Better in their words…

JEFF CHILDERS MAY 17, 2026

The seven-Senator impeachment club shrinking by one, as Bill Cassidy collapses to a third-place finish in his Louisiana primary five years after his Trump-conviction vote; the Trump administration’s proposed $1.776 billion “Truth and Justice Commission” to compensate the targets of Biden-era weaponization, with predictable hand-wringing from the very people who built the weaponization; AG Ken Paxton forcing Texas Children’s Hospital to fund the nation’s first pediatric detransition clinic — for free — two business days before his Senate runoff with John Cornyn; and the American Bar Association quietly burying its century-old DEI mandate before red states bury the ABA itself.

⛑️ C&C ARMY BRIEFING ⛑️

I’ll have more to say about the conference in this week’s upcoming roundups, but I wanted to let you all know that, while in DC, I personally inspected the reflecting pool and was gratified to confirm that the blue-ing continues despite Democrat lawfare over their “aesthetic injuries.” Here is evidence, taken on my own phone cam. They are almost done:

Finally, some color enters the drab, concrete frame. Aesthetic cures. Progress.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY🇺🇸🌍

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In 2021, Bill Cassidy (R-LA) voted Trump ‘guilty.’ In 2026, Louisiana voters returned the verdict— with a 76-24 margin. The New York Times ran threetop-of-page stories, the main one headlined, “Cassidy Loses Senate Primary in Louisiana, as Trump Vanquishes G.O.P. Foe.” (Right below that: “7 Republicans Voted to Convict Trump. Most Are No Longer in Office.”) They can’t help it; the “revenge” narrative is media catnip.

In 2021, seven Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to convict President Trump in his second impeachment for “inciting an insurrection.” Because Senate terms last six years, and because Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) had just been re-elected, yesterday was the first time he had to face primary voters since his infamous vote. NBC, yesterday:

As it turns out, voters did remember, and Cassidy came in a mortifying thirdplace.

Watching the returns last night, Cassidy must have felt the kind of thrill you get riding in a motorcycle sidecar just as it heads down the hill ahead of the motorcycle it just separated from.

Of the seven GOP Senators who somehow concluded that the evidence showed “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump intentionally started an unarmed insurrection, only two others now remain in office. Both hail from deep blue states, where voting for Trump’s impeachment was probably a plus: Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine).

Apart from Cassidy, the four others —including the cardboard cutout of Mitt Romney— all retired in disgrace to avoid facing primary voters.

Senator Cassidy remained unrepentant and never gave up his Trump derangement. In 2024, he refused to support the party’s nominee. In 2021, he joined a handful of Republican Senators to vote for Biden’s trillion-dollar “infrastructure” porkzilla bill, which has yet to deliver its $64 billion for high-speed internet. Recently, he’s often attacked Secretary Kennedy over “vaccine skepticism,” and this year blocked Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Casey Means.

So he somehow got both MAGA and MAHA mad at him. What surprises me the most is that he managed to get as many votes as 24.3%. Cassidy’s practice was to ignore most of his voters. He was practically begging to be primaried.

Anyway, he held true to his beliefs to the bitter end. In so doing, he joined a teeny tiny club of congressional incumbents to be submerged in rage landslides. Nationally, incumbents almost never lose Senate primaries. Politico noted that since 1982, sitting senators have enjoyed an overall re‑election rate of 87%, with primary defeats being especially rare.

Cassidy just became only the second Louisiana senator in 94 years to lose his re‑election bid, making last night’s primary washout locally historic.

As you might imagine, Trump took several victory laps on Truth Social overnight. He said, “RINO Bill Cassidy got CRUSHED by the great people of Louisiana. They never forget — and neither do I!”

In 2021, the Senator explained his vote against Trump simply: “he’s guilty.” Well, Louisiana voters just found Bill Cassidy “guilty.”

It’s worth everyone’s notice that Senator Cassidy will continue serving through the end of his term (this year). So don’t celebrate too hard.

