Scandal and chaos grip the nation’s capital as lazy lawmakers abandon their posts, leaving the House Speaker in a desperate lurch. Meanwhile, a federal judge has smashed a brazen $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund hatched by the President, even as tragedy strikes the Senate and blood spills on the streets of Maine. This cascading collapse of order threatens the very bedrock of our Republic's justice and governance!
**THE DAILY INQUIRER**
*The Voice of the City — Five Cents*
---
### **LAZY LAWMAKERS PLAY HOOKY AT THE CAPITOL!**
#### **"Lame Ducks" Skedaddle as Speaker Johnson Grips the Reins; Absenteeism Reaches Fever Pitch in Washington!**
**WASHINGTON** — There is trouble brewing under the big dome, and Speaker Mike Johnson is holding a mighty short straw! A sensational exposé by the ink-stained scribes of *Bloomberg Government* reveals that Uncle Sam’s lawmakers are catching a bad case of the "senioritis"—with outgoing Republicans treating the House of Representatives like a high school playpen on a sunny Friday afternoon!
According to the ledger, those GOP gents who are packing their trunks for home have missed an average of 39 roll calls apiece—more than double the standard average of 18 missed votes for the rest of the Congressional gang!
It seems the biggest slackers are those who took a walloping in the recent primaries or tried to climb the ladder to a higher office. This group of nearly ten reluctant retirees has missed about ten percent of the action—60 out of 595 roll calls! And the truant list is set to grow taller than a flagpole, with Arizona Representatives David Schweikert and Andy Biggs currently locked in a dandy slugfest for the Governor’s mansion.
The gold medals for playing hooky go to South Carolina’s Nancy Mace and Texas’s Wesley Hunt. Sister Mace, having lost her bid for the Governor’s seat down south, missed a whopping 105 votes. Meanwhile, Brother Hunt, after a failed run for the Senate, racked up 156 missed votes—though we hear his attendance got a lick of polish after he lost the primary.
Speaker Johnson is pulling his hair out over these empty desks, especially with insurgent firebrands like Sister Anna Paulina Luna throwing wrenches in the legislative gears to force her own hard-boiled priorities. It’s a real headache for the chief, and the taxpayers are left holding the bag!
---
### **GRISLY DEATH IN MAINE! IMMIGRATION G-MEN FIRE ON COLOMBIAN DRIVER!**
#### **Tragedy in Biddeford: Dying Man Handcuffed as Toddler Cries in Her Pajamas!**
**BIDDEFORD, Maine** — A shocking and bloody spectacle turned the quiet streets of Biddeford into a shooting gallery on Monday morning! Federal immigration agents cornered a small white motorcar, unleashing a hail of lead that left a 26-year-old Colombian man clinging to life at the steering wheel.
A sensational moving-picture reel obtained by the *Portland Press Herald* shows the victim’s automobile spinning in dizzying circles after the fateful shots were fired. When the G-men finally pried the door open, they let the driver's limp, bleeding body slump onto the cold gravel, immediately slapping the iron cuffs on his wrists.
"They still dropped him on the ground and handcuffed him after a bullet went clean through his noggin!" cried one horrified onlooker.
An eyewitness told reporters the victim was bleeding profusely from his dome but was still gasping out his final words: *"I tried to stop."*
To make matters more heartbreaking, a tiny doll of a girl—the victim's own three-year-old daughter—was found at the scene, sobbing hysterically in her "Bluey" pajamas.
Advocates for the foreign-born declare the deceased had all his papers in order, possessed a Social Security card, and was authorized to work in the U.S. A spokesman for the Feds claimed the driver tried to ram them with his motorcar—a yarn similar to the one told in Houston last week when agents shot down Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
Representative Chellie Pingree and Senator Angus King disclosed that the agents were not wearing "camera boxes" on their lapels during the affray. Outraged townfolks have taken to the streets in protest, marching all the way to Senator Susan Collins’s headquarters, chanting, *"Vote her out!"*
---
### **THE CHIEF JOCKEYS FOR HORSEPOWER WHILE COMRADE CROSSES THE RIVER!**
#### **No Tears from Trump for Lindsey Graham; President Hypes Mall Automobile Race Instead!**
**WASHINGTON** — Senator Lindsey Graham has gone to his eternal reward after a sudden, tragic tear in his great blood-pipe—but you wouldn’t have known it from the President’s lips on Monday!
