Nancy Mace Played Stupid Games. Now She’s Winning Stupid Prizes.

Representative Nancy Mace’s congressional spending is still the talk of the town. On this week’s agenda: her $1.6 million D.C. townhouse.

The South Carolina Republican was accused of “secretly fleecing taxpayers,” in an ethics complaint filed earlier this week alleging she sought higher monthly lodging reimbursements than what was actually warranted by her expenses.

“Representative Mace has violated House Ethics Rules by repeatedly seeking reimbursement for lodging in excess of the actual monthly expense of maintaining her co-owned townhouse in  Washington, D.C., resulting in a misuse of taxpayer funds for purposes unrelated to her official duties,” read a copy of the complaint obtained by Punchbowl News.

Mace’s requests violate two key rules of a congressional reimbursement program, according to the complaint: Lawmakers cannot be repaid for interest or principal on their mortgage payments, and they cannot ask to be repaid for more than their actual expenses.

The complaint came on the heels of a lengthy investigation by The Washington Post into Mace’s spending habits. Two former staffers told the Post that Mace repeatedly directed her team to file for reimbursements to the tune of $2,000 a month, despite being informed by people involved in her office finances that she could not justify claiming more than $1,726 a month. During some months of the year, she filed to be reimbursed upward of $3,000—nearly double what her team had calculated.

“This allegation alone deserves further investigation as well as interviews of former staff,” the complaint said. “If true, then this is a flagrant abuse of House Rules and a clear example of a Member secretly fleecing taxpayers.”

“Money is fungible, so the thousands of excess dollars received by [Representative] Mace could conceivably have been put towards any use,” the complaint alleged, noting that if the anecdotes offered by her former staffers were true, she would have twice violated the program’s statutes.

Crime doesn’t pay, but it seems that Justice can get you millions.

A new report from Fix the Court, a judicial watchdog and advocacy group, found that justices on the U.S. Supreme Court received close to a total of $3 million in gifts, at least, over the last 20 years—with more than $2.4 million of those gifts being directed solely to Justice Clarence Thomas.

Thomas has repeatedly been the focus of ethical scrutiny over reports that he received exorbitant gifts and vacations from Republican billionaires, never paid back a loan for his beloved R.V., and cavorted with the Koch brothers, while failing to adequately disclose many of the perks he’s received. All of this has been reported on extensively by publications such as ProPublica. Now, Fix the Court has worked to add it all up.

Fix the Court was able to identify 103 gifts that Thomas received between 2004 and 2024, totaling a value of $2,402,310. Overall, it found 193 when counting some gifts that were received before that period. These gifts could be a number of things: often meals or lodging, with a free flight counting as one gift and a round-trip journey counting as two.

The court’s gift-reporting threshold has slowly risen over the course of 20 years. In 2004, it was $285, and in 2023, it was $480. Of those 193 gifts, Thomas only disclosed receiving 27.

Fix the Court was also able to identify 101 “likely gifts”—mostly trips to exclusive clubs Bohemian Grove and Topridge—Thomas received during those 20 years, which added an additional value of $1,787,684. Including those “likely gifts,” Thomas has reportedly received $4,189,994 worth of perks.

For context, in January 2001, an associate Supreme Court justice like Thomas would’ve made $194,300, a sum that has since risen to $285,400, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. Through gifts, Thomas has roughly doubled his official published income from the last 20 years, which would sit at approximately $4,747,700. To Thomas, being bought and paid for appears to be a second job altogether. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

When counting “likely gifts” furnished to Thomas, justices seated on the U.S. Supreme Court received an astounding 445 gifts valued at $4,780,720. Without those “likely gifts,” the justices’ tallies still hit 344, worth $2,993,036.

Police officers in Burlington, Vermont, opted for an unusual teaching method for an active shooting simulation: inflicting pure terror.

Roughly 20 Burlington High School students were touring the Burlington Police Station Wednesday as part of a year-end forensics program when the authorities decided to stage a surprise active shooter demonstration, with one officer bursting into the room dressed as a masked gunman, firing blanks and sending students ducking for cover, reported Vermont’s weekly paper Seven Days.

