑
- Cases against the former FBI director and the New York attorney general dismissed after a judge found the prosecutor unlawfully appointed — NBC News, 24 November 2025 ↑
- Two grand juries, on 4 and 11 December 2025, declined to indict the New York attorney general — CNN, 11 December 2025 ↑
- The former FBI director was indicted again in April 2026 over a social media post — CNN, 28 April 2026 ↑
- The former national security adviser pleaded guilty to one count in June 2026; sentencing set for 28 October — NPR, 26 June 2026 ↑
Republican
WITCH HUNT
The phrase is nearly a decade old — one count in 2019 put it at 294 uses on the platform he was then using, and no one has kept the tally since 1. It is worth stating why it has held on: a defendant who believes the process is the punishment will say so, and in this instance an appellate court agreed with a version of that.
In August 2025 the Appellate Division vacated the $464.6 million penalty against him as an excessive fine, splitting on the underlying liability 2. That is a court — not a spokesman — finding that the punishment sought exceeded what the offense could carry. If you want the strongest evidence that the legal pressure has at times outrun the conduct, that ruling is it, and it belongs on this side of the page in full.
Sources
“I keep a list, and this one has four lines. The thirty-four counts in Manhattan: that verdict stands, the sentence was an unconditional discharge, and the move to federal court has now been denied three times. The four hundred sixty-four million dollar penalty in New York: an appellate court threw it out as an excessive fine, and the state's top court has it now. The five million to the writer: final, the Supreme Court closed it in August. And the fourth line — two grand juries, eight days apart, refusing to indict the New York attorney general. Sorry, before you go. Which of those four is the hunt?”— Lou
“A witch hunt, he calls it, and one tally had him at two hundred ninety-four by 2019 — the counting stopped, the saying didn't. Here's what one actually looks like from the inside: a prosecutor installed without lawful appointment, two cases thrown out because of it, and a grand jury that said no twice in one week. Only that hunt was pointed the other way, at the state attorney general who'd sued him. The word came with a floor plan.”
“A prosecution is only a witch hunt if it fails, which is why the ones that failed prove the point entirely, and the one that succeeded is under appeal and therefore not yet available for comment.”
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In their own words
“Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way.”
Ballmer apologizes for cap scheme, pays $30 million fine, then takes year off as interim governor runs Clippersthe receipts: 4 stories
GUS: Kawhi Leonard signed with the Los Angeles Clippers back in ought-nineteen, this reporter recalls, a marquee move that set the Western Conference on its ear.
GUS: And a stern finding it was: this reporter is told the Clippers were socked for a cool thirteen million dollars, real money even for men who own basketball teams.
GUS: The penalty carries real teeth, too: Steve Ballmer himself banished from his own arena for the better part of two years. …
Ruled an illegal monopoly, Google keeps every piece; the going rate is $463 million.the receipts: 3 stories
Let's do the arithmetic first, because that's the job. In July of 2018, the European Commission fined Google €4.34 billion for using Android's dominant position to box out rival search products. Google said it would appeal, and it did. On Monday, the EU's data privacy watchdog added another line to the same ledger: $463 million, for mishandling the location data of the people who use Google's services, which is most people. That's eight years and two fines apart, and the second one runs about a tenth the size of the first, which in this business passes for restraint.
At the money desk we don't read a fine as a punishment so much as a receipt — proof the meter was running, nothing more. The interesting number sits nineteen days earlier and an ocean away. On September 2, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who had already found last year that Google holds an illegal monopoly over the ad-tech industry, ruled that the company does not have to sell off any part of it. No divestiture of the AdX exchange. No structural change of any kind. The finding of illegal monopoly stands; the monopoly stands right along with it.
So run the filing against the table, hon. …
Google has been fined $463 million for breaching the European Union’s strict privacy rules because it mishandled users’ location data, the bloc’s data privacy watchdog said Monday.
Fed blames Iran war for inflation, raises rates on American homeowners instead.the receipts: 8 stories
The filing, reconciled. On August 28th, Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh told an audience the central bank was "not ruling out" a rate hike, because inflation remained too high. By September 11th, The Hill had the receipt for why: inflation stayed stubbornly elevated "amid the war with Iran." Not amid a shopping spree. Not amid a raise. Amid a war.
On September 16th, the Fed did what Warsh signaled it would do: it raised the federal funds rate a quarter point, to 3.75 to 4 percent, the first increase in more than three years. The same day, progressive economists flagged the arithmetic working families were about to run twice — once through the tariffs and the war pushing prices up, and again through the higher borrowing costs the Fed had just attached to every mortgage and car loan in the file. The next morning, September 17th, The Hill ran the sequel: "Warsh wins credibility with rate hike." Nobody ran a sequel about the mortgage payment.
By this weekend, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari was still finding inflation "too high" in what he called "all aspects" of the economy, even after stripping out food and energy, the two categories currently carrying the load. …
Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve’s Minneapolis branch, said Sunday that inflation is “still too high,” days after the central bank raised interest rates. “Even if we strip out energy, which is really volatile, and strip out food, they matter a lot, but in terms of where the economy is going, inflation is...
First-time homebuyers are now a record-low 21% of the market, at a record median age of 40 National Association of Realtors, 2025 Profile
'Working Families Foot Trump's Bill Twice' as Fed Hikes Rates Amid Worsening Affordability CrisisThe US Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2023, prompting renewed criticism from progressive economists and Democratic lawmakers who argue that President Donald Trump’s tariffs and warmongering are fueling inflation and further squeezing working families. The 12-member Federal Open…
Oil just broke $100 a barrel. Diesel has surged past $6 a gallon in parts of the country. Yet this week the Federal Reserve responded to the pain American families are feeling at the pump by raising interest rates for the first time since 2023 by a quarter of a percentage point.