Instead of draped black cloth and solemn eulogies, Donald Trump took to the microphone to ballyhoo a high-octane, 190-mile-an-hour IndyCar race slated to tear down Pennsylvania Avenue this August to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.
"It’s going to be a sight for the ages!" Trump boomed, completely skipping any mention of the departed South Carolina statesman. Instead, the President traded wisecracks with Transportation Chief Sean Duffy—kidding him about his old days as a world-champion lumberjack speed climber—and joked about "big ratings" with Fox Sports big boss Eric Shanks.
This stood in stark contrast to Sunday, when the President told reporters that Graham’s passing was "devastating" and that the Senator was "like family." Trump had even lauded Graham’s fiery 2018 defense of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as "a top-five moment in the history of the Senate."
But by Monday morning, the President's tune had soured. Calling into the Fox news-wire, Trump chuckled as he recalled Graham’s temporary about-face after the January 6th ruckus.
"He had one bad moment... and then he called me 40 minutes later and said, 'Did I really say that?'" Trump laughed, grading his late pal a "99 out of 100."
When the radio hosts tried to steer the chat back to the dead Senator, the President shrugged them off, launching instead into a fierce tirade about mail-in ballots, his coveted SAVE America Act, and the "rigged" elections of California.
---
### **THE HUNDRED-BILLION-DOLLAR MEDIA MONOPOLY WAR!**
#### **Twelve States File Suit to Block Paramount-Skydance Merger; Fear of "Conservative Empire" Grips the Airwaves!**
**SAN FRANCISCO** — The trust-busters are out in full force! Twelve heavy-hitting Democratic Attorneys General, led by California’s Rob Bonta, have filed a grand lawsuit in federal court to put the kibosh on Paramount-Skydance’s whopping $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The states—including New York, Arizona, Washington, and Colorado—argue that if these two entertainment giants merge, it will squeeze the pocketbooks of every working man and woman who owns a radio or visits the moving pictures.
"This unlawful merger of two behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less swell content for film and television!" Attorney General Bonta warned from his soapbox.
If the deal goes through, the newly crowned czars of the company—Larry Ellison and his son David, both staunch allies of Donald Trump—would control a media empire containing CNN, CBS News, Warner Bros. Studios, and the HBO Max streaming service.
Whispers around the speakeasies suggest that CNN is slated for a major conservative face-lift under the Ellisons. CBS News has already been steered to the starboard side, resulting in plummeting ratings and a mass exodus of writers from the legendary *60 Minutes* broadcast.
The President is said to be tickled pink by the merger, hoping to settle some old scores with CNN, while his Defense Chief Pete Hegseth has openly cheered the pro-Trump shakeup. Though the Department of Justice gave the deal the green light last month, the final round of this heavyweight bout will now be decided by a federal judge!
---
### **JUDGE PUTS THE KIBOSH ON TRUMP’S BILLION-DOLLAR "SLUSH FUND"!**
#### **"A Sham!" Cries Court; President’s Sneaky Taxpayer Payoff Scheme Dealt Knockout Blow!**
**MIAMI** — A federal judge has thrown a bucket of cold water on Donald Trump’s grand $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization" treasure chest!
The dizzying sum was the result of a backroom deal Trump made with his own administration after dropping a $10 billion lawsuit against the taxman for leaking his financial ledgers. The taxpayer-funded "reparations" were designed to hand out fat stacks of dough to any right-winger who claimed they were targeted by the previous administration.
But U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wasn’t buying the snake oil! In a blistering 56-page ruling on Monday, she declared the entire setup a flim-flam designed to "earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law."
The Judge revealed that there was never any real scrap between the two sides. Trump simply had his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche—whom he placed atop the Justice Department—negotiate a cozy "settlement" with Trump’s *current* lawyers.
"It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the Parties," Judge Williams wrote, using high-falutin court talk to call it a fix!
The sneaky deal even included a clause that would forever bar the U.S. government from prosecuting Trump, his family, or his businesses ever again.
The Judge has officially banned anyone from using the settlement, and has referred Trump’s mouthpiece, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida Bar for a good old-fashioned disciplining. It’s a total knockout for the President’s pet fund, and the taxpayers’ dough stays right where it belongs!