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The great un-Bidening continued yesterday, when ABC reported, “Trump administration to create $1.776B ‘Truth and Justice Commission’ to compensate allies: Sources.” It’s a reparations fund that would be available for anyone harmed by the weaponization of the federal government. If that sounds like common sense to you, that’s only because you have not given it the careful consideration of brilliant minds like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

“It’s outright corruption! What we’re seeing here is outright corruption,” outraged Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told ABC. Outright corruption is different and even worse than regular old Learing-Center-style corruption. “We’re looking at a billion dollars for a ballroom; $1.7 billion for a slush fund for the president’s friends,” she added, accidentally enlarging the President’s circle of friends to include everyone the Biden regime ever targeted.

The patriotically numbered restitution fund ($1.776 billion) would ‘settle’ the President’s three lawsuits against the federal government: one against the IRS for leaking his tax returns, the second over the Russia-collusion hoax during Trump 1.0, and the third on account of the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid.

You would think progressives would be happy to see those lawsuits settled. And, since they invented reparations, you would think they’d endorse the idea.

According to the current proposed settlement terms —which could still change— President Trump would personally be ineligible to get any of the money (though his businesses could conceivably apply). The fund would be overseen by five ‘independent’ commissioners appointed by the Attorney General (or acting Attorney General). Trump would retain the right to remove any or all of them without cause.

Concerned Legal Scholars™ wrung their hands about the “conflicts of interest” involved in the President effectively settling a lawsuit with himself, since he runs the agencies like the IRS that he is suing. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered legal briefing explaining how both sides are “sufficiently adverse” to sustain a constitutional cause of action.

In simpler terms, a court would immediately throw out any lawsuit where you sued yourself, even if you suffered from a bad case of multiple personality disorder, like Jimmy Kimmel. But a better comparison might be if Elon Musk sued Tesla, where he is the CEO.

I could easily imagine a reasonable lawsuit in which Elon could legally sue the same company he runs— say, for breach of his employment agreement.

As a lawyer, I could dive right into the murky legal details. But I think the answer should be simple and obvious to anyone. The President is adverse to the IRS because it is the IRS. Everybody is adverse to the IRS. If you are notadverse to the IRS, you should seek professional help.

Since settlement details are not only unavailable but are also not yet final, we cannot yet say who might be eligible to apply. Hopefully, it would include my Disinformation Dozen clients, who are canceled health influencers on whose behalf I am currently suing the federal government. January 6th people also seem like a no-brainer.

But … could it even extend to anyone whose Facebook account was canceled for posting a mask meme, or Twitterers suspended for mocking the human cockroach, Fauci? We do not yet know.

How cool would it be if everyone who was actually harmed by Biden’s weaponization could file a claim? Freeing Tina Peters was good enough— but what if everybody got a shot?

A few Republicans are opposing, or at least questioning, the proposed settlement. “I don’t even know how that’s allowable to happen,” Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) told ABC, mangling his grammar.

Well, in fairness, $1.776 billion is a lot. But it would be a rounding error compared to funding illegal aliens to not provide hospice services in Los Angeles, USAID grants for studying lesbian interpretive dance, or $64 billion high-speed internet bills that deliver six dial-up modems.

“It sounds like a question our colleagues across the street are going to have to resolve pretty quickly,” Rep. Fitzpatrick added, passing the buck.

Okay. That’s fair. Let’s wait and see what they come up with.

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Speaking of high-profile primary challenges, on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will runoff against never-Trump Senator John Cornyn. Meanwhile, Paxton continues crushing it. On Friday, the Texas Tribune reported, “Texas Children’s Hospital to create clinic reversing trans care.” In short, AG Paxton forced them to start the nation’s first detransitioning facility. Better yet, they must provide the services to detransitioners for free.

After Texas passed laws in 2023 drastically restricting “gender affirming” procedures for kids, calling those procedures child abuse, Texas Children’s Hospital publicly said it had complied and stopped prescribing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mastectomies, and other related services.

But in secret, they kept going— and kept submitting claims to state and federal insurance programs using billing codes for fake conditions. Dummies.

After a whistleblower, courageous Dr. Eithan Haim, provided his office with evidence, Paxton pounced on the hospital like a honey badger on a cobra. During the investigation, the hospital coughed up over five million pages of documents, investigated itself, and whined that “these efforts have required significant staff time and financial resources to defend ourselves.”

Poor babies.

Last week, Texas Children’s surrendered and resolved the case. It agreed to fire five doctors, stop all pediatric gender‑transition procedures, hand over $10 million in fines, accept findings that it violated federal law for insurance fraud, and fund for five years a first‑of‑its‑kind detransition clinic helping minors suffering from so-called “affirming procedures.”