Parents of the affected students were outraged, telling the paper that they felt the officers were playing on the fears of teenagers who grew up enveloped in fears of mass gun violence.

“I’m baffled,” one unidentified mother told Seven Days. “It is a very real threat to kids these days to have a school shooting. It’s something they worry about.”

One student, speaking anonymously, told the paper that the incident left her “shaking and crying,” fearing that she was going to get shot. Another said that they scraped their knee while attempting to find shelter, while a third immediately rushed to contact their mother.

“It felt so real,” a student told Seven Days.

Burlington police confirmed to the paper that the incident occurred, noting that they had informed teachers ahead of time that there would be a “gunshot-related crime” depicted during the tour—but not that it would take place without warning.

In a separate email to parents, schoolteachers alleged that the police department had wanted the demonstration to be “as realistic as possible” and that the department had previously performed the live demonstrations for college students and adults.

“The detectives did apologize after they realized that the reenactment did not translate well to high school students,” the teachers wrote, according to an email obtained by Seven Days.

The school district has since issued an apology for the incident and has offered counseling services to the students involved.

The trial may be over for Steve Bannon, but that doesn’t mean his attorneys are done with the drama.

The January 6 conspirator’s legal representation blew up Thursday after his client was ordered to report to prison on July 1 to serve a four-month sentence, resulting in a swift dressing down by Judge Carl J. Nichols.

Bannon attorney David Schoen reportedly “sprung into action” after Nichols announced his decision, becoming much more lively than he had been throughout the rest of the hearing, per NBC News.

“One thing you have to learn as a lawyer is that when the judge has made his decision, you don’t stand up and start yelling,” Nichols responded.

But when Schoen refused to quit, the judge added that he’d “had enough.”

“I’m not yelling,” Schoen threw back, explaining that he was “passionate.”

“You’re sending a man to prison who thought he was complying with the law, we don’t do that in my system,” he continued, deriding the decision as “contrary to our system of justice.”

That appeared to be the final straw for the judge, who ordered Schoen to “sit down.”

Despite facing a near future in prison, Bannon appeared in decent spirits on Thursday, telling reporters that he had “great lawyers” with the intention of going “all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to.”

“There’s nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up,” Bannon said. “There’s not a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up.”

That already seems to be the case: Bannon was sentenced to prison more than a year and a half ago, but he has remained free this whole time to spew disinformation and hatred online.

Bannon isn’t the only eyebrow-raising client on Schoen’s roster. Prior to representing the far-right conspiracy theorist, he defended the Russian mafia, capital murderers, and international drug dealers. Schoen has been an adviser to House Speaker Mike Johnson, was the last person to see his client Jeffrey Epstein alive, and also represented Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.

Trump’s search for a vice president pick is heating up as the Republican National Convention draws near with contenders recently receiving vetting materials, according to multiple outlets that have shared the new nightmare short list.

Team Trump has officially requested materials from North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Senators J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, according to ABC, with inquiries sent to Senators Tim Scott and Tom Cotton, Representatives Elise Stefanik and Byron Donalds, and former Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson. Cue the tea leaves:

“Trump likes people who are rich and have hot wives,” a source unaffiliated with Trump’s campaign but reportedly closely following the veep search told Politico’s Playbook on Thursday. If wife hotness is a major factor in Trump’s search, Stefanik may still be in the running on the technicality that she’s the wife—although lacking in the platinum-blonde, spray-tanned aesthetic common among women in Trump’s orbit.

Trump plans to announce his choice for vice president at the RNC in July. And while Trump is reportedly still working from a “fluid” list of prospective candidates that changes day to day and the Trump campaign hasn’t offered any insights, a request for vetting materials is as strong an indicator as it gets—stronger, at least, than guessing whose wife Trump thinks is hotter. Regardless of who he picks, Trump’s short list is a mishmash of far-right figures hiring white supremacists, pushing bigoted policies, and floating racist conspiracy theories that are a threat to democracy.