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The serials
Long stories in short chapters: the walk from a receipt in your hand to the ledger it lands in.
Commencing in these pages
THE HOUSE IS A PARK
“The house costs $15.5 million a year to run and $600 million this year to add a room; Congress voted on the first number.” — from the editor’s desk
Chapter One opens on a spray-on truck-bed liner, the option the dealer adds for a few hundred dollars over the sticker, a black skin that bonds to the steel and never comes off
Commencing in these pages
THE FLOOR NEVER FALLS
“Above a fixed dollar floor, Congress is notified. Below it, Congress is not. The floor was set in 1981; the only amendment since raised it.” — from the editor’s desk
Chapter One opens on a $14 rubber-and-steel drive belt off a home lawn tractor, the kind sold at any hardware store
Commencing in these pages
THE FIRE BILLS THE WORLD
“The one industry whose entire business is pricing risk has arranged to carry none of its own: the premium is yours, the fire is yours, and the backstop, when it arrives, is yours as well.” — from the editor’s desk
Chapter One opens on a homeowner's fire-insurance renewal notice, $312 higher than last year, no explanation given beyond "risk factors."
Commencing in these pages
THE MANAGED ENEMY
“Money that reaches an armed group with everyone's paperwork in order is not a leak; a leak does not recur on a payment schedule.” — from the editor’s desk
Chapter One opens on $100 bills, sealed in a Qatari courier's duffel, counted twice at the Israeli crossing before Gaza's civil-service payday.
Commencing in these pages
YOUR RING FUNDS THE WAR
“The comforts of the first world arrive scrubbed of their supply lines — the ring, the chocolate, the coffee — with a thirty-second commercial standing where the history should be.” — from the editor’s desk
Chapter One opens on a hand-chalked price board at an Abu Jubaiha trading post lists the day's rate per gram of raw gold — the only receipt an artisanal miner working the pits that collapsed on January 23, 2026, will ever hold.
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Also in today’s edition
Senator from Trump's own party asks him to prove the wedding repayment he claims already happened.the receipts: 4 stories
I need somebody who does this for a living to explain a word to me, because I don't do wire transfers and I figured a bank would be the outfit that knows the answer, not me. So I asked the woman at the counter at my branch — Tuesday, not busy — what it means when somebody says a debt got "reimbursed." She said it means money moved, on a date, in an amount, and the bank has a record of both, because that's the job. That's their whole business, keeping track of when money that went one way came back the other. I believe her. I just don't have the two things she said I should have.
I wrote some of this down. Not all of it — I lost the thread once and had to start the notebook over on the same page — but here's what I've got. In May, Donald Trump Jr. got married in the Bahamas. A Russian named Umar Kremlev, who runs the International Boxing Association and who Vladimir Putin had handed the Order of Friendship to a few weeks before the wedding, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward it — the rental of a private island was part of that. Trump Jr. and his wife confirmed it themselves, on social media, once ProPublica had already reported it.
I don't want to be a bother, but I have to go back to the word for a second. …
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) pressed for proof on Sunday that Donald Trump Jr. paid back a Russian oligarch who funded his wedding festivities.
President Donald Trump said Friday that his son Donald Trump Jr. had reimbursed the Russian oligarch who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to help fund his wedding celebration. An investigation published this week by ProPublica reported that Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association and a close ally of Russian…
Congressional Democrats have opened an investigation after ProPublica revealed on Monday that a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin bankrolled part of Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding in May. ProPublica reports that Umar Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on wedding expenses, including the rental of a private island.…
Arch With No Legal Basis to Break Ground Gets Promoted to 'Military Complex' With Snipers, Dronesthe receipts: 13 stories
On September 3rd, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the government was preparing "over the next two-week period" to start excavation on what he called the "Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck." All together now — those are his own two names for the same structure, filed one sentence apart, and neither one is "monument."
By September 4th, the people reading the same paperwork found a problem Burgum hadn't mentioned. Attorney Nicolas Sansone told Common Dreams the administration "has no legal authority to begin work" on the arch at all. The two-week excavation window had, on paper, no floor under it.
On September 5th, three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian went to federal court anyway, filing an emergency motion to block the groundbreaking before it could happen. …
Trump said the update was being made at the request of the U.S. military.
The president’s post about the 250-foot arch planned near Arlington National Cemetery comes as veterans groups, historic preservationists and others attempt to stop the project.
President Trump has claimed that military operations are needed at his proposed triumphal arch in Washington D.C., in order to protect national security. A federal court is weighing the arch's legality.
The president’s announcement on Sunday echoed his justification for the White House ballroom: that the project was necessary for national security.
Trump says his 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington Memorial Bridge will house drones, snipers and large quantities of ammunition storage.
President Trump posted on social media early Sunday that his proposed 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery will be used as a military complex, saying there will "large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage."
President Trump said that he has agreed to convert plans for a massive triumphal arch into a "top grade Military Complex," equipped with snipers and drone storage.
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
Trump says his proposed arch will include a military complex housing drones and snipersPresident Donald Trump said in a Sunday Truth Social post that he would convert plans for the D.C.-area “Triumphal Arch” to “a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch” which could be used for snipers and drone storage.
Primary ballots cast, 2026
Ballots in each state's comparable statewide primary contests, certified state by state - not party registration, and not a November prediction. Top-two states (CA, WA, AK) have no party ballots to count; unopposed-side states are counted as cast. Ten states await certification and join as their canvasses land.
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The wire
Everything the headlines were drawn from: 164 items from 45 outlets, gathered through the day, every right or mainstream headline answered or rebuked before it renders. RSS.