Democrats and LGBTQIA++ activists were predictably outraged. State Rep. Jessica Gonzalez (D) bizarrely called the settlement literally erasing trans people from the ‘eyes of society’ and tweeted:

How Rep. Gonzalez concluded that the deal “erases trans people” is anyone’s guess. It’s already been illegal to provide the procedures for two years now. One more thing they swear isn’t happening that keeps happening and must continue happening. She forgot to mention that the Texas Children’s settlement is also destroying democracy.

The settlement arrived two business days before Tuesday’s primary election. Great timing, Ken! Let’s get that kind of strategic thinking into the Senate. Texans, you know what to do.

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On Friday, Reuters reported, “American Bar Association votes to eliminate DEI rule for law schools.” Saying the ABA did it ‘willingly’ is like saying your teenager volunteered to apologize to his brother. They did it, all right, but under extreme duress.

Historically, state bar associations have allowed the ABA to accredit (or certify) law schools. This gave the far-left group immense power to shape law school policy. The ABA has effectively dominated U.S. law‑school accreditation for the last century, with near‑monopoly control over bar‑qualifying schools in most states since at least the 1920s.

But last month, a leaked ABA committee memo warned that the “national system of accreditation—and the ABA’s role as an accreditor—would be imminently threatened if the diversity and inclusion rule is not repealed.” I’m not saying they were panicking, but “imminently threatening” is legalese for time to panic!

They weren’t wrong. In recent months, Texas, Florida, and Alabama have each stripped the ABA from their states’ lawyer licensing processes, on account of the ABA’s overt racism disguised as virtue signaling. Reuters reported that “several other Republican-controlled states are weighing similar moves.” The Federal Trade Commission piled on, endorsing Florida’s change and stating that an ABA-only accreditation scheme was not in consumers’ best interest.

For law schools to keep their necessary accreditation, the ABA’s rule mandated them to “demonstrate a commitment” to having a diverse student body, faculty, and staff; to prove their commitment was working by providing recruitment and admissions figures; and to provide diversity-related student programming like special DEI departments, minority-only job fairs, and separate-but-equal water fountains (for white students).

Ten months ago, the ABA remained stubbornly defiant. Bloomberg, July 2025:

But suddenly, now that the cultural winds have undeniably shifted, they have achieved a more refined point of view. Get this word salad: “Even though I personally agree with the DEI standard and what it tries to achieve, I think it’s appropriate as an accrediting body that we eliminate that standard so we don’t inhibit the diversity of ideas out there in various types of legal education environments,” said David Brennen, a periphrastic ABA council member.

Folks, we have come a long way if the credentialed elites are starting to promote “viewpoint diversity” over race/gender/sexuality diversity, even if it’s just a fig leaf to let them pivot without the abject humiliation of conceding Trump and red states made them do it.

They love mandates for others; but not so much for themselves.

For decades, the ABA enthusiastically mandated DEI for everyone else: law schools had to prove their commitment to diversity in admissions, hiring, and programming or risk losing accreditation. But once Trump, the DOJ, and multiple states turned that same coercive logic back on the ABA —change your rules or lose federal recognition and state reliance— suddenly, the ABA councilors rediscovered the wondrous virtues of pluralism and institutional restraint.

We continue racking up major victories in the cultural counter-revolution. When a key ABA committee warns that keeping the DEI rule would “imminently” threaten its federal recognition, it shows just how fragile top‑down progressive control always was. Apparently, it could rapidly collapse after bumping into a hostile administration and a few defiant, freedom-loving states willing to challenge the status quo.

In other words, the ABA sees the SS Diversity sinking, and doesn’t want to go down with the ship. It’s classic institutional self‑preservation. Better to sacrifice the DEI standard than lose federal recognition and watch states erect parallel, rival frameworks that might permanently erode the ABA’s relevance.

Confronted with the painful reality, they surrendered, concluding that giving in meant they could live to fight another day. Meanwhile, we conservatives must keep driving the ball as far down the field as we can while we have possession.

Have a blessed and rewarding Sunday! Thanks, as always, for you continued loyal support. I’m now back at HQ and still getting unpacked, but will soon be prepared for a whole new week of essential news and highly caffeinated commentary.

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